“…Ruemmler served as White House Counsel from 2011 to 2014 and was involved in a range of sensitive national security matters, including the administration’s drone program.
After American-born cleric Anwar al-Awlaki was killed in a CIA-directed drone strike in Yemen in September 2011, Ruemmler argued against releasing the legal memo that authorized the operation, concerned that disclosure could expose the administration to Freedom of Information Act lawsuits, according to an account by Newsweek’s Daniel Klaidman. It took three years of FOIA litigation to force the Obama administration to release the memo.
The posture was consistent with her broader approach: protect the White House, limit exposure, manage the fallout.
But the most significant challenge she navigated—and the one that John Brennan later called the most “complex, challenging, distracting, and time consuming” problem he faced running the CIA—was the Senate Intelligence Committee’s landmark report on the agency’s post-9/11 torture program.
Senate investigators spent seven years reviewing millions of pages of internal CIA documents and produced a 6,700-page report whose findings were devastating: the torture program was ineffective and had been systematically misrepresented to Congress, the White House, the Justice Department, and the public.
The committee had completed its report when Brennan was sworn in as CIA director in March 2013, after a bruising confirmation battle—one in which Ruemmler played a key role, writing letters to skeptical Republican senators on the White House’s behalf and helping manage the release of Benghazi documents that had blocked his nomination.
From the moment he arrived at Langley, Brennan made his intentions clear. He had promised during his confirmation hearing to meet with committee staff on the torture report, which Brennan found shocking and disturbing. Once confirmed, he changed his mind.
[…]
“Uncle Jeffrey”
Ruemmler shared the news that same afternoon with a man she had met just months earlier. According to documents released as part of the federal investigation into his crimes, she had first met Epstein for lunch at his Manhattan mansion in July 2014, just two months after leaving the White House. She was soon being invited to parties Epstein hosted with his rotating cast of powerful friends, including future CIA Director Bill Burns. She called Epstein “Uncle Jeffrey.” He gave her a $9,400 Hermes handbag…”