Alwaght- US President Donald Trump has sacked Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and replaced him with CIA Director Mike Pompeo amid instability in his administration.
Trump praised both Pompeo and Gina Haspel the deputy director at the CIA who will succeed Pompeo at the CIA, becoming the first woman to run the spy agency, if confirmed.
“I am proud to nominate the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, Mike Pompeo, to be our new Secretary of State,” Trump said.
“Mike graduated first in his class at West Point, served with distinction in the US Army, and graduated with Honors from Harvard Law School. He went on to serve in the U.S. House of Representatives with a proven record of working across the aisle.”
"Gina Haspel, the Deputy Director of the CIA, will be nominated to replace Director Pompeo," Trump statedpresident continued.
Haspel had a role in the CIA’s former covert programme where suspected terrorists were subjected to harsh interrogation methods, including waterboarding, which simulates drowning. More than a decade after it was last used, the CIA is still haunted by the legacy of a tactic that the US government itself regarded as torture before the Bush administration authorised its use against terrorist suspects.
The Washington Post first reported the news, saying that Trump had asked Tillerson to resign last Friday. According to the Post, Trump wanted to replace Tillerson before he began talks with North Korean Leader Kim Jong Un.
Tillerson already came close to resigning last summer but was urged to stay in the job until the end of the year. He referred to Trump as a "moron" in July following a meeting with the president's national security team.
Tillerson never denied using "moron" to describe the president.
Tillerson was among Trump's deputies who tried to prevent the president from pulling the United States out of the Paris climate agreement and taking steps to scrap the Iran nuclear deal.
In an early clash, Trump criticized Qatar as "a funder of terrorism" in June about an hour after Tillerson urged Persian Gulf states to ease a blockade against the tiny monarchy.
