WASHINGTON – A veteran CIA analyst who led President Biden’s face-to-face meetings in the early days of the government is no longer doing so, intelligence officials said on Saturday.
The summit’s duties typically included coordinating work between 18 intelligence agencies, in what is known as mission integration, and overseeing the assembly of the written intelligence document delivered to the White House each day. In a change from previous administrations, the task of conducting the face-to-face briefing will be distinct from other responsibilities and divided among several people.
Veteran analyst Morgan Muir is still set to take over as director of mission integration, a key role in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, succeeding Beth Sanner, who was primarily responsible for President Donald J. Trump’s report. As director of mission integration, Mr. Muir will elaborate what is known as the President’s Daily Summary, or PDB, from various reports from the intelligence community, but will no longer conduct face-to-face briefings.
In his new role, Mr. Muir will oversee the agency’s efforts to integrate intelligence community activities “from collection to analysis, including the interagency PDB process,” said Amanda J. Schoch, spokeswoman for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.
Muir’s appointment as Biden’s briefest last month was unusual because it was his second stint in office, the only time anyone has returned to office under a new administration. He had served as an adviser to George W. Bush in the midst of his presidency.
Former presidents also continue to receive briefings, although they are different from the confidentiality that an incumbent president receives daily. Still, it is provided in part as a courtesy and in part for cases where an incumbent president asks for advice. The CIA team of analysts who would instruct a former president is not the same as the one that would instruct a current president.
The question of whether Trump should continue to receive briefings has been raised in recent days. On Friday, Biden told CBS that “there was no need” for the former president to receive briefings, citing his “erratic” behavior. But a day later, the White House clarified those comments.
“The president expressed his concern that former President Trump has access to confidential information,” said Jen Psaki, press secretary of the White House, in a statement, “but he also trusts his own intelligence team to determine how to provide intelligence information if former President Trump ever requests a briefing. “
On Saturday night, the White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment, clarifying whether Trump had requested briefings.
The New York Times previously reported that Mr. Muir was set to become responsible for the briefing, but at the time intelligence officials said that the director of national intelligence, Avril D. Haines, was still determining the final format of the briefing sessions. and what additional briefers would work with Mr. Biden. The authorities also said at the time that there was no final decision on dividing the briefing functions from the broader responsibilities of the mission’s integration director.
Some officials in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence have long been pushing to delegate these tasks to different people.
But in the past few days, Haines has decided to bring a series of expert briefers to conduct sessions in the Oval Office, said Schoch. Ms. Haines continues to attend these meetings.
On Saturday, BuzzFeed News reported that in 2013, Mr. Muir, then a senior CIA analyst, led a delegation from the agency in tense conversations with members of the Senate Intelligence Committee staff, drafting what would become the report about the agency’s torture program. The article quoted Daniel J. Jones, a leading member of the committee’s staff at the time, as saying that Muir had defended the value of the CIA’s torture program in private talks with Senate advisers.
In a statement, Mr. Jones said that Mr. Muir had provided “verifiable false information” to the committee that year. The CIA later acknowledged that Muir’s statements were wrong.
“One would expect that kind of professional failure to be at least disqualifying for any leadership positions in the future,” said Jones.
The Senate report released in 2014, a comprehensive accusation against the CIA, outlined abuse and torture by the agency in interrogating suspected terrorists in the years after the September 11, 2001 attacks and a pattern of deceiving Congress and the White House about it. .
While the report remains a sore spot for many former senior officials at the agency, who disagree with its findings and characterization, several senators expressed frustration that some senior agency officials continue to question the report.
Following the publication of the BuzzFeed article, two intelligence officials insisted that criticism of Muir’s interactions with the Senate committee had nothing to do with the decision to change the way Biden was being informed.
Ms. Schoch said that Ms. Haines remained “confident in Morgan’s stable leadership”.
“Morgan Muir is a widely respected intelligence officer who has demonstrated the highest standards of integrity and professionalism throughout his career,” said Schoch.
Katie Rogers contributed reports.