TRANSPARENCY

Mike Pompeo Failed to Disclose Chinese Business Connection

The CIA director and current secretary of state nominee has ties to a Chinese state-owned oil firm that frequently lobbies D.C.

CIA director Mike Pompeo, the president’s pick to be secretary of state, “failed to disclose last year that he owned a Kansas business that imported oilfield equipment from a company owned by the Chinese government,” McClatchyDC reported Wednesday. The omission was made on the questionnaire Pompeo had to fill out early last year while undergoing confirmation to lead the Central Intelligence Agency. Between 2006 and 2010, Pompeo served as president of Sentry International, an oilfield equipment manufacturer that partly owned a subsidiary of an oil and gas company majority-owned by a Chinese state-owned petrochemical company. That same subsidiary frequently lobbies in Washington, D.C. on energy and deregulation-related issues. “Mr. Pompeo was president of an American company in Kansas that sold products made in many different countries, Canada and China to name just two. In fact, the paper clips the company used were from Taiwan,” a CIA spokesman said in a statement to McClatchyDC. “He would have no reason to know details on the layers of companies that may or may not have had ownership interests in each overseas company that supplied products to his Kansas company.”