Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., is asking Gina Haspel, President Trump’s nominee to lead the CIA, to explain her involvement in the spy agency’s enhanced interrogation program.
Trump announced his plan to nominate Haspel, the CIA’s current deputy director, this month to replace CIA Director Mike Pompeo, who the president nominated to become secretary of state. But Haspel has come under scrutiny from senators for her involvement in the CIA’s enhanced interrogation program after the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks.
“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 in a letter to Haspel on Friday. “These techniques included the practice of waterboarding, forced nudity and humiliation, facial and abdominal slapping, dietary manipulation, stress positions, cramped confinement, striking, and more than 48 hours of sleep deprivation.”
“We now know that these techniques not only failed to deliver actionable intelligence, but actually produced false and misleading information,” he said. “Most importantly, the use of torture compromised our values, stained our national honor, and threatened our historical reputation.”
McCain, who was tortured as a prisoner of war in Vietnam, asked Haspel for a “detailed account” of her role in the CIA’s interrogation program between 2001 and 2009, which includes her time at so-called “black sites” run by the CIA.
Haspel oversaw a CIA black site prison where detainees were subject to interrogation.
The Arizona senator also asked Haspel if she ever imposed, directed, or oversaw the use of enhanced interrogation techniques, including waterboarding, and for her personal views “of the legality, morality, and effectiveness” of these interrogation techniques during the eight-year span.
McCain wants Haspel to explain if she was asked to destroy evidence of torture or the use of enhanced interrogation techniques and whether she did so.
If confirmed, Haspel will become the first woman to lead the CIA.
Several senators, though, are skeptical of her nomination. Neither McCain nor Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., who authored the 2014 report from the Senate Intelligence Committee on the CIA’s detention and interrogation program, have said whether they will support Haspel’s nominations.
Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., announced he opposes it.
