Congressman Mike Pompeo has been named to be the new head of the Central Intelligence Agency. The Kanas law maker has been a big proponent of increasing the use of security surveillance programs and surveillance video inside the United States.
According to news from Vice News, Mike Pompeo is considered to be a part of the Tea Party movement. He first was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 2010. He currently sits on the influential House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence . He was very outspoken in his opposition to Hillary Clinton’s actions regarding the Benghazi situation and her use of a private email server that was located in new New York home. As a consequence, he played a prominent role in the hearings and investigations that were conducted on that subject. After Congressman Trey Goudy released the findings of the Benghazi Committee’s investigations, which cleared the former Secretary of State, Pompeo wrote a dissenting opinion in which he placed the blame for the attack on her.
Pompeo represents Kansas’s Fourth Congressional District, which includes Wichita but he was born in Orange, California. The Congressman attended West point where he studied mechanical engineering. He graduated first in his class. After serving in the Army as a branch cavalry officer, he went onto receive a juris doctor from Harvard University. Before his 2010 Congressional run, he founded and ran Thayer Aerospace and served as the president of the oilfield equipment firm, Sentry International.
Pompeo has also been very vocal in his opposition of the international nuclear deal with Iran and has supported increasing and enhancing security surveillance programs for use within the borders of the United States. In President-Elect Donald’s Trump’s announcement of the appointment, he called Pompeo a “brilliant and unrelenting leader for our intelligence community to ensure the safety of Americans and our allies.”
Pompeo has made no secret of the fact that he supports the National Security Agency’s (NSA) security surveillance programs and has voiced active support for programs that include the mass collection of metadata around the country. He even went so far as to pen an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal in which he said that the country needs a “fundamental upgrade to Americaandrsquo;s surveillance capabilities.” He also called for a repeal of the changes made to the NSA’s security surveillance programs that were implemented after Edward Snowden made much of the country aware of them. People may not have been aware of the number of times they are captured by government, business and retail security cameras around the country or how much of their communications are captured and monitored by the federal government. He has made it a point to praise the NSA’s surveillance solutions.
Collection of the contents of specific targetsandrsquo; communications under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act has been dumbed down,” Pompeo wrote, “with onerous requirements to secure the authorizing court order. The intelligence community feels beleaguered and bereft of political support.”
After news that Pompeo was being considered for this position surfaced, he tweeted this message:
“I look forward to rolling back this disastrous deal with the worldandrsquo;s largest state sponsor of terrorism.”
This was a reference to the nuclear deal that was brokered under the Obama Administration with Iran. It is unclear what President-Elect Trump actually thinks about the deal with Iran. He has said that one of his plans is to renegotiate the deal but he has also pledged that of the first things he plans to do as president is “rip it up.”
Experts on the deal and U.S. policy on Iran have noted that the CIA director may not have any authority to change the deal with Iran. Trita Parsi, author of the book, Losing an Enemy: Obama, Iran, and the Triumph of Diplomacy, has noted that any meddling with the deal could cause serious problems for the country. Parsi told Vice News, “Rolling back the Iran deal is not picking a fight with Iran. Itandrsquo;s picking a fight with Russia, China, the EU and the vast majority of countries who welcome this deal.”
Pompeo originally endorsed Florida Senator Marco Rubio but came around to support Trump when Rubio bowed out of the presidential contest.
