Gina Haspel
Haspel would be 1st woman to run nation’s spy agency
could become the first woman to lead the CIA. She’s also a proponent of torturing people.
WASHINGTON — Gina Haspel, President Donald Trump’s choice for new CIA director, would be the first woman to run the nation’s spy agency, but her confirmation hearings may focus more on her role in the CIA torture of terrorism suspects and the destruction of key evidence more than a decade ago.
If confirmed by the Senate, Haspel would succeed Mike Pompeo, who Trump plans to nominate to replace Rex Tillerson as secretary of state, in a reshuffle of his national security and foreign policy team.
At 61, Haspel is a veteran CIA operative who has deftly navigated challenging foreign assignments as well as the vast bureaucracy of agency headquarters in Langley, Va. She steadily rose to top positions in the male-dominated spy service during a career, mostly in the shadows, that spanned more than three decades.
Haspel served as CIA station chief in several overseas assignments, directing U.S. espionage in those countries or regions. She later served as deputy director of the CIA division responsible for clandestine operations, and was promoted to deputy director of the agency last year.
Haspel said she was grateful and “humbled” by the opportunity to lead the CIA. “I look forward to providing President Trump the outstanding intelligence support he has grown to expect during his first year in office,” she said.
Trump called Haskel’s nomination a “historic milestone” for the CIA.
Haspel played a key role in the CIA’s response to the 2001 al-Qaida attacks on the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Virginia. Most importantly, she was involved with controversial interrogation tactics that some at the CIA believed were necessary to prevent new strikes on U.S. soil.
The CIA began seizing terrorism suspects and shipping them to secret overseas prisons, where some were waterboarded, beaten, deprived of sleep and otherwise harshly interrogated in an effort to obtain information about al-Qaida’s plans. Haspel reportedly ran one such “black site” in Thailand, an experience that critics cited Tuesday to oppose her nomination.
“She was at the center of the rendition, detention and interrogation program,” said Laura Pitter, senior national security counsel at Human Rights Watch. “Someone with that kind of history should not have been made deputy director, let alone head of an agency with this much power.”
One suspect at the prison, Abu Zubaydah, was waterboarded 83 times, a painful process that simulates drowning. Some CIA officers grew so concerned about Zubaydah’s treatment that they reached “the point of tears and choking up,” according to a 2014 report from Democrats on the Senate intelligence committee.
The report concluded that the brutal CIA interrogations, which took place over several years, did not produce any actionable intelligence about impending or planned terrorist plots.
Ali Soufan, a former FBI agent who helped interrogate Zubaydah in 2002, said Haspel should face questions in her confirmation hearing about her handling of interrogations.
“Maybe she was following orders,” Soufan said. “But we cannot deny there are a lot of issues that need to be discussed.”
When Pompeo was facing confirmation as CIA director last year, he told senators he would refuse a presidential order to restart what the CIA called its “enhanced interrogation” program.
“The American people now deserve the same assurances from Gina Haspel,” said Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee and a critic of the CIA program. McCain, a former Navy pilot, was repeatedly tortured during his 5½ years as a prisoner of war in North Vietnam.
During the 2016 campaign, Trump voiced support for waterboarding and other techniques that were discontinued and criticized after they came to light.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., who led the Senate investigation into the CIA abuses, said “it’s no secret I’ve had concerns in the past” about Haspel’s connection to the program.
But Feinstein added, “to the best of my knowledge she has been a good deputy director and I look forward to the opportunity to speak with her again.”