CIA boss defends meetings with Russian counterparts

WASHINGTON: Central Intelligence Agency director Mike Pompeo on Thursday defended meetings in Washington with top Russian espionage counterparts despite one being under US sanctions.

Pompeo told Senator Chuck Schumer in a letter that the meetings reportedly held last week with Sergey Naryshkin, the head of the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service, and FSB director Alexander Bortnikov, were normal business in the process of the CIA’s mission to ‘keep Americans safe’.

“While Russia remains an adversary, we would put American lives at greater risk if we ignored opportunities to work with the Russian services in the fight against terrorism,” Pompeo said.

Naryshkin’s visit, first reported in the Russian media, raised eyebrows because he is on a US sanctions blacklist, which normally would have prevented him from travelling to Washington.

After the news came out, Schumer, the leading Democrat in the Senate, asked for clarification on why he came and with whom he had met.

The secret meetings also raised questions as they came just before a decision by the Trump administration to withhold new sanctions on Moscow despite Congress voting to impose them last year.

The US stepped up sanctions against Russia in early 2017 after concluding that Moscow actively interfered in the presidential election to boost Donald Trump’s presidential campaign. —