cia, two democrats on the intelligence committee sent president trump a letter protesting that appointment. protesting gina haspel s background makes her unsuitable and urged trump to declassified a description of her role in the cia s torture program. needless to say trump never did that and did appoint her to the number two job last year. now today he s nominated gina haspal to be the director as he tries to move mike pompeo out replacing the abruptly fired rex tillerson. it was said he will oppose the nomination to run cia. he says he ll oppose it for some reasons he can t talk about and for some reasons that he can. i, of course, have access to classified information and i m very troubled about what i know and can t discuss.
terrorist plots. the agency lied to the congress, lied to the american people. and what we ll be asking at those hearing is what role ms. haspel had, if any in those matters. you also said you will oppose michael smerconish s nomination to be secretary of state replacing rex tillerson. you said that pompeo and the president both have a casual relationship with the truth. why will you oppose pompeo? we saw when he was the director of the cia that it was so hard to pin him down on fundamental issues with respect to accountability. you and have i talked about the open intelligence committee hearing in the past when i tried to pin him down on mike flynn. sally yates said that mike flynn was a security threat we could never get mike pompeo to
that was not true. even if it does match what the president says all the time. the cia had to issue a correction, had to walk back. no, there hadn t been another report that we all missed in which the intelligence community had come to that conclusion. we do have some real loose ends and some questions about mike pompeo and we still really don t know why rex tillerson got fired from that job or when he learned for sure that he was getting canned. but the best reporter in the country on the state department and the top diplomats in this country will join us here tonight and if anybody can sort it out, she can. stay with us.
new system of trying to keep this list all in one place. now tonight, we ve got to squeeze things even a little bit more because now we ve got to add in drum roll please, the secretary of state rex tillerson who apparently came back early from a trip to africa either because he was tired and not feeling great or make sure he would be in u.s. air space by the time he saw the president s tweet firing him. one of those two depending who you ask. i don t know why rex tillerson was fired and neither do you, but we re going to get as close as we can to that tonight. first of all, there is stuff you should know that is related to the russia scandal that pertains to rex tillerson who was just fired as secretary of state and information related to the russia scandal that pertains to mike pompeo. we ll get to that stuff right here in just a second. that s a piece of the tillerson story that i think is worth considering.
but for the real skinny, for the whole holistic story of what happened today and why and why now, we re going to be talking tonight on this show to the reporter covered this beat better and longer than anybody else in the business, one of the legends of this industry, that reporter will be here live with us in a moment and i think she can get us closer to anybody else at explaining why rex tillerson was forced out today. before i get away from the wall, though, i do also have to add a couple more names. first of all, we got to squeeze in the number four guy at the state department, the under secretary of state for public diplomacy named steve goldstein. he was fired today, too. apparently in relation to the rex tillerson firing. he put out a statement explaining rex tillerson hadn t known he was being fired until he saw the president s tweet about it this morning. so the number for a job at the state department, he was fired