Indian-origin American Attorney and former US government official Kashyap ‘Kash’ Patel, a loyalist of President-elect Donald Trump, is likely to be picked as the new chief of Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).
In the closing weeks of his previous administration that ended in 2020, Trump intended to pick Patel as the deputy director of CIA, which is America’s foreign intelligence service. However, reports said Trump was forced to drop the idea due to pressure from White House officials.
Now after a landslide US Presidential election victory, Trump, who has hold over the Senate and also enjoys the popular vote, is likely to appoint Patel as the CIA chief in his new administration. “Get ready, Kash. Get ready,” Trump told Patel at a major public event last year.
Patel was born in 1980 in New York to Gujarati Indian parents who had migrated to the United States through Canada.
He earned a degree in criminal justice and history from the University of Richmond in 2002, and a certificate in international law from the University College London and a graduate-entry professional degree from Pace University School of Law in 2005. He worked as a public defender in Florida for eight years after that.
Subsequently, Patel was hired as a trial attorney in the US Department of Justice National Security Division in 2014. Three years later, he was appointed senior counsel on counterterrorism at the House Select Committee on Intelligence.
In 2017, Patel significantly became the senior committee aide to House Intelligence Committee chair Devin Nunes. He reportedly played a role in Republicans’ opposition to the probe into Trump and Russia’s interference in the 2016 US polls.
He also worked as a senior counsel at the House Reform and Oversight Committee after the Democrats took control over the House of Representatives in 2019.
(IBNS)
In a career spanning three decades and counting, Ramananda (Ram to his friends) has been the foreign editor of The Telegraph, Outlook Magazine and the New Indian Express. He helped set up rediff.com’s editorial operations in San Jose and New York, helmed sify.com, and was the founder editor of India.com.
His work has featured in national and international publications like the Al Jazeera Centre for Studies, Global Times and Ashahi Shimbun. But his one constant over all these years, he says, has been the attempt to understand rising India’s place in the world.
He can rustle up a mean salad, his oil-less pepper chicken is to die for, and all it takes is some beer and rhythm and blues to rock his soul.
Talk to him about foreign and strategic affairs, media, South Asia, China, and of course India.
