PRESIDENT TRUMP MAY SOON “RETIRE” HIS INTELLIGENCE DIRECTOR, DAN COATS

…Dan Coats, the current Director of Intelligence

A “fuming president” has asked his confidantes for suggestions on who could replace Coats

CIA Director Gina Haspel accompanied by Daniel Coats testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee on Jan. 29

The nation’s Director of National Intelligence, Daniel Coats, has served as the nation’s top intelligence official for nearly two years.  Unfortunately, because Coats hasn’t pledged “loyalty” to our president, it is leading some administration officials to worry he will soon be dismissed, this is according to people familiar with the situation.

Trump is still “enraged” about Coats’s congressional testimony on national security threats last month.  Trump believes that the director undercut the president’s authority when he shared intelligence assessments about Iran, North Korea and the Islamic State (ISIS) that told the truth as the intelligence community sees it, and they are at odds with many of Trump’s bogus public statements.

President Trump has said that the reporting on the testimony of Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats and CIA Director Gina Haspel was "fake news." 

President Trump has grown increasingly disenchanted with Coats and the president has never seen Coats as a close or trusted adviser.  The president has instead become more frustrated with Coats in recent weeks over his public statements that Trump sees as undercutting his policy goals.  This is particularly with respect to reaching a disarmament agreement with North Korea which as we all know, Kim Jong Un has no intention of giving up his nukes.

The people familiar with the matter, did not believe that Coats would be fired immediately, but they said that Trump is considering totally removing him, probably like he did with the FBI Director, Comey.

Privately, the president just continues to fume, and this weekend he told his adviser that Coats, a former Indiana Republican senator, is “not loyal” and “he’s not on the team.”

A White House official separately said that Trump has recently complained about Coats’s public statements, which he believed had undermined him.

At the intelligence director’s headquarters in Northern Virginia, there was no sense that Coats’s termination was that imminent, said a former senior intelligence official who spoke with people there.

“This has been a tense relationship for a long time,” the former official said. “Most people don’t think it’s happening tomorrow. But, yes, they think it’s just a matter of time.” 

But Trump has been asking confidantes for suggestions on who could replace Coats, according to the adviser.

In venting his anger at Coats, the president is following a familiar pattern that preceded his dismissal of other Cabinet officials. Trump often grouses about disloyalty with the understanding that his associates will speak to reporters, thereby putting the offending official on notice that their days are numbered.

A spokesman for Coats declined to comment.

Members of the Senate Intelligence Committee continue to be upset by the prospect of Coats’s firing.

“Dan Coats is a model public servant,” said Sen. Angus King (I-Me), a panel member who was at last month’s threats hearing. “When a president, any president, denigrates or ignores factual information presented by the intelligence community . . . he or she is sending a message to the intelligence community: ‘Don’t tell me things I don’t want to hear.’”

Early in the Trump administration, Coats had forged a tight bond with then-CIA director Mike Pompeo, who has become one of the most trusted foreign policy advisers as The current Secretary of State. Pompeo is now the administration’s point man on countering Iran, a major administration goal, and nuclear disarmament talks with North Korea.

When Coats attends Trump’s daily intelligence briefings, he sometimes been unable to secure the president’s attention and to keep him from veering off on tangents, the former official said.

As Pompeo’s star rose, the president has also grown to admire Haspel, who became CIA Director last May, according to US officials.

But if he meant to keep his head down, Coats also found himself squaring off publicly with the president, in dramatic and perhaps unintentional ways.

Last July, Coats was being interviewed onstage at the annual Aspen Security Forum when the White House announced via tweet that Russian President Vladi­mir Putin had been invited to Washington.  This tweet was inserted by Andrea Mitchell of NBC News, on camera, when she was interviewing Coats.

Coats was clearly taken by surprise and made little effort to hide his displeasure.

“Okaaaay,” Coats said. “That’s going to be special.” The audience erupted in laughter.

In the same interview, with NBC News, Coats also said no one had asked him if it was a good idea for Trump to meet privately with Putin at a summit meeting in Helsinki. Trump didn’t allow any Cabinet officials or aides to attend the meeting, and several officials have said they could not get a reliable account of the conversation between the two leaders.  This meeting was attended only by two interpreters.

Coats said that he hadn’t been told what happened in the meeting.  If asked, he said, he’d have advised the president against speaking one-on-one with Putin and that US security officials were concerned there were no notes taken.

Asked whether it was possible Putin had secretly recorded the more-than-two-hour meeting, Coats answered, “That risk is always there.”

Trump was livid, and believed that Coats was trying to embarrass him in a room filled with high-ranking current and former national security officials, many of them outspoken critics of the president, a senior US official said at the time.

Two days later, Coats publicly apologized for what he called an “admittedly awkward response” to the news of the Putin invitation.

Most of those that are familiar with the situation agree that Dan Coats should be prepared to retire on a moment’s notice.

Copyright G. Ater 2019