Anti-Russian ex-senator picked as US intel chief

Donald Trump has chosen for his director of national intelligence someone who could provide a counterweight to the president-elect's alleged soft spot for Moscow: a former senator banned by Russia.

Dan Coats, 73, will be nominated by Trump to serve as the powerful coordinator of 16 intelligence and security agencies, according to multiple US media reports Thursday.

Coats, who served as a Republican senator from Indiana from 1989 to 1999, and then from 2011 to the end of his term on Tuesday, was one of six US legislators and three White House aides blacklisted by Moscow in 2014 in reprisal for US sanctions placed on the country for its seizure of Ukraine's Crimea region.

Coats, who had advocated tough sanctions against Russia, called the ban an honor.

His nomination will have to pass Senate confirmation. He will replace James Clapper, director of national intelligence under outgoing President Barack Obama from 2010 to the present.

The DNI oversees coordination between disparate agencies including the Department of Homeland Security, CIA, FBI, NSA and others, acting as the president's principal advisor on their work.

According to reports, Trump wants to reshape and possibly slim down the US intelligence apparatus, a job which could fall to Coats. Trump spokesman Sean Spicer rejected earlier Thursday a Wall Street Journal report that Trump wants to scale back the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and restructure the CIA.