Senate confirms Pompeo as CIA chief amid questions over torture, spying views
WASHINGTON — The Senate voted Monday to confirm Republican Rep. Mike Pompeo of Kansas as CIA director despite critics’ concerns that he has offered conflicting statements about whether he would expand government surveillance of Americans and bring back harsh interrogation techniques banned by President Obama.
Senators voted 66-32 to approve Pompeo, who is giving up his congressional seat to lead the agency.
His confirmation completes President Trump's national security team. Defense Secretary James Mattis and Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly were confirmed Friday.
"Mike Pompeo is somebody who can contribute in a significant way to the security of the American people, the security of this country," said Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C., chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee.
But Pompeo's critics said he has given mixed signals on both torture and government surveillance.
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"Rep. Pompeo showed he’s perfectly comfortable saying one thing on Monday, and the opposite on Tuesday," said Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., a member of the Intelligence Committee and a leading privacy advocate. "But his record reveals extreme positions, including enthusiasm for sweeping new surveillance programs targeting Americans and an openness to sending our country backward with regard to torture."
As president, Obama banned waterboarding and other harsh interrogation techniques through an executive order in 2009.
During his confirmation hearing earlier this month, Pompeo said he would "absolutely not" bring back those techniques. However, in response to written questions from members of the Senate Intelligence Committee, he said he would review the current ban on waterboarding if the ban was shown to impede the collection of "vital intelligence."
"If experts believed current law was an impediment to gathering vital intelligence to protect the country, I would want to understand such impediments and whether any recommendations were appropriate for changing current law," Pompeo wrote.
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Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., also questioned whether Pompeo would try to bring back the mass collection of Americans' phone records and expand that surveillance to include other personal information about U.S. citizens with no suspected ties to terrorism.
In an opinion piece he co-wrote for The Wall Street Journal in January 2016, Pompeo urged Congress to pass a law "re-establishing collection of all metadata, and combining it with publicly available financial and lifestyle information into a comprehensive, searchable database."
Congress passed the USA Freedom Act in 2015 to stop the National Security Agency from collecting metadata from the phone records of millions of innocent Americans. Pompeo was among the House members who voted to abolish the program, but later called for it to be restored.
"We (Americans) don't want to be spied on," Leahy said. "I don’t question Congressman Pompeo’s loyalty to our nation. I do question his stated beliefs that immediate security concerns can be used as a justification for eroding the fundamental rights of Americans."
Supporters of Pompeo's confirmation — including Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., the senior Democrat on the Intelligence Committee — said they believe he will uphold current laws banning torture and the mass collection of Americans' phone records by intelligence agencies.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., said Pompeo assured her that he would abide by the Army Field Manual, which prohibits the use of torture to interrogate prisoners.
"I...intend to hold him to his commitments," she said after announcing that she would vote to confirm Pompeo.
Pompeo, who was first elected to Congress in 2010, is a West Point graduate, Army veteran, Harvard Law graduate and member of the House Intelligence Committee. Before coming to Congress, he worked as an executive in the aerospace industry.
"This is a man who understands exactly what it takes to keep America safe," said Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., who served with Pompeo in the House. "It's clear why President Trump didn't interview anyone else after meeting with Mike...The time has come to put aside partisan politics and do the right thing for our country and for the brave men and women of the CIA."
