Morgan Muir, the longtime CIA analyst who The New York Times reported was tasked with delivering President Biden’s daily intelligence briefings, played a leading role in defending the CIA from its torture program and cited information that the agency later publicly admitted to be inaccurate during a standoff with the Senate Intelligence Committee in 2013, BuzzFeed News reports. The extent of Muir’s involvement in the confrontation was not previously known, for BuzzFeed.
Daniel Jones, a former Senate investigator and lead author of the committee’s 6,700-page report on the torture program, said he “would not trust” Muir to “convey accurate information” and former Senator Mark Udall (D-Colo .), an outspoken member of the committee at the time, said Biden “should have serious concerns about entrusting his daily presidential briefing to anyone who may have helped to cover up this dark chapter in our country’s history.” Senator Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), Committee member at the time and now, did not specifically address Muir, but said BuzzFeed “the American people deserve transparency about the origins of high-level intelligence officials.”
Amanda Schoch, a spokeswoman for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, said Muir is “a widely respected intelligence officer who has demonstrated the highest standards of integrity and professionalism throughout his career”. But she added that Muir is not Biden’s shortest “as that term is generally understood” and he will not be in the Oval Office. Instead, he is supposed to be in charge of what is known as “mission integration”, which means that he will coordinate “intelligence collection and analysis at various briefings”. Read more at BuzzFeed News.
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