Who are Mike Pompeo and Gina Haspel?
i24NEWS ·
On i24NEWS's Défense show, the day after Mike Pompeo's speech setting out twelve demands on Iran, David Benaym draws from New York the portrait of the new US Secretary of State and of the woman who succeeds him at the CIA. "Mike Pompeo is clearly the president's man": named head of the CIA three days after Donald Trump's inauguration, one of the first decisions announced by the president-elect in November 2016. But his political career goes back much further: a fierce opponent of Barack Obama's Iran nuclear deal, against closing Guantánamo, close to the intelligence agencies thanks to his seat on the House Intelligence Committee. The public discovered him through his trips, to Israel in particular, then to North Korea to meet Kim Jong-un, he who had advocated regime change in Pyongyang during the campaign. Now a diplomat, he will have to smooth the edges, with a personality that contrasts with Rex Tillerson's discretion. At the CIA, Gina Haspel, in the agency since 1985, is an internal promotion. Her role in the years after 9/11 dominated the debate and overshadowed a historic fact: she is the first woman to lead the agency. According to David Benaym, had this appointment happened under a Democratic administration, the media would have stressed this revolution more. "It is more the deputy who came to the fore than a will to promote a woman", in the line of Mike Pompeo and the conservative directors: "change in continuity". Correspondence by David Benaym on i24NEWS in French, May 23, 2018.