Trump loyalist John Ratcliffe sails through CIA director confirmation hearing

WASHINGTON ? John Ratcliffe, President-elect Donald Trump’s pick to lead the CIA, said he plans widespread reforms at the nation’s premiere spy agency at his nomination hearing Wednesday, but promised he would not hire or fire employees based on their political views.

Ratcliffe’s pledge, made repeatedly in response to questions from Democrats on the Senate Intelligence Committee, may put him at odds with Trump and some of the president-elect's other national security picks who have vowed to test intelligence officials based on their support of Trump.

But Ratcliffe, citing his time as Director of National Intelligence in Trump's first administration, said he will not waver.

"If you look at my record as DNI, that never took place. That is never something anyone has alleged, and it is something that I would never do," Ratcliffe told the committee’s top Democrat, Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia.

More: Team Trump faces the Senate: Six top picks in confirmation hearings

Ratcliffe’s hearing lacked the fireworks that marked the hearing this week for former Fox News host Pete Hegseth, Trump's choice for Secretary of Defense.

Republicans and Democrats alike praised Ratcliffe, calling him well-qualified, having also served on the House intelligence committee and as a top federal prosecutor in Texas.

More: Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin risked national security 'unnecessarily,' Inspector General says

Ratcliffe pledged repeatedly to focus more on the rising threat posed by China, to upgrade the agency’s technological capabilities and to hire and promote spies and analysts based on merit alone, in a reference to Trump's vow to weed out diversity programs from the national security realm.

“Today we face what may be the most challenging national security environment in our nation’s history,” Ratcliffe said in his opening remarks.

More: Assault allegations, women in combat: Takeaways from Hegseth confirmation hearing

“The Chinese Communist Party remains committed to dominating the world economically, technologically and militarily," he said. "Transnational criminal organizations are flooding American communities with violence and deadly narcotics. The Russia-Ukraine War wages on,” and Iran “is closer to nuclear breakout than ever before.”

He also promised to revisit the origin of the Covid-19 virus and whether Russia or another foreign power is behind the largely unsolved cognitive injuries known as Havana Syndrome suffered by many CIA employees in recent years.

More: Pam Bondi, Trump's choice for attorney general, declines to talk about TikTok ban at Senate hearing

Sen. Jon Ossoff, D-Ga., asked about one controversy Ratcliffe helped create as DNI, in which he was accused of selectively declassifying intelligence from the Justice Department investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election to portray Trump in a more favorable light.

Ratcliffe’s actions “might reasonably draw the question of whether or not there was some political impetus,” behind his decision, Ossoff said.

Ratcliffe responded that the process "was an iterative, collaborative process" that included many other top Trump officials "to respond to these requests or demands to put that information out.”

Republican Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas, the committee chair, kicked things off by saying the CIA had failed repeatedly in its core mission of “stealing secrets … handling spies … hacking computers.”

“Suffice it to say, we’re too often in the dark,” Cotton said, citing the intelligence community’s failure to predict the fall of Syrian strongman Bashar Assad and other geopolitical events. “The CIA must get back to its roots."

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: John Ratcliffe sails through nomination hearing as Trump CIA director