Donald Trumps Pick for Spy Chief Took Hard Line on Snowden, Guantanamo, and Torture
Donald Trump’s Pick for Spy Chief Took Hard Line on Snowden, Guantanamo, and Torture
Jenna McLaughlin
The Intercept
Colleagues of former Sen. Dan Coats, R-Ind., describe the septuagenarian as competent and congenial — the “Mister Rogers” of Republicans, as Sen. Cory Gardner, R-Colo., said — but his positions on issues including NSA surveillance, Edward Snowden, torture, and Guantanamo Bay are bound to spark arguments with civil libertarians as Congress debates his nomination today by President-elect Donald Trump to succeed James Clapper as director of national intelligence.
Coats said the NSA’s programs, including its bulk collection of American telephone records, were “legal, constitutional and used under the strict oversight of all three branches of government” — though courts later disagreed, and Congress amended the law to end the American records collection program, as Snowden pointed out on Twitter on Thursday.
Coats and Trump’s team are also in accord on Guantanamo. In the past, Coats has railed against President Barack Obama’s attempts to close the prison. “For years, the facility at Guantanamo Bay has been a valuable tool in our counterterrorism efforts. Moving Guantanamo detainees into the United States poses significant security risks, and we should not endanger American families simply for President Obama’s legacy,” Coats said in a February 2016 statement. He has also described the Senate Intelligence Committee’s investigation into CIA torture as “only a partisan account of the last decade’s counterterrorism efforts.”
Another concern about Coats that may come up in hearings: while ambassador to Germany he was embroiled in an embarrassing scandal around the wrongful imprisonment and torture of German citizen Khaled Masri — who was kidnapped while vacationing in Macedonia, sent to Afghanistan, tortured, and released five months later without ever being charged with a crime.
Feels like the George W. Bush years already.
= new reply since forum marked as read
