The Senate Intelligence Committee, its expected chair, and his (former CIA) wife
The CIA’s newest employees were celebrating at headquarters. They had done it. They had gotten into the premiere intelligence agency of the world’s most powerful nation — at a time when two major wars have embroiled the United States and new alliances threaten to shift the world order. A future of intrigue, adrenalin, and purpose lay ahead. And they mingled with older staff at the reception a few days ago, overshadowed by President-elect Donald Trump’s choices to lead the intelligence community.
First came the nomination of former Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe to be CIA Director, a pick that many intel officers are fine with. Then came Tulsi Gabbard to oversee all intel agencies as the Director of National Intelligence, a selection that many officers are not fine with. The once Democratic Congresswoman has a military background but zero intelligence experience. Gabbard also flew to Syria to meet its dictator Bashar al-Assad and has been accused of taking Kremlin-aligned stances on national security matters. Some officers are nervous about who gets announced next.
I’m told that some intelligence officers will resign after years of service. Others will share their complaints on the Hill, speaking with lawmakers they trust. Which brings us to the Senate Intelligence Committee and the critical role it will play next year in progressing or halting Trump’s nominees.
Right now the committee’s Chairman, Democratic Senator Mark Warner of Virginia, speaks with members of the intelligence community every day. They could be talking about staffing, budget and auditing, inspectors general, polygraph administration, innovation, Havana Syndrome, or any other range of issues.
But come Jan. 3, when lawmakers of the 119th Congress are expected to be sworn in, the Senate Intelligence Committee’s next chair will be a Republican. It will be his or her job to set the tone of the committee and oversee some of the country’s most important confirmations to lead intelligence agencies.
Of all the Republican members on the committee, Senator Susan Collins of Maine is most likely to vote against Gabbard. She was one of seven Republican senators who voted to convict Trump for inciting the U.S. Capitol insurrection during his second impeachment trial. She said Trump failed to obey the oath he swore when he took office on Jan. 20, 2017. “His actions to interfere with the peaceful transition of power — the hallmark of our Constitution and our American democracy — were an abuse of power and constitute grounds for conviction.” She also endorsed Nikki Haley earlier this year and said she would not vote for Trump.
As one of the committee’s most senior members, Collins could also become its next chairperson, but she’s already the Vice Chair on the Senate Appropriations Committee. Another senior Republican member, Senator Jim Risch of Idaho, is already the ranking member on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. And Trump nominated Senator Marco Rubio of Florida to serve as Secretary of State.
The job of leading the committee is poised to fall to Tom Cotton, the junior senator from Arkansas.
Cotton advocated for inflicting pain on Iran following its attacks on oil tankers in the Gulf of Oman, saying that Tehran would escalate its aggression. He supported sending aid to Ukraine, Taiwan, and Israel while also insisting the Biden administration toughen its immigration policy to slow down migration. He opposed sending humanitarian aid to Gaza, believing that funds were being diverted to Hamas through the UN agency working in Gaza, which confirmed it had indeed employed a Hamas leader.
In 2006, as a U.S. Army lieutenant in Iraq, he was angered by a New York Times report that disclosed a classified financing program that was catching terrorists. He wanted the journalists to face jail time. “You have gravely endangered the lives of my soldiers and all other soldiers and innocent Iraqis here,” he wrote to the newspaper. “Next time I hear that familiar explosion — or next time I feel it — I will wonder whether we could have stopped that bomb had you not instructed terrorists how to evade our financial surveillance… By the time we return home, maybe you will be in your rightful place: not at the Pulitzer announcements, but behind bars.”
Cotton is also considering running for president in 2028 as an alternative to Vice President-elect JD Vance. And as Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman, Cotton would surely want to make a name for himself there.
But something else matters about Cotton — in the person that he chose to share his life with. Through my reporting, I learned that his wife, Anna Cotton, used to work at the CIA as Assistant General Counsel, where she engaged in legal proceedings after the raid on Osama Bin Laden. Then she went on to become the Deputy General Counsel of the National Reconnaissance Office. She was involved in insider threat initiatives, internal investigations, and security clearance reviews, according to a bio.
And today Anna Cotton is still involved in national security matters. I couldn’t find much on SLG Solutions, which she apparently founded. But she is on the board of a private, Washington, DC-area company that provides advice and training to foreign governments that want to improve their military and intelligence services, a former intelligence official who knows her told me this week. A company that aspires to one day do U.S. government contract work.
“She's quite balanced and thoughtful,” the person said. “She really doesn't make any political statements one way or the other — nothing I've seen that I thought was either pushing a Republican or Democratic or any specific agenda. She rarely mentions her husband.” The person described her as someone on top of foreign matters and sanctions, before going back to her apolitical aura. “If she's a heavily political animal, she has hidden it from me.”
A person who knew her at the CIA told me about how she got engaged to then-Rep. Cotton while working at the agency. Her marriage was kept very quiet to the public. But she was looking forward to starting a family, she was modest and nice to work with, and she never talked politics, the person said.
Neither Anna Cotton nor the senator responded to my requests for comment. But perhaps, in addition to the unwavering loyalty Trump seeks, her experiences will factor into Cotton’s behavior on the committee. Because Gabbard, and any other controversial figure that Trump puts forth, will undoubtedly influence the agencies that she worked at and that the nation depends on. Perhaps the senator will also consider what he wrote years ago, in his last article as a college kid, writing for The Harvard Crimson.
“I have devoted my time at Harvard to cultivating contrarianism,” Cotton wrote in 1998. He said that prejudice, even the most subtle kind, is shared by all in the form of conventional wisdom. “The prescient Tocqueville called it the omnipotence of the majority.” Refuting a contrarian argument, he said, required a person to understand that argument, so “one might even come to appreciate or agree with it. In a word, one might lose a prejudice or two.”
Now that Cotton is in the majority in this committee, Congress, and country… will he follow suit?
My main impression of Cotton is that he's a racist, but of course, all MAGAs have that inclination