Who will Trump choose to lead the CIA?

Potential contenders, from top left to right, then bottom left to right: Steve Feinberg (Cerberus), Chris Miller (Department of Defense), Robert O’Brien (Department of State), Brian Bulatao (Department of State), Kash Patel (US Army/Sgt. Keisha Brown), Sen. Marco Rubio (Senate)

Names have been swirling around the halls of the CIA and among former administration officials. Who will President-elect Donald Trump choose to oversee the most prominent intelligence agency in the country?

In March of 2023, he was still licking 2016 wounds. He promised, “We will clean out all of the corrupt actors in our national security and intelligence apparatus,” crack down on leakers, establish a “Truth and Reconciliation Commission” to declassify documents, and request “an independent auditing system” through Congress to monitor intelligence agencies “to ensure they are not spying on our citizens or running disinformation campaigns.”  

But Trump’s selection for CIA director will tell us more about his intentions than any of his words can. And former senior intelligence official from the Trump administration tells me, “It's a wild card because you don't know what's going to happen with Trump. He often really focuses on the last person who was in the room talking to him. And unfortunately, there's guys saying, ‘We’ve got to clean house. It's the deep state of liberal Hillary and Kamala supporters. We've got to clean house there.’ But the reality is the CIA is one of the least partisan places in Washington.” 

Indeed, the agency is comprised of both Democrats and Republicans, people who voted for and against Trump, but who just keep doing their jobs.

Another former senior intelligence official told me about a trend he saw: “The mission of the organization tends to envelop you and you tend to become part of a mission of the organization. It happened with [Mike] Pompeo. He began distrustful of us but once he got in there, he became a very strong advocate.” 

These are the contenders for CIA director that I have heard about but this is by no means a complete list: 

Steve Feinberg: The co-founder and CEO of Cerberus Capital Management, Feinberg’s net worth is estimated by Forbes to be about $5 billion. “His heart is in the right place,” says a source who knows him. “He's always wanted to help power the intel community.” The source described him as “a wealthy person who wants more in life.” Feinberg also served as head of the President's Intelligence Advisory Board during Trump’s first term, and advised him to adjust the intelligence community’s spending to reflect its national security priorities. “Everyone would say ‘China,’” the source said. “But if you said, ‘What's our spend,’ you look at the spending in the IC, and it was overwhelmingly weighted towards terrorism. And some of that is because those are really expensive programs, to run the Predator [drone] program, to staff Kabul station. Huge, multi-billion dollar programs” from the post-9/11 era. At the same time, I’m told Feinberg does not want to take a position that would require Senate confirmation. “Steve has just such a long career, buying companies and owning banks. And he thinks that Democrats would have a field day with it.” I’m told he is “intensely private and doesn't like the press.” The position of CIA deputy director does not require confirmation.

Chris Miller: He served as the acting Secretary of Defense from Nov. 2020 to Jan. 2021 — a period of time that included the U.S. Capitol riot on Jan. 6, and Miller was accused of delaying the deployment of National Guard troops that day. He later testified that he was concerned the move would feed into fears of a military coup and conspiracies about martial law. “Historically military responses to domestic protests have resulted in violations of American civil rights, and even in the case of the Kent State protests of the Vietnam War tragic deaths,” he said. He also worked on counterterrorism and transnational threats at the White House’s National Security Council and served as Director of the National Counterterrorism Center, after 27 years in the infantry. A former Green Beret, he commanded Special Forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. One source believed Miller would be “more principled than most as far as carrying out Trump's agenda.” 

Robert O’Brien: The fourth and last national security adviser in Trump’s first term, O’Brien took a hard stance on China as a threat, defended the U.S. drone strike that killed Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and Quds Force commander Qasem Soleimani, and touted the Abraham Accords which normalized diplomatic relations between Israel, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco, and Sudan. He supported Trump’s pardoning of Navy SEAL Eddie Gallagher, accused of killing a wounded ISIS teen fighter and shooting unarmed civilians in Iraq. O’Brien previously served as the special presidential envoy for hostage affairs. He is considered a Trump loyalist, but after Biden’s victory in 2020, he said, “If the Biden-Harris ticket is determined to be the winner — and obviously things look that way now — we’ll have a very professional transition from the National Security Council. There’s no question about it.” A source tells me, “He was, most of the time, fairly straightforward, professional… I think a Robert O'Brien would not be a bad choice.” There is talk that O’Brien suffered a health setback. He also told his private sector clients that he would not join Trump’s administration, according to the Financial Times.

