Former top CIA official discusses Trump's first visit to the agency
Former career CIA official Meroe Park vividly recalls the days leading up to President Trump's first visit to the agency; she served as its acting director from January 20 to 23, 2017, and was tasked with coordinating the newly elected president's first official appearance on his first full day in office.
Mr. Trump's speech, which was delivered before the Memorial Wall commemorating the agency's fallen officers, became an early flashpoint in his consistently strained relationship with the U.S. intelligence community. For just over 15 minutes, he boasted about his election victory, bashed the media and cited his record number of Time magazine cover stories, all without substantively acknowledging the personal sacrifices routinely made by intelligence officers – including those who had paid the ultimate price.
But despite the torrent of criticism the president's performance later unleashed, Park said there were unseen meetings with the president and his national security team that were more productive.
In an interview with Intelligence Matters host and CBS News senior national security contributor Michael Morell – with whom Park worked closely while at CIA – she recounted the last-minute preparations for the president's first visit to the agency.
It was a historical first that led to Park's brief term as acting director. Never before in the agency's history had both the director and deputy director – John Brennan and David Cohen at the time – stepped down simultaneously.
"Generally," Park said, "one of them is asked to stay on for some period of time for continuity, because CIA does things and takes action that must continue."
"As we got closer to that date, no one took them up on that offer and so we started to realize that probably someone else was going to have to be acting director," she said. "I was the next one in line."
As then-executive director, Park assumed she would serve in an acting capacity for a matter of hours – the president's pick for CIA director, Mike Pompeo, was expected to be confirmed by the Senate that Friday, January 20. When that didn't happen, Park assumed the president's visit would simply be postponed.
"I remember calling [Pompeo], maybe Thursday evening. We had a conversation and I said, 'Mike, surely the president's not going to come now. He's going to cancel his visit because you're not going to be confirmed in time,'" Park said.
"And he said, 'Well, actually, the president is still going to come. And I'm just a congressman and you're the acting director. So you're going to have to host the visit,'" Park recalled.
"I believe I used a few vocabulary words that are not generally ones I use," she joked, "but we moved on."
She spent the next 48 hours coordinating a presidential visit, even as Trump's own team was still coming together.
"I had trouble actually finding someone to talk to about the visit in advance because it was so unexpected," she told Morell.
Ultimately, the agency secured two hours of the president's time, which it used to brief the Mr. Trump, Vice President Mike Pence, and members of their national security teams.
"We had him briefed on a number of issues. He met a lot of employees. He met the senior leadership team," Park said. "And it was a great opportunity to talk to him about all that not just CIA was able to do, but we were very careful about making sure that the intelligence community was part of that."
"Despite all of the press that came out afterwards about the visit, it really was, in my view, a success in that we established the importance of intelligence early on, on the first day of his administration," Park said. "It made it very real for him."
Park, who over the course of a nearly three-decade career at the agency has held a number of roles – including analyst, executive assistant to then-director George Tenet, chief of payroll and chief operating officer – is now executive vice president of the Partnership for Public Service, a nonprofit organization that works to boost the federal government's recruitment efforts and overall effectiveness.
In her day-to-day interactions with various government agencies, she said, the workforce's morale appears to have been generally resilient to, but nonetheless affected by, an uptick in politically charged attacks.
"This is not the first administration where we've had government employees…not talked about in the most positive manner," she said. "But for some reason, it has become a political football, and we believe that is incredibly damaging, and I believe incredibly damaging to our ability to attract and retain talent."
"I talk to a lot of students who wonder about taking on a career where they wonder if they're going to be valued," she said. "And what I always tell them is, 'You absolutely will be.'"
For much more from Michael Morell's conversation with Meroe Park, you can listen to the new episode and subscribe to Intelligence Matters here.