On January 23, 2017, the Senate confirmed Rep. Mike Pompeo, a Republican congressman from Kansas, as director of the Central Intelligence Agency. Pompeo, 53, has served in the House of Representatives since 2011. He succeeds a 25-year veteran of the CIA, John Brennan, who’s served as the agency’s chief since 2013.

Here’s what you need to know about Pompeo:



1. He served in the Army.

Mike Pompeo during a TV appearance while he was a member of the Army. Facebook

Pompeo graduated first in his class from West Point in 1986, according to his congressional biography. He spent five years on active duty in the Army — part of it along the East German border — serving as a tank platoon leader. He left the Army as a captain, according to the Wall Street Journal.

2. Like Trump, Pompeo spent years as a businessman.

Pompeo, who was born in California, moved to Kansas in 1996 after graduating from Harvard Law School and working in Washington, D.C., as an attorney for two years. In Kansas, Pompeo went into business, starting Thayer Aerospace, where he served as CEO. After selling the company in 2006, he became president of a company called Sentry International, which makes equipment for oilfields.

3. He is married to Susan Pompeo and together they have one son, Nick.

4. He was swept into office with the Tea Party movement.

Rep. Mike Pompeo gives a fist-bump to one of his aides during orientation for new members of Congress in 2011. Getty Images

Pompeo, a Tea Party Republican, was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives when a wave of disgruntled Republicans threw their support behind the Tea Party movement.

One of his Democratic colleagues in the House, Rep. Adam B. Schiff, called Pompeo "bright and hardworking."

5. As a U.S. representative, Pompeo was an outspoken critic of Hillary Clinton’s handling of Benghazi.

Rep. Mike Pompeo listens as then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton testifies before the House Intelligence Committee on American deaths in Benghazi, Libya. Getty Images

Pompeo is a member of the House Intelligence Committee, which oversees the U.S. intelligence community, including the CIA and National Security Agency (NSA). The committee investigated the 2012 attack on Americans in Benghazi, Libya, and, according to the New York Times, “found no new evidence of wrongdoing by the Obama administration” or then-Secretary of State Clinton.

However, Pompeo was convinced there was a cover-up and wrote a 48-page report highly critical of Clinton. According to the Times, Pompeo’s report, which he wrote with another Republican committee member, said the State Department was “seemingly more concerned with politics and Secretary Clinton’s legacy than with protecting its people in Benghazi.”

Rep. Mike Pompeo shakes hands with longtime Hillary Clinton aide Huma Abedin in 2015. Getty Images

He also told reporters that Clinton was “morally reprehensible,” according to the Associated Press.

The committee chairman, Republican Trey Gowdy, did not put his name on Pompeo’s report, the Times said.

6. Pompeo thinks Edward Snowden should be put to death.

During an appearance on C-Span in February, Pompeo said Edward Snowden, the former National Security Agency (NSA) contractor who leaked secret information and now lives in Russia, should be put to death for what he did.

"He should be brought back from Russia and given due process and I think the proper outcome would be that he would be given a death sentence for having put friends of mine, friends of yours who serve in the military today at enormous risk because of the information he stole and then released to foreign powers," Pompeo said.

7. He supports government surveillance programs of Americans and foreign leaders.

Getty Images

Pompeo told a group of students at Wichita State University they shouldn’t worry about the NSA’s surveillance programs of phone calls and emails, according to the Wichita Eagle. “The NSA is not intentionally listening to your phone calls,” he said in 2013. “Feel free to talk to your friend. Tell him or her anything you’d like. Your government is not recording those phone calls.”

In 2015, the NSA ended its controversial program that required phone providers to turn over bulk data from Americans’ phone calls, according to NPR. The NSA can still see that information if it makes a specific request.

Pompeo said in January that NSA’s spying programs are valuable and that he wants to revive them. “We ought not to take that tool away from our intelligence community while the threats are as great as they are today," he said.

He also told the university students that the U.S. should spy on world leaders, including our closest allies. “Why would you spy on Germany? It turns out that’s where al-Qaida is hanging out,” he said. “Why would you spy on friends? Because it’s a place where you find people who are trying to do enormous harm to America.”

