Confirmed: Veteran spy Gina Haspel will become the first female director of the CIA. »

Six Dems join GOP to confirm Haspel as first woman to lead agency

WASHINGTON» Veteran spy Gina Haspel will become the first female director of the CIA on Thursday after six Democrats joined Republicans in a Senate confirmation vote that overrode concerns about her role in the spy agency’s harsh interrogation program after 9/11.

The 54-45 vote split both parties, and the margin was the closest for a CIA nominee in the nearly seven decades that a nod from the Senate has been required. Haspel, who has spent nearly all of her 33-year CIA career in undercover positions, is the first career operations officer to be confirmed since William Colby in 1973.

Haspel, 61, is a native of Kentucky but grew up around the world as the daughter of an Air Force serviceman. She worked in Africa, Europe and classified locations around the globe and was tapped as deputy director of the CIA last year. She worked under former CIA director Mike Pompeo until President Donald Trump moved him to secretary of state.

Haspel was backed by many in the CIA rank-and-file and was robustly supported by senior intelligence officials, including six former CIA directors and three former national intelligence directors, who said she earned the chance to take the helm of the nation’s premier spy agency. National Intelligence Director Dan Coats said Haspel has integrity and both frontline and executive intelligence expertise. “We salute Director Haspel, a trailblazer who today becomes the first woman to lead the CIA,” he said.

Her opponents argued that it wasn’t right to promote someone who supervised a covert detention site in Thailand where terror suspects were waterboarded, an interrogation technique that simulates drowning. They said the U.S. needed to slam closed what was one of the CIA’s darkest chapters that tainted America’s image with allies abroad.

Several senators said Haspel was not forthcoming in answering questions about her role in the torture program or the CIA’s decision to destroy videotaped evidence of the sessions. They also had questions about her rejection of the now-banned techniques.

Haspel has vowed never to restart such a program and says her “strong moral compass” would prevent her from carrying out any presidential order she found objectionable. That was enough to coax some senators into the “yes” column.

But Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., said he still questioned her judgment and lamented that she has never publicly condemned torture as “immoral.”

He wondered aloud what Haspel would do if she’s asked to do something that goes against America’s core values. “Should we trust that she will have the moral compass to stand up and say ‘No?’ ” he asked. “Based on what we’ve seen, I do not.”