President Trump announces via Truth Social, his intent to nominate former ODNI official John Ratcliffe to the position of Director of the Central Intelligence Agency.
Former DNI Ratcliffe passed through the Senate Intel Committee nomination process in 2019 after being blocked by Mitch McConnell in 2018. With a prior SSCI confirmation being successful, the path to confirming John Ratcliffe as CIA Director is essentially a foregone conclusion.
As CIA Director, John Ratcliffe will control the world’s second-most powerful intelligence agency. Ratcliffe has almost no attack vectors for the internal IC apparatus to use against him, that’s why I previously thought a role in the Trump-2 intel system would be good.
Ratcliffe was/is the lead transition team member on all things related to Intelligence. Prior rumor put him in the NatSec Advisor role, but CIA Director is a good fit. John Ratcliffe is very stable, vanilla, no drama and can be expected to deliver on the priorities of the Trump administration. He will work very well with the White House.
The concern would be Ratcliffe’s ability to remove the corrupt players within the darkest part of the darkest IC system.
The CIA operates a totally opaque budget and is the only institution in government with an allowable mandate to lie to every other element of the executive branch and every other branch. The CIA is legislative authorized to be an entirely dark operation with almost no oversight (SSCI).
All lying is legislatively lawful from the CIA, that is the structure of their authority. However, we can quickly see what that authority can lead to when corruption is running amok.
With this in mind, a guy like Ratcliffe in charge of a silo that is permitted to manipulate/lie is worth quite a bit. It will be very interesting to see how truth telling Director Ratcliffe deals with the dark aspects to the omnipotent silo he now controls.
One last word of caution. In the prior administration Ratcliffe never fought for declassification of records, which led to President Trump exiting his second term without vital issues ever seeing sunlight. As DNI John Ratcliffe never declassified the critical information that President Trump was urgently requesting in the final months of his presidency. Ratcliffe maintained the silo structure without conflict.
John Ratcliffe’s best friend is Trey Gowdy.
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Sean Hannity will likely quickly follow with ‘glowing’ reviews.
Watch for a response from those who have a table in the kitchen.
♦ The U.S State Dept and CIA operation is like a restaurant.
The Dept of State is the front of the restaurant, with the Secretary as the Maitre D’. The CIA is the back of the restaurant, the kitchen. The Director is the Chef.
The consulates are the wait staff. USAID are the food runners. The Dept of Defense are the bus boys.
The tables and chairs are assigned by the Maitre D’ according to their value. Countries viewed as more important get the best tables.
The menus offered to each nation are completely different.
Israel has a table in the kitchen.
To get the best experience, tips (bribes) are required for everyone, from the parking valets outside, to the sommelier, to the server. Currently, Ukraine is the biggest tipper.
On the oversight aspect the Senate Foreign Relations Committee is the control mechanism to approve/install the Secretary of State. The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence is the control mechanism to approve/install the CIA Director. Everything therein and thereafter is a system of pretending it is something else.