Joe Biden nominates Daryl Lam Blocker, a black man, to head the CIA for the first time in history
The US President-elect Joe Biden has not yet announced his choice to be director of the CIA, but there are some names nominated for the position, including Daryl Lam Blocker, a black man who has provided his services to the secret agency for decades. If the appointment is announced and confirmed, he will be the first black person to hold the intelligence position. .
Fox News has learned that the 32-year-old Blocker - who retired in 2018 - was contacted about the position days after the election, as discussions continued.
Blocker was awarded the Distinguished Professional Intelligence Medal upon his departure, after serving four years as an Air Force analyst and 28 additional employees as a CIA Operations Officer, including nine in the senior intelligence service's executive ranks, including the station chief and division chief Africa, according to his official biography.
It remains unclear when Biden will choose his candidate for the crucial role. As it stands, there are 23 members of the Biden-Harris Transition Team for the Intelligence Community, nine of whom are blacks. However, some critics lamented that despite public promises of diversity in his administration, his appointments so far are a reflection of his longtime inner circle.
Recent press reports indicated that Biden was tending to select former Obama National Security Adviser Tom Donilon as director of the CIA, who was also poised to be the front-runner, having served as the agency's spy agency director in both 2011 and again in 2013.
However, Morrell's potential gesture is said to already spark strong opposition from progressives in the Democratic Party, earlier comments about the CIA's use of "enhanced interrogation," which many on the left understood as a controversial defense of torture methods.
For his part, a spokesman for Biden's transition team refused to comment on any upcoming nominations or when they would be announced.
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