Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Fast Forward

Trump Almost Offered Gary Cohn CIA Job, But Changed His Mind

President Trump reportedly informally offered former White House economic adviser Gary Cohn the job of CIA director, but ultimately changed his mind.

Cohn, who resigned earlier this month amid a disagreement with the president’s steel and aluminum tariffs, had expressed interest in returning to the administration for the CIA job, which had become available last week when Trump fired Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and said he intended to replace him with CIA Director Mike Pompeo.

Cohn does not have a background in the intelligence community, having worked at Goldman Sachs before moving to the White House. He has yet to line up his next job.

It is unclear why Trump changed his mind. Gina Haspel is currently the nominee as CIA director.

Contact Haley Cohen at [email protected]

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.

If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.

Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism. 

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.