The CIA officer charged with overseeing President Biden’s daily intelligence briefing would have led to a stalemate between the CIA and the Senate Intelligence Committee.
In 2013, Morgan Muir, then a senior CIA analyst, played an important role in defending the CIA’s inaccurate allegations in defense of its torture program, Buzzfeed News reported for the first time.
The Senate Committee concluded, based on reports from the CIA itself, that “improved interrogation techniques” against suspected terrorists were ineffective, but Muir led a series of combative meetings in which the CIA attacked these findings.
After Buzzfeed questioned the CIA about his findings about Muir’s role, an agency spokesman said Muir would not directly inform the president. The New York Times reported for the first time last week that Muir would be reporting directly to the president, and the agency did not explain the change.
The committee at the time pressured the CIA to release its internal report that was detrimental to the CIA’s interrogation techniques. After the 6,700-page report was released, Daniel Jones, a Senate investigator and lead author of the report, said Muir continued to defend the value of the torture program, using information that the CIA later admitted was inaccurate.
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Jones said Muir’s story should disqualify him for the new role, as he cannot be trusted “to convey accurate information”.
“I wouldn’t trust him,” said Jones.
CIA spokesman Timothy Barrett said Jones’ accusations were “unfounded” and described Muir as “an exemplary career intelligence officer whose strength of character is unquestionable”.
Former Democratic Senator Mark Udall, an outspoken critic of the CIA’s torture practices in light of the 2013 report, urged Biden not to be informed by anyone who defended the practices.
“President Biden has assembled a strong national security team, but he must have serious concerns about entrusting his Presidential Daily Briefing to anyone who may have helped to cover up this dark chapter in our nation’s history,” Udall said in a statement to Buzzfeed .
“I can attest that it is critical that intelligence agencies provide the president and other leaders with unbiased, factual and honest information. As we now know, the CIA and its leadership have deceived the public, senators and Senate officials for years about systematic and brutal torture. detainees, “he continued.
Muir also served as President George W. Bush’s resume for three years.
A spokeswoman for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, Amanda Schoch, denied that Muir was working directly with Biden in the Oval Office.
“He is not the briefest of the president as that term is generally understood, and there are no plans for him to stay in the oval,” said Schoch.
Schoch said Muir will be responsible for integrating the mission, or coordinating intelligence between various agencies. She said he will have a role in overseeing the content of the President’s Daily Summary, but the summaries are likely to be delivered by different “expert briefers”.
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Jones said Muir was involved in a series of “false claims”, including when the CIA claimed success in extracting information from Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, a mentor admitted behind the 9/11 attacks. The agency said Mohammed had provided information about another terrorist agent after being subjected to drowning, but documents in the report showed that the CIA obtained this information from Mohammed before the use of torture.