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Another name thrown around for the CIA is Jeh Johnson, the former Obama-era Homeland Security Secretary. Johnson, a former federal prosecutor, was the Pentagon’s attorney general during Obama’s first term – trying, but unsuccessfully, to shut down Guantanamo Bay prison. However, it is unclear how serious his position is in the CIA hunt, and he is also mentioned for other positions including that of Secretary of Defense and Attorney General. Johnson sits on Lockheed Martin’s board, a fact he doesn’t like with progressives, who want Biden to cut defense spending.
Johnson, in an email, declined to say whether he had discussed any of the positions with the Biden team. A spokesperson for Biden’s transition team also declined to comment on this story, as did Donilon.
Earlier this week, Biden unveiled his picks for several major national security niches, including Avril Haines as a candidate for director of national intelligence. The CIA remains the heavyweight among the country’s 17 spy agencies, and its employees often resent the somewhat amorphous surveillance role of the DNI. But Haines is widely respected within the national security community, and his point of view is being taken into account as Biden weighs options for the CIA chief, according to two people familiar with the process. One of the people said Haines would likely prefer Morell, who has not been his boss in the past, unlike Donilon whom Haines has worked with on the National Security Council staff.
Morell’s comments about the CIA’s past use of “enhanced interrogation” procedures have been interpreted by many on the left as a defense of the morality of torture. Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon, a Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, warned Biden against Morell’s appointment to the CIA.
“No apologist for torture can be confirmed as director of the CIA. He’s a non-runner, ”Wyden told The Daily Beast, who also reported that Donilon and Johnson are under investigation to varying degrees. It is unclear where the two leaders of this committee, Senator Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) And Senator Mark Warner (D-Va.), Are leaning, who would play key roles in any confirmation process.
If Biden chooses Morell, he will cross a “red line” to progressives in his party, many of whom have supported him and his Cabinet choices so far despite feeling he is too centrist, a Capitol Hill aide d ‘a progressive legislator. said POLITICO.
“One fundamental thing that we should be able to expect is that you are not going to appoint torture advocates to a higher post or to any post,” the aide said.
Former CIA Deputy Chief of Staff Nick Shapiro, who now serves as Morell’s spokesperson, said in a statement that “Morell was in no way involved in the creation of the EIT program and he didn’t even learn of it until 2006, four years after its launch, ”using an acronym for the CIA’s“ Enhanced Interrogation Techniques ”program. “He stated publicly in a 60-minute interview in 2013 and wrote in his 2015 book that he believed waterboarding was indeed torture. Morell thinks there have been many errors with the EIT program and has written about them extensively.
Shapiro’s statement, however, glossed over the main disagreements between many members of the agency and critics of the torture program, particularly Senate investigators tasked with determining whether the tactics were legal and justified. Morell wrote in his book “The Great War of Our Time” that while he was troubled by waterboarding, he also thought it was “one of the two most effective of all hard techniques (the other being sleep deprivation) ”. The Senate’s detailed report on the torture program found that “improved” interrogation tactics, including waterboarding, were not effective in obtaining intelligence.
One factor that works in Morell’s favor is that he is already well known within the agency, having served as both deputy and interim director twice and before that as an analyst and executive assistant at the former CIA Director George Tenet. He was George W. Bush’s 9/11 briefer – and went on to receive the CIA’s second highest honor, the Distinguished Intelligence Medal, for his role in the raid that killed Osama bin Laden.
Donilon has served in various roles in the Carter, Clinton, and Obama administrations, and he has known Biden for many years. He has a legal, business, and political background, and he was a key architect and policy coordinator as “the backbone to Asia” when he headed the National Security Council during Obama’s first term, though. that he often operated behind the scenes.
His brother, Mike, is a well-established political strategist and close associate of Biden who helped craft his 2020 campaign message. Biden recently announced that Mike Donilon would serve as senior White House adviser.
But progressives aren’t quite comfortable with Tom Donilon either. This is in part due to his current role as Chairman of the BlackRock Investment Institute. BlackRock has been a major investor in fossil fuels, among others, and Donilon’s role there has worried progressives about corporate influence, especially on the environmental front. However, it is not clear how this supposed influence would manifest itself in Langley.
On the other hand, some people who have worked under Donilon say he can be a tough boss who regularly demands excessive and often unnecessary work from people in already tough jobs. Critics didn’t question Donilon’s motives or patriotism and said they expected him to get some sort of role in a Biden administration. Some have said that, in a sense, Donilon embodied one of the central complaints about Obama’s NSC – that he was micromanaging too much.
He’s a “meticulous preparer” with “high standards that can be tough on staff,” said a former Obama administration official who worked with Donilion.
The former official also expressed concerns about Donilon’s confidence in the spotlight. While Donilon has all the intellectual skills necessary for a high-level position, he is uncomfortable in public places, the former official said, recalling the frantic demands for “facts, figures, resources” before the big boys. speech.
“If he was going to make a speech [he wanted] several, several meetings to go over the text to make changes – group meetings that only mobilized resources, ”the person said.
Others disagreed with Donilon’s critical assessment, who, after all, ran a multi-level organization.
Samantha Vinograd, who was Donilon’s senior adviser when he was Obama’s national security adviser, said that “no one cares more about his staff than Tom Donilon,” and that as a boss, “this didn’t improve much than Tom. “
Donilon also got a vote of confidence from Tom Nides, a former deputy secretary of state who is now vice chairman of Morgan Stanley financial firm.
“I’m sure it can be exhausting working for guys like Tom, but in these jobs you want to have people who work as hard as them,” said Nides, who has known Donilon for 35 years. “I don’t think anyone would suggest that Tom doesn’t demand as much from himself as from anyone who works for him.
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