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President Donald Trump an-
nounced on Wednesday that he
will appoint U.S. hostage nego-
tiator Robert O’Brien to replace
John Bolton as his national secu-
rity adviser, after a “hard” lobby-
ing campaign from the increasingly
empowered secretary of State, Mike
Pompeo.
“I have worked long & hard with
Robert. He will do a great job!”
Trump tweeted.
O’Brien represents a stylistic —
but not necessarily an ideological
— shift from the man he is replac-
ing. People who have worked with
and are close to O’Brien describe
him as similarly aggressive as his
predecessor on issues like Iran, but
more of a congenial colleague than
Bolton, who was known as a sharp
bureaucratic infighter. And unlike
Bolton, O’Brien, who had a career
before working in government, is
not a big name in the intelligence
and national security world, indi-
cating he will likely bring a much
lower profile to the job.
“He worked for John Bolton at
the United Nations and might be
as hawkish,” said Andrew Exum,
deputy assistant secretary of de-
fense for Middle East policy from
2015 to 2016, who knows O’Brien
and has traveled with him. “But
he’s certainly not as pugilistic.”
Another person close to O’Brien
agreed that he is “definitely in the
same school as Bolton on Iran,”
describing him as “hawkish” but
“more of a team player” — and
more compliant with Trump and
Pompeo’s demands. “Robert’s not
going to push back too much,” this
person said.
As the U.S. hostage negotia-tor, O’Brien got on the president’s
radar via a very Trumpian com-
bination — flattering comments
and his involvement in an only-
in-the-Trump era attempt to free
an American rapper detained in
Sweden.
When A$AP Rocky was jailed
on assault charges, Trump made
a show of dispatching O’Brien to
Sweden to assist in the case, far
different from the situations he
has usually dealt with in hostile
countries and war-torn regions.
Trump tweeted frequently about
the case from Washington, and
claimed that O’Brien had called him
“the greatest hostage negotiator
that I know of in the history of the
United States.” The State Depart-
ment later confirmed to The New
York Times that O’Brien had indeed
described him that way. Rocky was
eventually released to the U.S.
More broadly, O’Brien has been
a part of what Trump sees as a ma-
jor success of his administration —
freeing American hostages.
Trump has frequently touted
his administration’s record on
the issue, sometimes referring to
himself as “chief hostage nego-
tiator.” During Trump’s time in
office, his administration has se-
cured the release of suspiciously
detained Americans from places
like North Korea and Turkey, al-
though O’Brien was not yet in his
role when Pyongyang handed over
three Americans in May 2018.
Iranian Foreign Minister Javad
Zarif also acknowledged earlier
this year that he’d received a letter
from O’Brien asking for the release
of detained U.S. citizens, but Zarifdescribed the letter as a one-sided
demand rather than an effort to
negotiate.
Trump on Wednesday focused on
O’Brien’s work as a hostage nego-
tiator as he praised his new national
security adviser.
“He did a tremendous job on
hostage negotiation, really tre-
mendous, like unparalleled. We’ve
had tremendous success in that
regard, brought home many peo-
ple,” Trump told reporters. “And
through hostage negotiation, I got
to know him very well myself. But
also a lot of people that I respect
rated him as the absolute No. 1
choice.”
Standing next to Trump, O’Brien
returned the praise.
“We’ve got a number of chal-
lenges, but there’s a great team in
place,” he said. “I look forward to
working with them, and the presi-
dent, to keep America safe and con-
tinue to rebuild our military and re-
ally get us back to a peace through
strength posture.”
O’Brien isn’t a big name in na-
tional security circles. Fred Fleitz,
Bolton’s former chief of staff who
was also considered for the post,
said he knows next to nothing
about O’Brien except that he
“seems to have pretty good cre-
dentials on paper.” Asked whether
the Senate Intelligence Commit-
tee knew anything about O’Brien,
a committee aide said, “Nope, not
really.”
But Pompeo, who has known
O’Brien “for a long time,” urged
Trump to appoint the hostage en-
voy, according to a senior admin-
istration official.“Obviously, Secretary Pompeo
had a big say in who it would be,”
said a senior White House official
O’Brien did pop up during 2016
elections as a foreign policy adviser
to Trump opponents Scott Walker
and Ted Cruz, four years after he
had advised Mitt Romney’s cam-
paign on the same issues. In 2015,
while he was still in the Cruz camp,
O’Brien wrote that the Texas sena-
tor had an “opening” to differen-
tiate himself on national security
from Trump, “who has been play-
ing up how chummy he will be with
Vladimir Putin if he is elected.”
Prior to joining the Trump ad-
ministration, O’Brien served as
co-chairman of the State Depart-
ment’s public-private partnership
for justice reform in Afghanistan
under Presidents George W. Bush
and Barack Obama. He also served
as a U.S. representative to the U.N.
General Assembly in 2005, where he
worked alongside Bolton.
Speaking to reporters aboard A ir
Force One on Wednesday, Trump
praised O’Brien as “fantastic.”
The former hostage envoy comes
aboard as Trump faces a number
of crises in the Middle East, in-
cluding attempts to broker peace
in Afghanistan with the Taliban
as well as between the Israelis and
Palestinians.
T he administration is also grap-
pling with how to confront an in-
creasingly hostile Iranian regime,
which Trump hit with a fresh
package of sanctions just moments
before revealing that he’d tapped
O’Brien for the national security
post.
Trump has also thrown out the
possibility of a third nuclear sum-
mit with North Korean leader Kim
Jong Un prior to next year’s elec-
tion, in addition to the prospect
of reaching a new arms deal with
Russia and the ongoing push to
beat back the Islamic State — all
of which will require O’Brien’s
involvement.
O’Brien, who has advocated ex-
panding the Navy and was report-
edly considered in 2017 to serve as
Trump’s Navy secretary, beat out
Fleitz, a former CIA analyst who
served as Bolton’s chief of staff;
Lisa Gordon-Hagerty, the admin-
istrator of the National Nuclear
Security Administration; Keith
Kellogg, national security adviser
to Vice President Mike Pence; and
Ricky Waddell, a former deputy
national security adviser under
Trump.
Early on in the search, the presi-
dent ruled out appointing Pompeo
to take over the post in addition
to his duties at the State Depart-
ment, though White House coun-
selor Kellyanne Conway signaled
he would play a large role assisting
Trump with selecting the admin-
istration’s fourth national security
adviser.
Last week, Trump downplayed
the record levels of turnover in
his administration, asserting that
a job in his White House is a hot
commodity.
“Everybody wants it badly, as
you can imagine,” he said. “A lot
of people want the job — it’s a great
job. It’s great because it’s a lot of
fun to work with Donald Trump.
It’s very easy actually to work with
me. You know why it’s easy? Be-
cause I make all the decisions. They
don’t have to work.”BY CAITLIN OPRYSKO
AND NATASHA BERTRAND
Trump names his fourth national security adviser
Not much is known
of hostage negotiator
in national security,
intelligence world
EVAN VUCCI/AP
Robert O’Brien (left) has worked with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to free Americans held captive abroad. He
has advocated for expanding the Navy and reportedly was considered in 2017 to serve as secretary of the Navy.