John Ratcliffe, Trump’s appointee as CIA director, says that he wants officers who are “willing to go to places no one else can go and do things that no one else can do”. This, one might have thought, is a straightforward enough description of any intelligence operative worth his keep, just as country analysts in Langley must be really fluent in foreign languages to do their jobs effectively. Certainly, Ratcliffe seems keen to employ only the best at the CIA, and has offered eight months of pay and benefits to those who prefer to leave.
