Former CIA veteran and Obama National Security Council spokesman Ned Price on Tuesday accused CIA Director Mike Pompeo of not only being a hack, but dangerous, as well.
“Remember when CIA Director Pompeo was considered one of the admin’s “adults”? Turns out he’s more than just a hack; he’s dangerous,” Price tweeted out Tuesday.
Price worked in the CIA from 2006 to February 2017 as an intelligence analyst. For part of that time, he was loaned to the National Security Council, where he served as spokesman from 2015 to 2017. He also served as special assistant to President Barack Obama.
Price’s tweet thread comes in response to a report from The Intercept, which indicated that Pompeo met on Oct. 24 with William Binney, a former NSA official and whistleblower, who believes that the emails from the Democratic National Committee were stolen and subsequently leaked by an insider with physical access, not the Russians.
According to Binney, President Donald Trump had personally involved himself in requesting that Pompeo meet with Binney to discuss his take on the stolen DNC emails. The meeting lasted for an hour.
“I was willing to meet Pompeo simply because it was clear to me the intelligence community wasn’t being honest here,” Binney told The Intercept. “I am quite willing to help people who need the truth to find the truth and not simply have deceptive statements from the intelligence community.”
Pompeo apparently asked Binney whether he wanted to meet with intelligence officials from the FBI and NSA for more discussions. Binney accepted the invite, but said he hasn’t been contacted since about the meeting.
“These are not the tactics of a man trying merely to get his conspiracy-fueled boss off his back,” Price said. “Suggests Pompeo buys what Binney is selling.”
“Just about everything we’ve heard of Pompeo’s ldrship is troubling,” Price added. “But real concern is what we’re NOT seeing or hearing–at least not yet.”
Price wrote an op-ed in The Washington Post in February announcing that he was resigning from his career as a CIA intelligence analyst because he refused to serve under Trump. The op-ed later featured a clarification stating that Price had donated to Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party in 2016 to the tune of $5,000.
Despite the declassified summary report from January 2017 that stated that Russian President Vladimir Putin directly ordered an influence campaign into the 2016 U.S. presidential election and preferred Trump to Hillary Clinton, Trump has repeatedly expressed skepticism about Russia’s wider influence campaign and specific involvement in the DNC hack.
Now, senior CIA officials are reportedly upset about Pompeo’s willingness to entertain political pressure from Trump to examine theories contrary to the ones already endorsed by the CIA regarding Russian involvement. As evidence of Pompeo’s flexibility, he recently stated at an event in October that the U.S. intelligence community had determined that Russia’s influence campaign had no effect on the outcome of the presidential election. The CIA, however, quickly stated that its assessment on Russian involvement had not changed.
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