Who is DNI Gabbard's Successor Aaron Lukas?

The ODNI's new acting director is a product of Cato and the CIA who had an early interest in Eastern Europe

Tulsi Gabbard was not long for Director of National Intelligence, the scuttlebutt went for months in Washington—just too many missteps with President Trump, but particularly in regard to her widely reported opposition to “forever wars,” and specifically the administration’s war on Iran. She struggled to align Trump’s claims about the state of Iran’s uranium sites and ICBMs with the findings of U.S. intelligence—and the president’s own boasts—that they had been destroyed during the 12-day U.S. and Israeli air campaign against Iran last June.

“Her departure ends a stormy 15-month tenure in which the former Democratic congresswoman was largely excluded from President Donald Trump’s inner national security circle, even as she pushed his political priorities on election security, declassification and Russia’s role in the 2016 presidential contest,” according to an account in The Washington Post. She said she was resigning June 30 to help care for her husband, who she said has been stricken with a rare form of bone cancer, but a Reuters report said she was “forced out.”

In any event, her successor, at least on an acting basis, will be Aaron Lukas, a onetime international trade specialist at the Cato Institute who signed up with the CIA in the early years of the so-called war on terror. Spytalk Contributing Writer Tomás Dinges authored a “SpyFaces in the Crowd” profile of the principal deputy director of ODNI back on April 23, which we present again here.