Reuters US Domestic
By Gram Slattery and Trevor Hunnicutt
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Taiwan's top representative in the United States met privately in Washington this month with a little-known group of intelligence advisers that officials say has emerged as a key power node in U.S. President Donald Trump's White House.
The meeting with Alexander Yui, Taiwan's de facto U.S. ambassador, was described by two sources with knowledge of the matter and amounted to one of the higher-level Taiwan-U.S. contacts to date during Trump's second term.
It was also an unusually sensitive meeting for the previously obscure group, the President's Intelligence Advisory Board, which includes members who have jobs outside of the federal government and has historically played a low-key role in policymaking.
A White House official downplayed the encounter, saying it was not an official, sanctioned PIAB gathering but rather an informal conversation between some PIAB members and a foreign diplomat that was put together by a mutual contact.
Still, several national security officials told Reuters they see the body, which is nominally tasked with advising the president on the intelligence community's effectiveness, as an emerging source of influence in Trump's White House, particularly as national security officials throughout the government have been otherwise sidelined by mass firings.
The meeting with Yui, which has not been previously reported, appears to be one sign of this. Taiwan, a self-governed island that China claims as its own, does not maintain formal ties with the United States and meetings between U.S. and Taiwanese officials are a sensitive diplomatic issue.
Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping are due to speak on the phone on Friday. On the agenda for that call is an agreement to switch short-video app TikTok to U.S.-controlled ownership.
Several of the PIAB members are influential in Trump's orbit and speak directly to the president.
PIAB board chair Devin Nunes is particularly close to Trump, said three sources familiar with their relationship. Nunes is a former member of Congress and the current chief executive of the Trump Media & Technology Group. Trump Media operates Truth Social, Trump's preferred social media platform.
Other PIAB members include Robert O'Brien, who served as Trump's national security adviser during his first term, and Amaryllis Fox, currently a deputy director of national intelligence.
Michael Desch, a Notre Dame political science professor who co-authored the book "Privileged and Confidential: The Secret History of the President's Intelligence Advisory Board," said the PIAB appeared to be a more credible and active body than during Trump's first presidency, when it lacked a chairman until well into Trump's second year in office.
"There were a lot more pros, candidly, than I had anticipated," Desch said of the current list of PIAB members. "There are some serious people on it."
Reuters could not determine what was discussed in the meeting with Yui or the list of the PIAB members who were present. O'Brien and Nunes were among those who attended the meeting, said one of the sources, who requested anonymity as the PIAB activities are secret.
Taiwanese defense minister Wellington Koo had planned to visit the Washington area earlier in the summer to meet Elbridge Colby, the U.S. undersecretary of defense for policy, but that trip was canceled.
Taiwan's representative office in Washington and O'Brien declined to comment. Trump Media, the company headed by Nunes, did not respond to a request for comment, nor did a PIAB administrative officer.
ONCE-SLEEPY BOARD ACQUIRES INFLUENCE
In recent months, the National Security Council, a much larger and better known White House component that advises the president on foreign policy, has been hit with multiple waves of firings that have left the once-powerful group a shell of its former self.
The chiefs of the National Security Agency and the Defense Intelligence Agency have been abruptly fired, while other parts of the intelligence community, like the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, face radical downsizing.
The fate of the PIAB stands in contrast.
In recent months, the board has begun to meet regularly, said one person with knowledge of its operations. Three other people, including a U.S. intelligence official, said the PIAB members had become a more visible presence at the White House.
While it is unclear what precisely members have discussed with the president, Trump is known to speak highly of several members. Fox, the deputy director of national intelligence, was in the running to be deputy CIA chief and she also holds a high-ranking position at the Office of Management and Budget.
Some NSC staffers who have been let go in recent months have been approached about taking a PIAB staff position, said a separate source with direct knowledge of the matter. Some foreign diplomats have taken to calling PIAB members for information on administration positions on national security matters, two diplomatic sources said.
Other national security officials warned against drawing any causal link between the PIAB gaining influence and firings elsewhere in the government. Ultimately, they say, a board of volunteers, many of whom live outside Washington, is unlikely to engage routinely in granular and complex national security decisions.
The PIAB members are appointed by the president. While they are unpaid, they have security clearances, and the PIAB is considered an official White House component.
The board's influence has varied across administrations. While Trump waited until almost halfway through his first term to name a PIAB chair, this time around, he named a chairman a month before inauguration. In February, he announced an additional 11 members.
(Reporting by Gram Slattery and Trevor Hunnicutt; Additional reporting by David Brunnstrom; Editing by Don Durfee and Chris Reese)
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