U.S. President-elect Joe Biden nominated David Cohen, who served as deputy director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in the Barack Obama administration on the 15th (local time), as deputy director of the CIA.
According to foreign media such as Reuters, the Biden Transition Committee has nominated Cohen as deputy director of the CIA.
Nominee Cohen previously served as deputy director of the CIA in the Obama administration from 2015 to 2017, when Biden-elect served as vice president.
Prior to his tenure at the CIA, Cohen also served as a vice minister of terrorism and financial information in the Ministry of Finance.
He oversaw sanctions against countries such as Iran, Russia and North Korea at the time and was responsible for funding terrorism, Reuters said.
In the Obama administration, he served as deputy chief of the CIA and vice-minister of finance, overseeing financial sanctions against North Korea, and tracking illegal funds from the family of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.
The Washington Post (WP) said that when Cohen served in the Treasury before joining the CIA in 2015, he was the lead designing the Obama administration’s sanctions efforts against Russia and Iran.
He also worked as Deputy Minister for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence to stop the flow of money to terrorist groups and oversees government efforts to combat financial fraud and money laundering, the WP said.
Nominee Cohen also pointed out in his 2019 WP article that President Donald Trump’s sanctions against North Korea are not working and that it is dangerous to decide to impose or withdraw sanctions according to the president’s mood. Three things are needed: possible policy goals, parallel with other means such as diplomatic, economic support, and military signals, and mutual complementation with international partners who share policy goals, but the Trump administration pointed out that all three failed.
(Yonhap News/Photo = Reuters, Yonhap News)