GRENELL LAUNCHES OVERHAUL OF INTELLIGENCE OFFICE
Acting director installs top team aligned with Trump
WASHINGTON
Richard Grenell’s tenure as the nation’s top intelligence official may be shortlived, but he wasted no time this week starting to shape his team of advisers, ousting his office’s No. 2 official — a longtime intelligence officer — and bringing in an expert on Trump conspiracy theories to help lead the agency, according to officials.
Grenell has also requested the intelligence behind the classified briefing last week before the House Intelligence Committee in which officials told lawmakers that Russia was interfering in November’s presidential election and that Russian President Vladimir Putin of Russia favored President Donald Trump’s re-election. The briefing later prompted Trump’s anger as he complained that
Democrats would use against him.
Joseph Maguire, the former acting director of national intelligence, and his deputy, Andrew Hallman, resigned Friday. Grenell told Hallman, popular in the office’s it Liberty Crossing headquarters, that his service was no longer needed, according to two officials. Hallman, who has worked in the office or at the CIA for three decades, expressed confidence in his colleagues in a statement but also referred to the “uncertainties that come with change.”
The ouster of Hallman and exit of Maguire, who also oversaw the National Counterterrorism Center, allowed Grenell to install his own leadership team.
One of his first hires was Kashyap Patel, a senior National Security Council staff member and former key aide to Rep. Devin Nunes, R-visalia, former chairman of the House Intelligence Committee. Patel will have a mandate to “clean house,” CBS News reported, citing a person close to the matter.
Patel was best known as the lead author of a politically charged memo two years ago that accused FBI and Justice Department leaders of abusing their surveillance powers to spy on a former Trump campaign adviser. The memo was widely criticized as misleading, although an inspector general later found other problems with aspects of the surveillance.
Working with Nunes, Patel began what they called Objective Medusa to examine the FBI’S investigation into whether anyone associated with the Trump campaign conspired with Russia’s election interference in 2016.
“I hired him to bust doors down,” Nunes told author Lee Smith for his book “The Plot Against the President.” Patel was interviewed extensively in the book, which claims without proof that journalists, diplomats, law enforcement and intelligence officials engaged in a vast plot to undermine Trump’s campaign and then bring him down as president.
As acting director of national intelligence, Grenell has access to any secrets he may want to review. And he has requested access to information from the CIA and other intelligence agencies, according to two people familiar with the matter.
How long Grenell will be able to stay as the acting director is an open question. For him to remain past March 11 — a limit imposed by federal law — Trump must formally nominate someone else for the director of national intelligence post.
If Trump sent a nomination to the Senate, it would allow Grenell to serve for at least another six months.