Who Are the Senior Officials at the Pentagon and the N.S.A?

Ezra Cohen-Watnick, 34, was a little-known young aide at the Defense Intelligence Agency before he gained attention in early 2017 after taking a job in the Trump administration, where he served as the National Security Council’s director for intelligence programs under the president’s first, short-lived national security adviser, Michael T. Flynn. In that post, he told other administration officials that he hoped to use covert action to help topple Iran’s clerical government.

After Mr. Flynn resigned under pressure, the new national security adviser, Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster, sought to push Mr. Cohen-Watnick out of the White House — but was thwarted by the president’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and Stephen K. Bannon, then Mr. Trump’s senior strategist.

General McMaster eventually prevailed, but the struggle helped make Mr. Cohen-Watnick a hero figure to anti-establishment Republicans and believers that a so-called deep state in United States intelligence agencies was out to topple Mr. Trump.

Before leaving the White House, Mr. Cohen-Watnick, at the instruction of two senior White House officials, discovered and helped print intelligence reports about the federal investigation of the 2016 Trump campaign that were then provided to Representative Devin Nunes of California, the top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee. Mr. Nunes cited those reports as evidence of improper behavior by Obama administration officials.

Mr. Cohen-Watnick next worked in the Washington office of the software giant Oracle, whose chief executive and other senior executives are supporters of Mr. Trump.

In April 2018, Mr. Cohen-Watnick was named national security adviser to Attorney General Jeff Sessions. After Mr. Sessions resigned later that year under pressure from Mr. Trump, Mr. Cohen-Watnick attended law school.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/11/business/new-leaders-pentagon-nsa.html