The Senate approved President Donald Trump's choice to oversee the country’s spy agencies, with the Republican majority voting Tuesday to install top Manhattan federal prosecutor Jay Clayton as the next director of national intelligence. The Republican leader of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas, welcomed the vote in favor of Clayton. “Jay Clayton is a highly qualified nominee with a deep experience combatting a wide range of national security threats,” Cotton said. Congress created the national intelligence director’s position in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks with the aim of ensuring that information was shared across the country’s spy agencies. But President Trump and some Republican lawmakers have called for scaling back the office, which they say has become a bloated bureaucracy.