Page:CTRL0000034609 - Transcribed Interview of Kashyap Pramod Patel, (December 9, 2021).pdf/81

81 [2:12 p.m.]


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What was your understanding of what your role was going to be in the sense of it would now be after President-elect Biden had been declared the winner of the 2020 Presidential election? Did you discuss what your plans were for the next 2 months in that role?

In that role, same—you know, the question appears; it does implicate core privilege of executive privilege. I'm prepared to answer it, but I want the record to reflect my serious concerns about congressional overreach in this regard.

It was largely policy objectives that were—I was familiar with because, having been the deputy assistant to the President, senior director for counterterrorism, a lot of those mission sets folded over into one another. So we talked about policy and operational objectives generally that I can talk about here.

That'd be great. Go ahead.

Yeah. Generally speaking, he had stated publicly he wanted to wind some of the wars that were happening overseas. That was generally one of the policy objectives. And we at the CT Directorate were responsible for a large piece of that anyway in the National Security Council.

We were also similarly responsible for the hostage portfolio, American citizens detained and remained in captivity overseas. We were responsible for, in the National Security Council and the CT Directorate, for countering Iran, sanctions, wiping out Al Qaeda senior leadership, taking out the emirs of ISIS. A whole host of things that we had—I had continuously worked on seemed to merge with some of those priorities that -- or policy decisions of the President.