John Ratcliffe
| John Ratcliffe link (Lawyer,politician,spook) | |
|---|---|
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| Born | October 20, 1965 Mount Prospect, Illinois, U.S. |
| Nationality | US |
| Alma mater | University of Notre Dame,Southern Methodist University |
| Children | 2 |
Became Director of the Central Intelligence Agency in 2025. Heritage Foundation. | |
John Lee Ratcliffe is an American politician and attorney who became Director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in 2025. He previously was Director of National Intelligence from 2020 to 2021 and sat in the United States House of Representatives from 2015 to 2020.
Moscow visit
On 25 August 2026, the CIA director made a rare, unannounced visit to Moscow. US officials had not announced Ratcliffe’s trip, but publicly available flight tracking data captured the movement of a US government transport plane from Joint Base Andrews on the outskirts of Washington to the Russian capital. The aircraft departed Moscow about eight and a half hours later, according to tracking data from Flightradar24.
The Kremlin was mum about the visit. Spokesman Dmitry Peskov initially said the Kremlin had no information about the US military aircraft that arrived at Moscow’s Vnukovo International Airport.
The last known visit by a CIA director to Moscow was in November 2021, when William J. Burns, who led the agency under President Joe Biden, warned Putin and his top aides not to attack Ukraine and spelled out what the consequences would be. Moscow launched its full-scale invasion within weeks.[1]
Activities
After leaving the Trump administration in 2020, Ratcliffe became a visiting fellow at the Heritage Foundation and a contributor to Project 2025.