Trump picks Coats for intel director

WASHINGTON: President-elect Donald Trump yesterday formally announced former Indiana Senator Dan Coats as his pick for US director of national intelligence. A mild-mannered former ambassador to Germany who also served on the Senate Intelligence Committee, Coats was widely tipped for the job coordinating 16 intelligence and security agencies - a position Trump may slim down. “Dan has clearly demonstrated the deep subject matter expertise and sound judgment required to lead our intelligence community,” Trump said in a statement.

“If confirmed as Director of National Intelligence, he will provide unwavering leadership that the entire intelligence community can respect, and will spearhead my administration’s ceaseless vigilance against those who seek to do us harm.” The announcement comes a day after the Republican presidentelect met the country’s leading intelligence agency chiefs - including the current director of national intelligence, James Clapper, and CIA chief John Brennan - who told him that Russian President Vladimir Putin directed a vast cyberattack against mainly Democratic organizations aimed at helping install Trump in the White House.

But the selection of Coats, 73, may go some way toward reassuring those critical of Trump’s praise for Putin and stated desire to improve relations with Moscow. Coats - who served as a Republican senator from Indiana from 1989 to 1999, and then from 2011 to the end of his term on Tuesday - was one of six US legislators and three White House aides blacklisted by Moscow in 2014 in reprisal for US sanctions placed on the country for its seizure of the Crimean Peninsula from Ukraine.