Just 1 Trump transition aide for spy agencies
Cohn eyed for post
WASHINGTON, Dec 1, (Agencies): Only one member of President-elect Donald Trump’s transition team is dealing with the CIA and the 16 other offices and agencies that make up the US intelligence community, four US officials said Wednesday.
Geoffrey Kahn, a former House intelligence committee staffer, is the only person named so far to Trump’s intelligence community “landing team,” they said.
As a result, said one senior career intelligence officer, briefing books prepared by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the National Security Agency, the National Counterterrorism Center, and 13 other agencies and organizations are “waiting for someone to read them.”
“It seems like an odd time to put issues like cyber security and international terrorism on the back burner,” said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
Previous administrations, the official said, were quicker to staff their intelligence teams, in part because they considered intelligence issues critical to setting foreign policy, defense and budget priorities.
The intelligence community has some 200,000 employees and contractors and an annual budget of more than $70 billion. It collects and analyzes information on a vast array of subjects, from national security threats such as terrorism and climate change to global conflicts and the foreign, defense and trade policies of foreign governments.
Pompeo
Contact
Kahn has been in periodic contact with the CIA, said two of the officials, adding that they did not know if he had been in touch with the other intelligence agencies.
In addition to reviewing potential candidates for top posts, Kahn is responsible for coordinating briefings for nominees and helping prepare them for Senate confirmation hearings.
Trump has announced that he intends to nominate US Representative Mike Pompeo of Kansas to succeed CIA Director John Brennan, who will step down in January.
He has yet to tap nominees for other senior positions, including a successor to Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, the top US intelligence officer. Clapper, 75, will leave the government when Trump is sworn as president on January 20.
Trump on Tuesday received only his third intelligence briefing since he won the Nov 8 presidential election, despite an offer from President Barack Obama of daily briefings, three of the officials said.
Vice-President-elect Mike Pence has been receiving intelligence briefings daily or nearly every day, one of the officials said.
President-elect Donald Trump is considering Goldman Sachs Group Inc President and Chief Operating Officer Gary Cohn to head the White House budget office or to fill other positions, a Trump transition official said on Wednesday.
Cohn, 56, a former Goldman commodities trader who joined the firm in 1990, has been widely considered to be the heir apparent to Chief Executive Officer Lloyd Blankfein.
Dow Jones reported earlier on Wednesday that Cohn, who met with Trump on Tuesday, has had discussions about leaving the firm.
If Cohn is picked to become Trump’s budget director and is subsequently confirmed by the US Senate early next year, he would play a lead role in formulating spending priorities for domestic and international programs funded by Washington.
The budgets produced annually by the White House’s Office of Management and Budget are a reflection of every administration’s legislative priorities and a blueprint for detailed spending and tax bills the president wants Congress to consider.
Donated
Cohn has donated both to Democrats and Republicans over the years. He has given more recently to Republicans, including $33,400 to the National Republican Congressional Committee in 2015, according to campaign contribution records. They also showed that in 2007 and 2008, Cohn donated to Democrats Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaigns.
Cohn is a former Goldman commodities trader from Ohio who joined the firm in 1990. He served in a variety of leadership roles in bond trading, becoming co-head of Goldman’s broader securities and eventually, co-president in 2006.
He makes frequent appearances at industry conferences and on television, where he speaks about the state of the financial markets.
Cohn struggled with dyslexia as a child and bounced from school to school, according to a Malcolm Gladwell profile from his book “David and Goliath”.
Cohn is typically known throughout Goldman for his direct and abrasive manner in dealing with colleagues, although he has become more polished in recent years, current and former executives said.
Only about one in four Americans wants Presidentelect Donald Trump to entirely repeal his predecessor’s health care law that extended coverage to millions, a new poll has found.
The post-election survey released Thursday by the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation also found hints of a pragmatic shift among some Republican foes of “Obamacare.”
While 52 percent of Republicans say they want the law completely repealed, that share is down from 69 percent just last month, before the election. And more Republicans now say they want the law “scaled back” under the new president and GOP Congress, with that share more than doubling from 11 percent before the election to 24 percent after.
Kaiser CEO Drew Altman said the foundation’s polling experts aren’t quite sure what to make of that finding, and will continue to track the apparent shift in future polls. The organization is a clearinghouse for information and analysis about the health care system.
It could be that some Republicans “got a protest vote off their chests, and they’re done with that,” Altman said. “They now have a more moderate position.”
After branding the Affordable Care Act a “disaster” during an election campaign that saw big premium hikes unveiled in its closing days, Trump has been saying he’d like to keep parts of the law.