The C. I. A.’s emergence as the primary player speaks to the influence of Mike Pompeo, the agency’s director, who has been nominated to replace Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson.
WASHINGTON — The Central Intelligence Agency has emerged as the primary player in President Trump’s audacious diplomatic opening to North Korea, several officials said on Friday, conducting back-channel communications and taking a major role in planning Mr. Trump’s coming meeting with Kim Jong-un, the country’s ruler.
The White House’s decision to use intelligence, rather than diplomatic, channels in communicating with the North Koreans speaks to the influence of Mike Pompeo, the C. I. A. director whom Mr. Trump chose this week to replace Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson. It also reflects the State Department’s diminished role in preparing for the riskiest encounter between an American president and a foreign leader in many years.
Mr. Pompeo, these officials said, has already been dealing with North Korean representatives through a channel that runs between the C. I. A. and its North Korean counterpart, the Reconnaissance General Bureau. And he has been in close touch with the director of South Korea’s National Intelligence Service, Suh Hoon, who American officials said brokered Mr. Kim’s invitation to Mr. Trump.
The deep involvement of Mr. Pompeo, officials said, helps explain the timing of Mr. Tillerson’s ouster. Mr. Trump, having decided to accept Mr. Kim’s invitation to a meeting, wanted to have a secretary of state who was in lock step with his views, these people said.
Mr. Tillerson was an early advocate of diplomatic engagement with North Korea, pursuing it as part of his efforts to win the release of Americans detained there. But he often leaned too far ahead of Mr. Trump in his eagerness, most notably when the president publicly undercut him during one of Mr. Tillerson’s trips to Beijing, tweeting that he was “wasting his time trying to negotiate with Little Rocket Man.”
Mr. Pompeo, a hawkish former Army officer and Republican congressman who has spoken about the possibility of regime change in North Korea, is viewed as more skeptical about engaging with Mr. Kim. It is not clear whether he advised the president in advance of his decision to accept the invitation to talk. But he is an astute reader of Mr. Trump’s preferences, and even before his nomination as secretary of state had become a vocal defender of the meeting.
“President Trump isn’t doing this for theater,” he said last week on Fox News. “He’s going to solve a problem.
