Former colleagues in the upper chamber cited Dan Coats’ time as an ambassador as one of several reasons the retired senator was qualified to head ODNI. | Getty Trump to tap ex-Sen. Dan Coats as intelligence chief If the Senate confirms Coats, the recently retired lawmaker will be tasked with leading an intelligence community the incoming president has criticized and vowed to reform.

President-elect Donald Trump will pick former Indiana Sen. Dan Coats to be his director of national intelligence, a Trump transition source confirmed on Thursday.

If the Senate confirms Coats, the recently retired lawmaker will be tasked with leading an intelligence community the incoming president has criticized and vowed to reform.


Coats — who served on the Intelligence and Armed Services committees while in the upper chamber — reemerged in recent days as the leading candidate to become Trump's intelligence chief, with several news outlets reporting he was the expected choice. He would enter the job at the center of a spat between Trump and the government’s intelligence community over Russia’s alleged hacking of the recent U.S. election.

The next commander in chief has repeatedly refused to accept intelligence agencies' conclusion that senior Moscow officials directed the digital campaign, potentially in an attempt to boost Trump’s chances at the White House and undermine the candidacy of Hillary Clinton. Trump believes intelligence personnel have become politicized and are pushing a false narrative to try and undermine his future administration.

According to a recent Wall Street Journal report, Trump and his top advisers are working on a plan to scale down the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. The story follows a November Intercept report that Trump’s team was discussing whether to “dismantle” the office altogether.

Current Director of National Intelligence James Clapper on Thursday said his staff had not talked to Trump’s team about such a large-scale rearrangement — or all-out axing — of his office. ODNI oversees intelligence collection and analysis activities at the FBI, NSA, CIA and 13 other agencies in the intelligence community.

Sean Spicer, the incoming White House press secretary, has tried to downplay the reports, calling them “false.”

“All transition activities are for information-gathering purposes, and all discussions are tentative,” he said on Thursday.

In addition to his time on the Armed Services and Intelligence committees, Coats served as the U.S. ambassador to Germany from 2001 to 2005. The term came between two stints in the Senate — from 1989 to 1999, and 2011 to 2017.

Former colleagues in the upper chamber cited Coats’ time as an ambassador as one of several reasons the retired senator was qualified to head ODNI.

Senate Armed Services Chairman John McCain (R-Ariz.) called Coats a “great" choice, echoing remarks from other national security-focused Republicans, including Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr of North Carolina.

“He’s one of my favorite people,” McCain told POLITICO on Thursday. “I think he’s so well-qualified.”

McCain has been a staunch defender of the spy world amid Trump’s disparaging remarks. At an Armed Services Committee hearing Thursday, McCain told Clapper that he trusted the major intelligence agencies to faithfully execute a report on Russia’s election-season hacking that will be made public early next week.

After the hearing, McCain told POLITICO that Coats would “do what he believes is right” when it comes to ODNI reform.

“He stood up to the Bush administration when he was ambassador to Germany,” McCain added. “He has a record.”

Senate Intelligence ranking member Mark Warner (D-Va.), who served with Coats last Congress on the Intel panel, said the former Indiana lawmaker has “great respect for the intelligence professionals.”

“That is so critical now, especially when we’ve seen some of the recent actions by the president-elect,” Warner told POLITICO.

In recent weeks, Trump has sent out several tweets mocking or dismissing the intelligence community’s investigation of Russia’s apparent digital meddling in the presidential race. On Thursday, the president-elect walked back his remarks somewhat, insisting he was a “big fan” of “intelligence” and that the “dishonest media” was inaccurately portraying his stance.

“Intel’s most important job is to speak truth to power,” Warner said. “And I want to just make sure that everybody the president-elect appoints is going to allow the intelligence professionals to continue to make sure they speak truth to power and not have a hand on the scales.”

Coats’ positions on ODNI reform are not immediately apparent from his time as a public servant, although he has recently sided with intelligence advocates on a number of controversial items.

In 2015, Coats supported a landmark cyber bill that expanded cyberthreat data-sharing between the government and the private sector. But civil liberties groups and privacy-minded lawmakers loathed the measure, arguing it would give the government’s spying wing unfettered access to more of Americans’ personal data.

That same year, Coats voted against axing the NSA’s controversial bulk-phone-records collection program, a provision included in a surveillance reform bill — the USA Freedom Act.

Also in 2015, Coats sponsored an amendment that would elevate the role of the government’s counterintelligence office, which tries to ferret out insider threats — essentially people like NSA leaker Edward Snowden. The office also tracks foreign spies operating in the U.S.

“In the wake of the Snowden leaks, it is more important than ever for the White House, the director of national intelligence and the Senate Intelligence Committee to work together to strengthen our counterintelligence practices,” he said at the time. “With Russia trying to resurrect the Cold War and China growing more brazen, a mistake of this magnitude cannot be repeated.”

Coats has a tense relationship with Russia, whose ties with the U.S. have deteriorated over Moscow’s military aggression in Ukraine, the Syrian civil war and failed joint airstrikes against the Islamic State, not to mention the recent round of apparent cyberattacks on the U.S. election.

Coats is one of several lawmakers banned from visiting Russia as part of Moscow’s retaliation for 2014 U.S. sanctions.

Martin Matishak and Shane Goldmacher contributed to this report.