President Trump’s nominee for leader of the CIA, Gina Haspel, has officially claimed that she does not believe that the torture of Qaeda detainees, conducted under Bush’s presidency, should have occured. CNN reports she wrote this in a letter to Virginia Senator Mark Warner who is the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee.
This statement from Haspel comes as a bit of a surprise after during her confirmation hearing only a week ago, she would not condemn these actions of torture. According to the New York Times, Haspel said “I’m not going to sit here, with the benefit of hindsight, and judge the very good people who made hard decisions, who were running the agency in very extraordinary circumstances.”
In her letter, she now states “While I won’t condemn those that made these hard calls, and I have noted the valuable intelligence collected, the program ultimately did damage to our officers and our standing in the world. 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.”
Although Haspel seemed to flip-flop there, she has remained consistent in reassuring that there will no longer be any interrogation programs involving those terrible torture techniques that were used before. She continues in the letter, “As I was able to describe in detail during the classified session, in my role as Deputy and now Acting Director, every operation I review must not only meet those high standards, the activity must also be consistent with CIA’s mission, expertise and the law. I do not and would not hesitate to reject a proposal that fails to meet this threshold.”
I believe Gina Haspel is a patriot who loves our country & has devoted her professional life to its service & defense. However, her role in overseeing the use of torture is disturbing & her refusal to acknowledge torture’s immorality is disqualifying. https://t.co/ocDtdqU2Sx
— John McCain (@SenJohnMcCain) May 10, 2018
Currently, Haspel has the support of Democratic West Virginia Senator, Joe Manchin, and Indiana Senator, Joe Donnelly. She does not have the support of Republican Senator of Kentucky, Rand Paul and neither that of Republican Senator of Arizona, John McCain.
Republican Senator John Flake of Arizona has said he’s on the fence due to conversations with Senator McCain who was a prisoner of war in Vietnam. Flake says of McCain, “His voice means more than anybody else on this but my vote is my own and I’ll continue to consider it.”
In a new statement from Senator Warner, Haspel’s letter worked and he will be supporting her.
NEW: Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate Intel Cmte, says he’ll support Gina Haspel for CIA director. pic.twitter.com/HXyLf2IHM7
— Sahil Kapur (@sahilkapur) May 15, 2018