Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Thursday he did not write an anonymous New York Times opinion piece that said an internal "resistance" was working to thwart some of President Donald Trump's efforts.
Pompeo, a former Congressman from Wichita, spoke to reporters after a meeting in New Delhi with top Indian officials and said, "It's not mine."
He said "it shouldn't surprise anyone" that the New York Times chose to print "such a piece." He says if the piece actually was written by a top U.S. official "they should not well have chosen to take a disgruntled, deceptive, bad actor's word for anything."
Pompeo accused the media of trying to undermine the Trump administration and said he finds it "incredibly disturbing."
Dan Coats, the director of national intelligence, also said that speculation that either he or his top deputy wrote the op-ed is "patently false. We did not."
The article by an anonymous senior administration official has set off a wild guessing game on the author's identity.
Trump tweeted Wednesday that if "the GUTLESS anonymous person does indeed exist, the Times must, for National Security purposes, turn him/her over to government at once!"
The Times says publishing the essay anonymously is "the only way to deliver an important perspective" to its readers.
