Arizona senator John McCain is asking the president’s pick for CIA director to expand on her involvement in the agency’s enhanced interrogation program, amid adamant objections to her nomination from one other Republican lawmaker.
Gina Haspel, who has been at the agency for three decades and is currently deputy director, is likely to face a high level of scrutiny from members on the Senate Intelligence Committee, of which McCain is an ex-officio member.
“Over the course of your career with the intelligence community, you have served in positions of responsibility that have intersected with the CIA’s program of so-called ‘enhanced interrogation techniques,’” McCain wrote Thursday in a letter to Haspel. “We now know that these techniques not only failed to deliver actionable intelligence, but actually produced false and misleading information. Most importantly, the use of torture compromised our values, stained our national honor, and threatened our historical reputation.”
Haspel is reported to have run a secret CIA “black site” in Thailand, where al-Qaeda suspects were subject to waterboarding. She later reportedly supported the destruction of video tapes documenting the interrogation sessions, as ordered by her then-boss Jose Rodriguez.
McCain requested a detailed account of Haspel’s role in the agency’s detention and interrogation program, including her time at “black sites.” He asked whether she ever imposed, directed, or oversaw the use of enhanced interrogation techniques, including waterboarding, and what her personal views were on their legality, morality, and effectiveness at the time. He requested more detail about whether Haspel destroyed or advocated for the destruction of the tapes that captured the interrogation sessions.
McCain also asked whether Haspel would support declassifying in full a 2014 Senate intelligence committee report on the CIA’s detention and interrogation program. And he asked if she would commit to upholding current U.S. interrogation and detention laws. “As you know, the Congress has taken legislative action to mandate standards for the treatment of detainees in U.S. custody and outlaw the use of torture,” he wrote.
Kentucky senator Rand Paul has said he will do “whatever it takes” to block Haspel, as well as Trump’s pick for secretary of state, current CIA director Mike Pompeo. He stuck by that opposition despite citing a report earlier in March that misattributed a quote to Haspel and incorrectly said she oversaw the waterboarding of al-Qaeda suspect Abu Zubaydah.
I’ll do whatever it takes, including filibuster, to stop the nomination of Gina Haspel. I urge @SenFeinstein to stand against her nomination too!
— Senator Rand Paul (@RandPaul) March 18, 2018
With two Republicans potentially opposed to the nomination (if McCain in fact opposes and is back in D.C. for the vote), the White House will likely need support from some Democrats. Republicans have a slim 51-49 advantage in the Senate.
California senator Dianne Feinstein, who led the charge on the Senate Intelligence Committee’s 2014 report cited by McCain in his letter to Haspel, initially appeared open to the nomination. She told reporters that she and Haspel had had dinner together, and described her as a “good deputy director.”
But Feinstein quickly changed her tune. After similar calls from the American Civil Liberties Union, she urged the CIA to release documents laying out Haspel’s involvement in the agency’s detention and interrogation program.
“The American people deserve to know the actual role the person nominated to be the director of the CIA played in what I consider to be one of the darkest chapters in American history,” Feinstein said.
