Kamala Harris and the US intelligence community
Two weeks ago, I wrote about what a second-term Trump presidency would mean for the US intelligence community. Now that incumbent Joe Biden is no longer running, it’s perhaps time to look at what a Democratic victory might mean.
The likely candidacy of Kamala Harris sets up a stark contrast. In 2018, Trump appointed Gina Haspel as Director of the CIA, despite, and perhaps even because, of her involvement in the agency’s early 2000s torture programme.
Harris played a leading role during the Senate Intelligence Committee’s hearing on Haspel’s nomination, challenging her over the interrogation techniques she had been involved with.1
Haspel refused to condemn those techniques as immoral during the session, but later wrote to Committee vice-chairman Mark Warner that ‘with the benefit of hindsight and my experience as a senior agency leader, the enhanced interrogation program is not one the CIA should have undertaken.’ That concession secured crucial swing votes in the Committee’s closed door vote.2
Harris later voted against Haspel on the floor of the Senate. So too did her senior colleague from California, Dianne Feinstein, who had chaired the Committee during its investigation of CIA interrogation techniques.3
Harris’s background as a former California attorney-general no doubt gave her some experience of security issues, although it also left her with a reputation for equivocating on high profile policy debates.4
In the Senate, however, her background as a prosecutor stood her in good stead. The Haspel hearing was one example of that. Another took place in the Homeland Security Committee in 2018, when Harris secured an admission from FBI director Christopher Wray that the White House had limited the background check into Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh.5
During the presidential transition of 2020/21, Harris’s membership of the Senate Intelligence Committee gave her access to briefings which she could not share with Biden while his status as President-Elect was being challenged by Donald Trump.6
After his inauguration, Biden provided for Harris to attend the President’s Daily Brief, the intelligence report which is nowadays co-ordinated by the ODNI in concert with the CIA and other parts of the intelligence community.7
Despite such displays of confidence from her running mate, Harris’s vice presidency has not always convinced everyone. Her opinion poll ratings have been negative for much of her tenure.8
The role of vice-president is a notoriously uncertain one, but Harris has had substantive tasks. Britain’s Chatham House think-tank argues that ‘other than Biden, Americans must go all the way back to George H.W. Bush in 1989 to find a president who would take office with more foreign affairs experience than her. '
As vice president, Harris made 17 foreign trips in three-and-a-half years, reflecting both President Biden’s view of her role and his own limited travel. Some of those assignments were the highest profile. Harris attended the Munich Security Conference shortly after Russia launched its full-scale war on Ukraine in 2022, as well as the APEC and ASEAN Summits and the 2023 COP climate summit in Dubai.9
Although ABC News credits Harris with having taken a more forceful tone on ending the conflict in Gaza than other US officials, abrupt shifts in foreign policy are unlikely given her conspicuous advocacy for current administration positions.10 Personnel matters are less clear. Biden’s famously close-knit foreign policy team is not short of power players. CIA Director William Burns is one figure whose unusually high profile diplomatic role I’ve noted here before.
Harris has respected advisers of her own.11 Yet while Biden remains President it will not be easy for them to chart a distinct course during the campaign.
So we are left with a certainty and an uncertainty, the one about that contrast with Trump, the other about the level of continuity with Biden.
OPEN HEARING: NOMINATION OF GINA HASPEL TO BE THE DIRECTOR OF THE CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY, Select Committee on Intelligence, US Senate, 9 May 2018.
Greg Myre, Gina Haspel: CIA Should Not Have Carried Out 'Enhanced Interrogation', NPR, 15 May 2018.
Roll Call Vote 115th Congress - 2nd Session, US Senate, 17 May 2018.
Jeongyoon Han, As she is poised to be the Democratic nominee, here are 5 things about Kamala Harris, NPR/WHYY, 24 July 2024
Josh Gerstein, FBI’s Wray confirms White House limited Kavanaugh probe, Politico, 10 October 2018.
Natasha Bertrand, Transition delay leads to awkward gap between Biden and Harris in intel access, Politico, 19 November 2020.
Carol E. Lee, Mike Memoli and Elyse Perlmutter-Gumbiner, Biden puts the 'daily' back into the administration's intelligence briefings, NBC News, 25 January 2021.
Matt Stiles, Ryan Murphy and Vanessa Martínez, What does America think of Kamala Harris? Los Angeles Times, 23 April 2024.
Heather Hurlburt, Kamala Harris would bring greater foreign policy experience than most new US presidents, Chatham House, 25 July 2024.
Shannon K. Kingston, Anne Flaherty, and Nathan Luna, Harris on foreign policy: Her experience and where she stands, ABC News, 22 July 2024.
Heather Hurlburt, Kamala Harris would bring greater foreign policy experience than most new US presidents, Chatham House, 25 July 2024.