8. He spoke out in favor of the CIA's use of torture.

In 2014, the Senate released a portion of its report on the CIA’s use of torture on detainees between 2001 and 2006, including, according to Politico, “waterboarding ... the use of electric shocks, dogs, nudity, hypothermia and mock executions.”

Pompeo took issue with the report, saying in a statement at the time:

Our men and women who were tasked to keep us safe in the aftermath of 9/11 — our military and our intelligence warriors — are heroes, not pawns in some liberal game being played by the ACLU and Senator Feinstein. These men and women are not torturers, they are patriots. The programs being used were within the law, within the constitution, and conducted with the full knowledge Senator Feinstein. If any individual did operate outside of the program’s legal framework, I would expect them to be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.

Trump has said he’d bring back waterboarding.

9. He’s no fan of food labeling, particularly when it comes to GMOs.

As a congressman, Pompeo wrote a law that would prevent states from forcing food companies to put labels on their products saying they contain genetically modified organisms, or GMOs. The bill passed in 2015 over the objections of Democrats and consumer safety groups that insist Americans have the right to know what’s in their food, according to The Hill. Pompeo dismissed these concerns, saying requirements around new labels would only drive up costs.

“Precisely zero pieces of credible evidence have been presented that foods produced with biotechnology pose any risk to our health and safety,” Pompeo said. “We should not raise prices on consumers based on the wishes of a handful of activists.”

10. And he’s stridently pro-life.

Pompeo, who is an evangelical Christian, is against abortion even in cases of rape and incest, according to the Associated Press, although he would allow them if the mother’s life was at risk. Pompeo has also voted to defund Planned Parenthood, calling it the “largest commercial provider of abortions in the United States.” No federal money goes to fund abortions.

11. His comments about Muslims have drawn criticism.

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In the months after the Boston Marathon bombing in 2013, Pompeo took to the House floor to call on Muslim leaders to denounce acts of terrorism committed in the name of Islam. “It's been just under two months since the attacks in Boston, and in those intervening weeks, the silence of Muslim leaders has been deafening,” he said.

Failing to condemn such attacks, he continued, makes Muslim leaders “potentially complicit” in the attacks. "When the most devastating terrorist attacks on America in the last 20 years come overwhelmingly from people of a single faith and are performed in the name of that faith, a special obligation falls on those that are the leaders of that faith," he said.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations pointed out that “a number of Muslim institutions issued statements whose themes included prayers for the victims, calls for Muslims to assist humanitarian efforts, and condemnations of terrorism.”

In Kansas this year, Pompeo called on a mosque to cancel an appearance by a Muslim leader who he said was connected with the terrorist group Hamas. Armed protesters planned to protest the event, which was scheduled for the Christian holiday of Good Friday. Pompeo said that if the Islamic Society of Wichita didn’t cancel the event, “they will be response for the damage among religious faiths that is sure to follow,” according to the Wichita Eagle.

He said the mosque was showing “horrible judgment” in hosting this speaker on a Christian holiday. The event was ultimately canceled.

12. He supported Marco Rubio.

Pompeo traveled to Iowa ahead of the state’s caucus in February to campaign for Florida Sen. Marco Rubio for president, according to the Wichita Eagle. On his Facebook page, Pompeo said:

I know Marco well. I believe that he can articulate a vision of conservatism that speaks to every American, and will defeat Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders in November. Particularly on the issue of national security, which is so critical today, Marco simply has the best record and approach to keep Kansas families safe.

Rubio finished third and ultimately dropped out of the president race in March.

After Trump became the presumptive Republican nominee in May, Pompeo issued a light endorsement of the candidate — without actually saying his name. Pompeo “will support the nominee of the Republican Party because Hillary Clinton cannot be president of the United States,” his spokesman said at the time, according to the Wichita Eagle.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

This article was originally published on November 18, 2016, and has been updated.

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Michael Sebastian Michael Sebastian was named editor-in-chief of Esquire in June 2019 where he oversees print and digital content, strategy and operations.

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