Critics assail CIA nominee’s torture answers
Senators say her ambiguity about agency’s powers needs scrutiny
WASHINGTON — A day after Gina Haspel, President Donald Trump’s nominee to lead the CIA, refused during her confirmation hearing Wednesday to condemn the agency’s torture of al-Qaida suspects, several lawmakers and human rights advocates said aspects of her testimony merited greater scrutiny.
While Haspel, the agency’s acting director, vowed never to start another detention and interrogation program, her testimony was laced with ambiguities about the program and her understanding of limits on the CIA’s powers. For example, she promised to follow “the law” but insisted the agency’s interrogations were legal at the time.
Feinstein, McCain: No
Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif. and the author of the Senate’s comprehensive review of CIA interrogation practices, formally announced Thursday that she would oppose Haspel, arguing that confirming someone so closely tied to the program would in effect be telling the world that the United States endorses torture.
“This nomination is bigger than one person,” Feinstein, who released the 2014 torture report as thenchairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, wrote in a statement. “For the Senate to confirm someone so involved with the program to the highest position at the CIA would in effect tell the world that we approve of what happened, and I absolutely do not.”
Feinstein’s declaration comes on the heels of a similar message from Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., who stated Wednesday night that while Haspel’s 33-year record of service at the CIA is impressive, her refusal to denounce her past involvement with the interrogation program as immoral disqualifies her as a potential director.
“Ms. Haspel’s role in overseeing the use of torture by Americans is disturbing. Her refusal to acknowledge torture’s immorality is disqualifying,” wrote McCain, who himself endured years of torture as a prisoner of war in Vietnam. “I believe the Senate should exercise its duty of advice and consent and reject this nomination.”
Haspel needs at least one Democrat to back her nomination in the Senate of 51 Republicans and 49 Democrats, as McCain and Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., are opposed to her nomination. If McCain’s words are able to sway more Republicans away from Haspel, she will need to persuade more Democrats to support her candidacy to secure confirmation.
Ran secret prison
Against that backdrop, her critics pointed with suspicion to several of her comments during her testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee.
At one point, for example, she told Feinstein that “I was not even read into the interrogation program until it had been up and running for a year.”
Being “read in” means being briefed about classified information. The agency started its torture program in the summer of 2002, months after the capture of Abu Zubaydah, the first detainee the agency took into custody and for whom it initially developed its list of enhanced interrogation techniques, like waterboarding.
By late 2002, Haspel was running a secret CIA prison in Thailand where another detainee in her custody, Abd al Rahim al-Nashiri, was subjected to waterboarding, prolonged sleep deprivation and other such tactics.
Asked about the apparent discrepancy, Ryan Trapani, an agency spokesman, said in a statement, “Acting Director Haspel has said that she was briefed on some of CIA’s more sensitive counterterrorism authorities and activities in October 2002.”