Senate votes Ratcliffe in as intel director
WASHINGTON — A divided Senate voted on Thursday to confirm Rep. John Ratcliffe of Texas, a fierce conservative ally of President Donald Trump’s with relatively little intelligence experience, to become the next director of the nation’s spy agencies.
Every Senate Democrat opposed the nomination, making Ratcliffe the first national intelligence chief installed with no support from the opposition party since the post was created in 2004. The final tally in the Senate was 49-44 in favor, with seven not voting.
The speedy confirmation of Ratcliffe was a sharp change of fortune from last summer, when Trump first tapped him to oversee the nation’s 17 intelligence agencies. At that time, Ratcliffe withdrew from consideration within days amid doubts about his qualifications, his partisan political background as a House member and reports that he had inflated his résumé from his time as a federal prosecutor in Texas.
Ratcliffe’s luck turned after Trump replaced the previous acting intelligence chief, Joseph Maguire, with Richard Grenell, the ambassador to Germany and a fierce partisan on behalf of the president. As the acting director, Grenell has embarked on a campaign to declassify sensitive records that would benefit Trump politically and reorganize the intelligence director’s office, moves that prompted unease among some lawmakers of both parties.
Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., the acting chairman of the Intelligence Committee, said Thursday that he was “confident” that Ratcliffe would lead the agencies “with integrity” and stressed the importance of having a permanent director approved by the Senate in office.
Ratcliffe, who will be the first Senateconfirmed intelligence director in nine months, is set to be sworn in on Tuesday, according to an intelligence official.
Ratcliffe promised during his confirmation that he would “deliver the unvarnished truth” to the president and Congress, unshaded by political objectives.
His biggest challenge is likely to be gathering intelligence on China’s handling of the novel coronavirus outbreak that has killed hundreds of thousands of people around the world. The Trump administration has pressed intelligence agencies to learn all they can about the origin of the virus.
Democrats said on Thursday that they were unconvinced that Ratcliffe could put his personal political views aside.
Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., a member of the Intelligence Committee, said that Ratcliffewould not “speak truth to power; he would surrender to it.”