Haspel rejects torture; clears path to lead CIA
Two key Democratic senators signal support
WASHINGTON — Gina Haspel, President Donald Trump’s nominee to lead the CIA, appeared Tuesday to have secured the votes to be confirmed after she declared that the agency should not have undertaken its interrogation program in which al-Qaida detainees were tortured after the Sept. 11 attacks.
She had refused to condemn the program at her confirmation hearing last week.
“With the benefit of hindsight and my experience as a senior agency leader, the enhanced interrogation program is not one the CIA should have undertaken,” she wrote in a letter to the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia. “The United States must be an example to the rest of the world, and I support that.”
After receiving the letter, Warner announced Tuesday afternoon that he would support her confirmation.
Warner called his decision “difficult” and said there were “valid questions” about her record.
Soon after, two other Democrats, Sens. Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota and Bill Nelson of Florida, said they, too, would vote for Haspel.
Haspel’s apparently clear path to confirmation ends a cycle of debate about the agency’s use of torture after the Sept. 11 attacks and about the years of investigations and recriminations over human rights and the rule of law that followed — and that erupted anew when Trump tapped her for consideratin as the next director of the CIA. She would be the first woman to lead the agency. Haspel also faced questions about her role in the CIA’s destruction, in 2005, of 92 videotapes of detainee interrogation sessions.
Haspel said one of the “hard lessons since 9/11” was the costs of the agency’s use of torture, which she called “enhanced interrogation.”
“While I won’t condemn those that made these hard calls, and I have noted the valuable intelligence collected, the program ultimately did damage our standing in the world,” she wrote.
While two Republicans, Sens. John McCain of Arizona and Rand Paul of Kentucky, have expressed opposition to her confirmation, two other Democrats, Sens. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Joe Donnelly of Indiana, have also said they will vote for her.
The Intelligence Committee is scheduled to vote on her confirmation Wednesday. The full Senate could vote by the end of the week.