Brian Bulatao: Bulatao became the CIA’s Chief Operating Officer at the request of then-CIA Director Mike Pompeo, who he met as a freshman at West Point. They later co-founded Thayer Aerospace in Kansas, which made aircraft components for Boeing, Lockheed-Martin, Raytheon, and other major manufacturers. The son of a Filipino immigrant and grandson of Greek and Polish immigrants, he served as an active-duty infantry officer in Panama (Operation Just Cause) and Iraq (Operations Desert Storm and Desert Shield). “I can tell you with certainty, any warrior who has looked into the glazed eyes of a soldier dying on the battlefield understands and internalizes the value of diplomacy,” he testified, after being nominated for Under Secretary of State for Management in 2018. During his short time at the CIA, just about 1.5 years, he said he improved recruiting, developed new technologies to help officers in the field and to strengthen cyber security, and built “a deep bench of enterprise leaders.” He was “a good chief operating officer,” one of the sources said. “He's confident, he knows the organization fairly well and is not a crazy. So of all the people that I've heard, I think he would probably be the least damaging.” But Bulatao was floated months ago, and he doesn't have national stature, which may work against him. Trump also recently said he will not invite Pompeo into his administration, which could have ramifications for Bulatao. 

Kash Patel: Patel served as the former Chief of Staff to Trump’s acting Secretary of Defense Chris Miller, after Patel persuaded Trump to fire Defense Secretary Mark Esper for not deploying troops to George Floyd protests. Patel also worked at the National Security Council and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. Before that, he had been a top staffer for the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and helped write the so-called “Nunes memo,” which accused the Justice Department and FBI of political bias in investigating Russian influence in the 2016 election. That put him on the map with Trump, who suggested him for powerful positions — which some sources feel Patel earned not through experience but through devout loyalty to Trump. He has stayed close to Trump, written a memoir as well as children’s books about “King Donald,” and promoted Trump-related paraphernalia online. In a 2022 opinion piece, Patel accused former CIA Director Gina Haspel and the agency of “launching the Russia Hoax behind the scenes” and said the FBI “brazenly rigged the 2020 election.” (None of which has ever been shown to be true despite numerous assertions.) On former Trump adviser Steve Bannon’s podcast last year, he warned that “we’re going to come after the people in the media who lied about American citizens who helped Joe Biden rig presidential elections… criminally or civilly.” Patel did not respond to my requests for comment. One source told me Patel is “the most fiercely loyal person to Trump, but not viewed as professional or competent or principled… he's probably the scariest of all prospects.” Another source familiar with Patel told me, “Kash’s confirmation hearing for anything would be a circus,” and that “CIA would eat him alive inside.” Patel could also potentially work in the National Security Council as a conduit between the White House and the CIA, playing a role in covert action, intelligence sharing, and information operations.

Marco Rubio: The senior U.S. senator from Florida currently serves as the Vice Chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. He previously served as its interim Chairman. He has worked with Democrats like Sen. Mark Warner to highlight China’s intellectual espionage and Russian influence in the 2016 election. That year, he said, “As our intelligence agencies have said, these leaks are an effort by a foreign government to interfere with our electoral process and I will not indulge it.” On the campaign trail, Rubio called Trump a “con artist.” But their relationship evolved during Trump’s first term. Rubio helped shape Trump’s Cuba and Venezuela policies. By 2024, the foreign policy hawk voted against military aid to Ukraine, calling the measure “legislative blackmail.” In the summer, he wrote in an opinion piece that “a vote for anyone other than Trump is literally a vote to normalize the weaponization of government against political opponents and criminalize the traditional American way of life.” At a hearing on the nomination for General Counsel of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, Rubio said, “I hope the day never comes when a real stark warning is made about some threat to our country, and people just dismiss it because they don’t believe who it is that’s telling it to them.” He went on to say, “That is why it’s so critical that, above everything else, we always preserve and build the confidence that people have in our agencies, that the work they’re doing is about our national security, not a tool for internal politics, not as a way to spy on and abuse Americans.”