Russia will meddle in the US mid-term elections scheduled later this year, Mike Pompeo, the director of the Central Investigation Agency (CIA) has warned.
Speaking to the BBC, Pompeo said that there has been “no significant decrease” in Russian activity and his concerns extend to the House and Senate polls in November.
“I have every expectation that they will continue to try and do that but I’m confident that America will be able to have a free and fair election [and] that we will push back in a way that is sufficiently robust that the impact they have on our election won’t be great,” Pompeo said.
The US intelligence community has said that it believes Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election.
A year into the job, Pompeo said his mission has been to unleash and unburden the CIA, whose intelligence assessments "can be the basis not just for military action, but also political controversy", the BBC report said on Tuesday.
Even though there has been co-operation in counter-terrorism between the two (with the CIA helping stop a plot in St. Petersburg in 2017), Pompeo said he still saw Russia primarily as an adversary.
Sharing the concerns in many European countries about Moscow's subversion, the CIA chief said: "I haven't seen a significant decrease in their activity."
Asked if his concerns extended to the upcoming US mid-term elections in November, Pompeo told the BBC: "Of course. I have every expectation that they will continue to try and do that."
However, he said he was confident that America would be able to have a free and fair election and would "push back" so that the "impact they have on our election won't be great".
He also said North Korea may have the ability to strike the US with nuclear missiles "in a handful of months".
(With IANS inputs)
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