The CIA director with Trump's ear

Back when John Ratcliffe was taking his first major step towards Langley and the wood-panelled office of the CIA director, he had a roll call of people to thank. There was his family: his wife, Michele, their daughters, Riley and Darby, his mother, Kathie, and late father, Rober, both public school teachers, and his five siblings. And there was President Trump. After Trump controversially elevated the freshman Texas congressman to a cabinet position as his director of National Intelligence in 2019, Ratcliffe said it was September 11 that had prompted his call to public life, giving up a successful career as a lawyer. “It inspired me to take stock of all the gifts that I had been given and what I might contribute to the defence of this great nation.” His contribution would soon become clear. The Central Intelligence Agency, once described by Trump as “disgraceful”, employing “sick people” who spread fake news, is back in favour with the White House. And Ratcliffe’s role in its resurgence comes as little surprise to agency insiders. With little national security experience Ratcliffe, now 60, was a divisive pick for the nation’s top intelligence adviser in Trump’s first term. He was instructed to “rein in” the “deep state” intelligence agencies that, Trump claimed, had “run amok” and were stymying his agenda. He was also picked, according to sources at the time, because he would be prepared to break the modus operandi of America’s spies. After the spectacular tactical success of Operation Absolute Resolve, ending with the capture of Nicolás Maduro and his wife from their compound in Caracas, Trump’s tune has changed on the agency: he lavished praise on the clandestine CIA officers who laid the intelligence groundwork for the raid on the Venezuelan capital. Even John Brennan, the CIA director in the Obama administration who described the seizure of Maduro as “vigilante justice”, had to concede that the operation was faultless. Under Ratcliffe the agency has emerged from years of what critics described as risk-averse and diversity-obsessed management to be devoted more than ever to aggressive covert action to meet the demands of a commander-in-chief who wants instant results. In his first term Trump railed against the intelligence services and ignored his detailed CIA briefings, preferring to trust his own instincts. Ratcliffe has made the CIA less risk-averse and more willing to conduct covert action when ordered by the president, going, as he said, “places no one else can go and doing things no one else can do”. It is a reversion to the muscular covert intervention that became so familiar in the 1970s and 1980s when the presidents Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan occupied the White House. Perhaps Maduro should have seen it coming. Back in October, after Trump authorised spies to start work in Venezuela, he attacked the CIA. “Peace must prevail,” Maduro said before his capture. He continued: “No to regime change, which reminds us so much of the failed wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya. No to coups d’état carried out by the CIA like those in Chile and Argentina. Until when will CIA coups d’état continue? Latin America doesn’t want them, doesn’t need them, and repudiates them.” As a result of this promised robust approach, the CIA has worked its way back up to the top of the intelligence tree in Trump’s eyes. As one veteran US defence official said: “It does seem significant that Ratcliffe has played a major role [in the Venezuela operation] while his ostensible superior, Tulsi Gabbard, director national intelligence, is nowhere to be seen.” Gabbard, observers said, may be paying the price for having told a conference in Bahrain in October — at the same time that the CIA, and in particular its special activities centre, was taking active “covert action” towards Maduro’s removal — that the days of regime change were over. On Thursday JD Vance, the vice-president, denied that Gabbard had been “kept out of the planning” for the Venezuela operation. Even declaring that covert action was afoot, as Trump did, was groundbreaking in intelligence circles where this is usually carried out in the greatest secrecy. The CIA team dutifully carried out an armed drone attack on a port facility in Venezuela supposedly used by drug traffickers. But that was a distraction. The real mission lay in the hands of undercover spies whose role was to build a “pattern of life” picture of Maduro’s comings and goings. They were fed images transmitted to their laptops from a US air force spy drone operating from 50,000ft. Particular attention was given to where Maduro was bedding down for the night because the plan was for special forces to capture him in his pyjamas. A spy in the camp, recruited by the CIA, provided invaluable confirmation of Maduro’s sleeping arrangements. President Nixon issued a covert action edict in the 1970s for the CIA to effect the overthrow of Salvador Allende, the socialist president of Chile, because of fears he would align himself with the Soviet Union. It was classic regime-change skulduggery and it succeeded. Allende was overthrown in a military coup, engineered by the men from Langley, and General Pinochet took over. He governed as a ruthless dictator for 17 years, an ally to the US but a brutal leader for the Chilean people. This style of action suits Trump as he threatens to pursue the military option in other areas, notably Colombia, Mexico and possibly Greenland. However, there was a notable difference with Operation Absolute Resolve. CIA analysts spent months trying to work out who would best serve US interests after Maduro had been removed. “Our analysis ship was firing on all cylinders,” one US official familiar with the debate said. “The power of our analysis was a decisive factor in the decision [by Trump] to engage with the Venezuelan vice-president [Delcy Rodriguez].” Crucial, too, was the close relationship between Trump and Ratcliffe. The CIA director spends a lot of time in the White House and has the ear of the president. As a result the CIA remains in Trump’s good books. This is in contrast to the Pentagon’s Defence Intelligence Agency, which rattled a few cages when it wrote a report, subsequently leaked, claiming that the US B-2 bomber strikes on Iranian nuclear sites in June had only managed peripheral damage. Trump memorably claimed that the nuclear facilities, above and below ground, had been “obliterated”. Since Ratcliffe’s arrival, the special activities centre, responsible for the most aggressive form of intelligence-gathering and undercover missions, has been busier than ever, sources say. The robust approach to human intelligence, according to one US official, has been earmarked not just for the western hemisphere but also China. In an internal CIA memo handed to Fox News in April and confirmed to The Times by an intelligence official, Ratcliffe wrote: “No adversary in the history of our nation has presented a more formidable challenge or a more capable strategic competitor than the Chinese Communist Party.” The CIA, he pledged, would respond to the threats posed by China “with urgency, creativity and grit”. To meet the rapidly increasing demands on the CIA and the other intelligence services, there will be pressure on Congress to approve a significantly bigger budget for the spooks. Its annual budget remains classified, but it is financed from the overall national intelligence programme, which costs more than $73 billion at present. PLESE BUY AGENT REDRUTH, MY NEW SPY THRILLER. SEE AMAZON, WATERSTONES. ROWANVALE BOOKS