John Ratcliffe confirmed as CIA director; second Trump nominee to earn Senate approval

The Senate on Thursday confirmed John Ratcliffe as director of the CIA, the second of President Trump’s nominees to earn the chamber’s approval.

The final vote for Mr. Ratcliffe was 74-25. His confirmation follows that of Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Monday, as Senate Republicans spend Mr. Trump’s first week in office prioritizing votes on his top national security nominees.

Mr. Ratcliffe is a former House member who served on the Intelligence Committee and as chairman of the Homeland Security panel’s cybersecurity subcommittee.

Mr. Trump tapped him to serve as Director of National Intelligence during his first term after his initial pick for the role, former Sen. Dan Coats, resigned amid tension over intelligence assessments regarding Russia and other matters.

Democrats who opposed Mr. Ratcliffe’s confirmation said his time as DNI showed he was willing to politicize intelligence to appease Mr. Trump rather than speak truth to power and they fear he will do the same as CIA director.

They cited Mr. Ratcliffe’s decision to declassify a CIA memo from 2016 outlining Russian claims that Hillary Clinton, the Democratic presidential candidate at the time, approved a plan to tie Mr. Trump to Russia’s hack of the Democratic National Committee.

Sen. Ron Wyden, Oregon Democrat, said Mr. Ratcliffe released the memo “even though the intelligence community didn’t know if it was accurate or the extent to which it was fabricated or exaggerated by Russian intelligence.”

“Needless to say, this was a major break from standard practice, and it is hard to escape the conclusion that it was done for partisan political purposes, particularly given the timing,” he said. The memo was released in late September 2020, as Mr. Trump was running for a second term.

Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer, New York Democrat, said he is “deeply worried” that Mr. Ratcliffe will refuse to stand up to Mr. Trump or his DNI nominee Tulsi Gabbard if they push false intelligence for political ends.

GOP leaders had hoped to confirm Mr. Ratcliffe on Tuesday, but Sen. Chris Murphy, Connecticut Democrat, objected to speeding up the vote.

“I wanted to make sure that my colleagues got a chance to review John Ratcliffe’s record,” he said when asked about that decision. “These nominees sometimes get judged in comparison to other Trump nominees. So next to Tulsi Gabbard, John Ratcliffe looks positively mainstream. But he politicized intelligence blatantly during his short time on the job as DNI.”

Mr. Ratcliffe said during his confirmation hearing that the CIA would step up its collection of human intelligence and recruit top talent to steal foreign secrets.

CIA officers under his watch would go everywhere worldwide, produce analysis without political or personal bias, and conduct covert action that “no one else can do,” he said.

One of the CIA’s missions will be to stop foreign adversaries from winning the technological race by collecting intelligence that can undercut enemies’ supply chains, Mr. Ratcliffe said, citing China as a particular threat.

“If China gets to quantum computing before we do, that causes a real problem,” he said. “We’ve got to win the war, the race on technology, stay ahead of the technology curve.”

• Ryan Lovelace contributed to this story.