CIA nominee John Ratcliffe told America’s spies on Wednesday to get ready for aggressive espionage operations or to start looking for work elsewhere.
Mr. Ratcliffe oversaw the entire intelligence community during President-elect Donald Trump’s first term, and the nominee told the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence he has plans to ensure the CIA is focused on the business of stealing foreign secrets.
Mr. Ratcliffe told lawmakers reviewing his nomination that CIA officers under his watch would go everywhere worldwide, produce analysis without political or personal bias, and conduct covert action that “no one else can do.”
“To the brave CIA officers listening around the world, if all of this sounds like what you signed up for, then buckle up and get ready to make a difference,” he said. “If it doesn’t, then it’s time to find a new line of work. We must be the ultimate meritocracy.”
Republicans in Congress and Mr. Trump’s supporters have expressed deep frustration with the performance and the direction of the intelligence community.
Sen. Tom Cotton, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, thanked intelligence officers for their work but complained the CIA has gotten worse at its main function.
“The CIA has neglected its core mission: collecting clandestine foreign intelligence; put more simply, stealing secrets,” the Arkansas Republican said. “Intelligence collection is the main effort; every other job is a supporting effort. If you don’t collect intelligence by, say, handling spies or hacking computers, you should ask yourself how you support those who do or how you harness and use what they produce.”
Mr. Cotton cited CIA personnel offering to pay diversity consultants three times as much as what the agency offers new case officers to recruit and run human spies as emblematic of the problem he perceives at the agency.
“The CIA’s analysis and priorities have been politicized,” he said. “Intelligence analysis all too often has aligned curiously with the Biden administration’s policy preferences.”
Mr. Ratcliffe agreed that the agency has flaws, and he said he would work to correct them.
“With regard to HUMINT, the collection of human intelligence, we’re not where we’re supposed to be,” he said. “And other agencies collect HUMINT, but the CIA is the world’s premier and must be the world’s premier clandestine collector of human intelligence and, yes, there are challenges.”
Mr. Ratcliffe said foreign adversaries’ surveillance capabilities have complicated CIA officers’ operations but some of the agency’s shortcomings are more appropriately attributed to “focus and execution.”
He emphasized attracting top talent as a major priority upon taking leadership of the agency. He said the CIA needs to recapture the spirit of enlisting recruits who are “Ph.D.[s] who could win a bar fight.”
• Ryan Lovelace can be reached at rlovelace@washingtontimes.com.