An attorney for the only terrorism suspect known to have been waterboarded during Gina Haspel’s time leading a secret CIA facility in Thailand is blasting her “failure to stand up for what’s right,” just ahead of her confirmation hearing to be CIA director.
Navy Lt. Alaric Piette, a military defense attorney representing Guantanamo Bay inmate Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, emailed the statement to the Washington Examiner ahead of Haspel’s Wednesday confirmation hearing, where she is likely to be grilled on her post-9/11 actions.
“I was an enlisted sailor during 9/11 and I understand the impulses that led people to want to torture,” he said. “However, the purpose of leadership is to be able to stand up for what’s right in tough times. Ms. Haspel did not do that. Failure to stand up for what’s right is not toughness. In a time when we needed professionalism and leadership, we got torture instead.”
“The consequences of this failure of leadership haunt the military commissions and are what should eventually cause them to unravel,” Piette added.
Haspel recently was exonerated by some media outlets of an alleged role in the waterboarding of al Qaeda suspect Abu Zubaydah, but those reports noted she was chief of base at the Thailand facility in late 2002 when Nashiri was waterboarded at least three times.
Haspel reportedly became chief of base in October 2002, before Nashiri’s arrival in November. After being waterboarded at least three times, he was transferred in December to a different facility when the Thailand base closed, according to a Senate intelligence committee report.
It’s unclear what role, if any, Haspel had in Nashiri’s treatment after he left Thailand. At the subsequent facility, believed to be in Poland, interrogators “placed al-Nashiri in a ‘standing stress position’ with ‘his hands affixed over his head’ for approximately two and a half days” and “placed a pistol near al Nashiri’s head and operated a cordless drill near al-Nashiri’s body.”
Nashiri is a Saudi citizen and alleged mastermind of the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole near Aden, Yemen, which killed 17 U.S. sailors. He was captured in Dubai in 2002. Nashiri reportedly has intellectual disabilities, with one interrogator calling him “the dumbest terrorist I have ever met,” according to the memoir Hard Measures by former CIA National Clandestine Service Director Jose Rodriguez.
In 2005, Haspel drafted an order to delete more than 90 videotapes of waterboarding sessions of Zubaydah and Nashiri, preventing them from falling into the hands of congressional investigators. A recently released disciplinary review found “no fault with the performance of Ms. Haspel” relating to the tape destruction, finding she was acting at the behest of Rodriguez, then her superior.
It’s unclear if Haspel can get 51 votes needed for confirmation, and she reportedly offered to withdraw her nomination Friday after the White House learned new details about her alleged role in harsh interrogation tactics critics call torture. Ultimately, she did not withdraw.
Piette broke his silence on Haspel as the CIA said her nomination would go forward.
