NY Times
President-elect Donald J. Trump is considering Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s daughter-in-law to serve as the deputy director at the C.I.A., according to four people briefed on the matter.
Amaryllis Fox Kennedy, 44, a former C.I.A. officer who is married to Mr. Kennedy’s son, met with Mr. Trump last week to discuss the job, the people said. The position does not require Senate confirmation, unlike the director job.
Mr. Kennedy, who is the president-elect’s choice to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, is among those encouraging Mr. Trump to hire her, according to two people close to the Trump transition team. Like others interviewed for this article, they spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss private deliberations.
In an interview in 2023, Mr. Kennedy said it was ‘beyond a reasonable doubt’ that the C.I.A. was involved in the assassination of his uncle, President John F. Kennedy, in 1963.
Ms. Fox Kennedy, who served as her father-in-law’s campaign manager, has raised alarms within the agency and among some lawmakers, in part because she published a book about her time in the C.I.A. in 2019 — while Mr. Trump was president — without going through the lengthy government review process required to check that classified information is not made public.
Some former officials questioned details in the book about Ms. Fox Kennedy’s meetings in Pakistan with Islamic extremists.
What you should know. The Times makes a careful decision any time it uses an anonymous source. The information the source supplies must be newsworthy and give readers genuine insight.
Another book, written by the former administration official John R. Bolton, was also published without a sign-off, and the Trump administration tried to seize his book advance.
The Washington Post reported earlier this year that Ms. Fox Kennedy had been critical of Mr. Trump’s ability to manage the nuclear arsenal, as well as President Biden’s ability to perform the job at his age, in an email to Democrats. She later played a key role in negotiating Mr. Kennedy’s endorsement of Mr. Trump.
Ms. Fox Kennedy has said she worked for the C.I.A. from 2002 to 2010, at one point posing as an art dealer in a foreign country under ‘unofficial cover,’ meaning she did not have diplomatic immunity.
She has made comments on foreign policy that are at odds with how Republicans, including Mr. Trump, have approached adversaries in the Middle East. In an interview with Al Jazeera in 2016, she seemed to suggest that a problem in U.S. national security policy was that government leaders had not spent enough time listening to America’s enemies, including organizations that have sponsored terrorism, although agreement with them isn’t required.
‘I think the question we need to be asking as Americans examining our foreign policy is whether we’re pouring kerosene on a candle,’ she said, suggesting that the idea is to go beyond caricatures and more fully understand what motivates them. ‘The only real way to disarm your enemy is to listen to them.’
The interview was given at a time when President Barack Obama had broadened the drone program he had relied on for counterterrorism operations, which led to large numbers of civilian deaths. She is critical of the agency’s post-9/11 emphasis on counterterrorism and asymmetrical warfare more generally and wants to see a rebuilding of human intelligence gathering capacity in rival powers like China, Russia and Iran, according to a person with knowledge of her thinking.
Ms. Fox Kennedy is liked by a number of people in Mr. Trump’s orbit, and she is close with Tulsi Gabbard, Mr. Trump’s choice to serve as director of national intelligence. She has been discussed for other jobs in the administration, including an ambassadorship, but she has wanted a role at the C.I.A. for some time, according to one of the people briefed on the matter.
Ms. Fox Kennedy is expected to meet with John Ratcliffe, Mr. Trump’s choice for C.I.A. director, this week.
Through a spokeswoman, both Mr. Kennedy and Ms. Fox Kennedy declined to comment. Through an aide, Mr. Ratcliffe declined to comment.
Karoline Leavitt, the incoming White House press secretary, declined to address questions about Ms. Fox and the C.I.A. role, saying only that Mr. Trump is choosing ‘the best and the brightest individuals’ and will announce appointments when they’re ready.
It is not clear how serious Mr. Trump is about choosing her for the role. While some deputy directors are chosen by the head of the C.I.A., others are tapped by the president. David Cohen, the current deputy director, was the suggestion of the White House and then endorsed by William J. Burns, who took the top job.
Ms. Fox Kennedy’s ties to Ms. Gabbard will put someone trusted by an outspoken critic of the U.S. intelligence community and military in a pivotal position at the C.I.A. In late October, Ms. Fox Kennedy wrote on social media that she had known Ms. Gabbard for roughly a decade.
‘Donald Trump has surrounded himself with the precious few American leaders who still speak the truth at great personal cost,’ she wrote, counting Ms. Gabbard among them.
John Maguire, a former C.I.A. officer who became known for catching a spy named Harold ‘Jim’ Nicholson, spoke in favor of Ms. Fox Kennedy.
‘She’s infinitely qualified for the job,’ he said. ‘She’s a very talented woman.’