President Trump’s choice to lead the CIA has a record on so-called enhanced interrogations that would appear to directly be in conflict with the ethos of Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, who famously counseled Trump that “beer and cigarettes” work better than waterboarding.
Gina Haspel is a veteran spook who has been with the agency since 1985, but critics accuse her of overseeing the torture of two 9/11 terrorism suspects and covering up the extent of the brutal interrogations at a secret prison in Thailand by ordering the destruction of videotapes.
In a profile last year, the New York Times described Haspel as playing a direct role in the CIA’s “extraordinary rendition program,” under which suspects were spirited away to secret facilities overseas.
The Times said Haspel, who was undercover at the time, ran the black site in Thailand where Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri were allegedly tortured.
Abu Zubaydah was said to have been waterboarded 83 times in one month
“The sessions were videotaped and the recordings stored in a safe at the CIA station in Thailand until 2005, when they were ordered destroyed,” the Times reported. “By then, Ms. Haspel was serving at CIA headquarters, and it was her name that was on the cable carrying the destruction orders.”
CIA Director Mike Pompeo is on record saying waterboarding is not torture and praising the CIA interrogators who used the method as “patriots.”
In a November 2016 interview with the New York Times a few weeks after his election, Trump recounted his first conversation with Mattis, who expressed his disdain for torture.
“I met with him at length and I asked him that question. I said, what do you think of waterboarding? He said — I was surprised — he said, ‘I’ve never found it to be useful,’ ” Trump told the Times. “He said, ‘I’ve always found, give me a pack of cigarettes and a couple of beers and I do better with that than I do with torture.’ And I was very impressed by that answer.”
Haspel, who must be confirmed by the Senate, may benefit from the fact that Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., a fierce opponent of torture having been tortured himself as a prisoner of war, is not yet back in Washington as he battles brain cancer.
In a statement issued from his home in Arizona, McCain noted that during Pompeo’s confirmation hearing he repeatedly committed to comply with the anti-torture law.
“The American people now deserve the same assurances from Gina Haspel, whose career with the agency has intersected with the program of so-called ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’ on a number of occasions,” McCain said.
“The torture of detainees in U.S. custody during the last decade was one of the darkest chapters in American history. Ms. Haspel needs to explain the nature and extent of her involvement in the CIA’s interrogation program.”
McCain expressed confidence that Senate “will do its job” in examining Haspel’s record “as well as her beliefs about torture and her approach to current law.”
McCain and Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., co-authored an amendment to the fiscal 2016 defense authorization bill that establishes the Army Field Manual as the standard for interrogating detainees and allows the International Red Cross access to terrorism suspects in U.S. custody.
