March 13, 2018 "Information Clearing House" - Mike Pompeo, Donald Trumps soon-to-be Secretary of State is a hard-line Republican who shares the president-elects pugnacious worldview and, like Trump, spent years as a businessman before becoming a politician.

Pompeo, served three terms in the U.S. Congress from conservative Kansas, was a member of the House intelligence committee and has served as the director of the CIA since. During the 2016 presidential election Pompeo was an outspoken critic of former President Obama's nuclear deal with Iran, Hillary Clinton's handling of the Benghazi attack and has said former National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden is a traitor who deserves a death sentence.

During an appearance on C-SPAN last February, Pompeo said Snowden should receive the death penalty for his actions.

He should be brought back from Russia and given due process and I think the proper outcome would be that he would be given a death sentence, Pompeo said.

As recently as last November, mere days after Donald Trump's victory in the 2016 elections, Pompeo declared on Twitter, with regards to the Iran nuclear deal, "I look forward to rolling back this disastrous deal with the world's largest state sponsor of terrorism." 

As a lawmaker Pompeo supported restoring the National Security Agencys bulk collection of telephone metadata, a contentious terror-fighting tool Congress eliminated after Snowdens revelations. Its unclear if Pompeos views on using harsh interrogation techniques completely mirror those of Trump, who says: We should go tougher than waterboarding, which simulates drowning.

This article was originally published by "Haaretz" -