Everything changes now: A man sent to Serbia heads US national intelligence services

Everything changes now: A man sent to Serbia heads US national intelligence services

“I am pleased to announce that our highly respected Ambassador to Germany Richard Grenell will become the Acting Director of National Intelligence,” the US President Donald Trump tweeted.

The US President thanked Acting Director of Intelligence Joe Maguire, who has been in office since August.

Grenell will be in charge of 17 US intelligence agencies, including the CIA, the FBI, the Military Intelligence Agency, the NSA ...

Appointment as Acting Officer means that Grenell will not have to be confirmed in the Senate, AP reports.

The news of the Grenell election, first reported by the New York Times, comes just before the March 11 deadline to appoint a new intelligence director or a new acting director because under federal law, Maguire cannot remain in office after that date, CNN reports.

Grenell is expected to be in the position for only a couple of months, well-informed sources told CNN. One source told CNN that Grenell would hold the post for about 90 days and he accepted the job being aware of that. Theoretically, Trump could use that time to continue his search for the right director of intelligence agencies.

"This is just a short-lived thing," one source said. Another source states that some Republicans are dissatisfied with his ambassador's work so "there is no way to confirm it" in the Senate.

Still, his appointment allows Trump to immediately appoint a loyal man to the post while coming up with a long-term solution.

Grenell's appointment has received criticism primarily for his inexperience in the intelligence field. Virginia Democrat Senator Mark Warner, a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said Trump “selected an individual without any intelligence experience to serve as the leader of the nation’s intelligence community in an acting capacity", AP reports.

Warner accused the president of trying to sidestep the Senate’s constitutional authority to advise and consent on critical national security positions. “The intelligence community deserves stability and an experienced individual to lead them in a time of massive national and global security challenges,” he added.

Grenell retweeted the US President as well as Republican Kevin McCarthy, who said Grenell was a great choice and proved he was fighting for his country.

He also retweeted Congressman Matt Gaetz, who wrote that fifty years ago, a gay person could not work in the intelligence community, and that now Grenell, openly declaring himself, has been named acting National Intelligence Officer.

The media says Grenell will be the first member of Trump's cabinet to openly declare himself gay. Grenell has also been the US President's Special Envoy for the Belgrade-Pristina talks since October.

Fifteen years ago, he was the assistant to the then United States Ambassador to the United Nations, John Bolton, and was particularly active during US diplomatic attempts to bring to the Security Council a change to Resolution 1244 on Kosovo and the adoption of a plan drafted by a Finnish politician Martti Ahtisaari.