Gina Haspel, President Trump’s pick to lead the CIA, is good at her job because she cultivates alliances and counters adversaries.
That’s the story of Haspel’s 33-year career as a a CIA operations officer, which has seen her serve as the agency’s chief of station (the U.S. intelligence community’s top officer in embassies abroad) on four separate occasions. This includes two stints as the CIA’s station chief in London; once from 2008-2011 and again from 2014-2017.
The truest measure of Haspel’s work in London may be the admiration she earned within the diplomatic and intelligence communities of both the U.S. and the U.K. For example, both of former President Obama’s ambassadors to London during Haspel’s tenure there have endorsed her for the CIA’s top job.
How did Haspel earn this support?
Put simply, she cultivated allies and countered adversaries. As the chief U.S. intelligence representative to Britain and a senior manager of U.S. espionage operations across Europe, Haspel helped counter the Islamic State and al Qaeda activities on European soil and consolidated the U.S. special relationship with Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service, Government Communications Headquarters, and Security Service intelligence agencies. These efforts saved hundreds of European lives in bringing U.S. intelligence capabilities to bear against resourceful enemies.
But spying isn’t just about taking on enemies, it’s also about making allies stronger. To that end, Haspel would have been involved in providing U.S. support for GCHQ’s landmark “Project Golf” program, which strengthened Britain’s cyberespionage capability between 2014 and 2017. She would also have worked on joint U.S.-U.K. efforts to track illicit Russia money flows.
The British government is quietly supporting Haspel’s nomination, and that support was earned the hard way. In 2006, Haspel was the CIA operations chief of staff when the CIA asked Pakistan’s Inter-Service Intelligence group to capture a senior British al Qaeda operations officer, Rashid Rauf, against British intelligence wishes. Rauf’s arrest caused great consternation with British intelligence, who believed the CIA had acted prematurely to force Britain’s hand in disrupting the 2006 trans-Atlantic bomb plot.
Despite this strategic disagreement, Haspel won British favor. This tells you something about her diplomatic skills.
Haspel is popular with foreign partners, according to Frank Archibald, former head of operations at the CIA, because she “expertly understands their nuances” and treats them “honesty,” without sucking up to them. This goes far with the British SIS, who sometimes have chip on their shoulder in dealing with “the cousins” and must consider domestic political complexities in their dealings with the CIA.
Haspel’s second tour in London wasn’t easy either. After all, that tenure required Haspel to manage the fallout over Edward Snowden’s leak of highly-classified National Security Agency programs and operations (which infuriated the British intelligence community). Again, she walked out of London years later with the respect of the Brits.
Haspel’s time in Europe also offers another reason why Haspel is so well regarded at the CIA and beyond: her reputation for robust and creative operational leadership against Russian targets. Haspel’s experience here is extensive; between 1993 and 2000, the acting director worked almost exclusively on Russia-related operations and just 11 years into her career was given a station chief posting somewhere in the Central Eurasia division (which is heavily focused on Russia).
What are the specifics?
It’s hard to know, but in his radio podcast this week, the CIA’s former acting director and former head of its analysis directorate, Mike Morell, and former CIA director, Mike Hayden, agreed that Haspel had done “some of the agency’s best work against the Russians,” as Morell put it.
Archibald subtly echoes this sentiment from the operations side. “Haspel knows them [the Russians] well and I think the Russians will expect her be clear-eyed and pragmatic in dealing with them.” Yet Archibald also notes that Haspel is well aware that intelligence operations are supposed to serve public policy, not vice versa. Haspel won’t get tangled up in the tactical level of espionage, Archibald says, she “is not going to get lost in one transaction.”
That doesn’t mean she’ll be indifferent to the foot soldiers of the agency. One former CIA officer told me that “In working with Gina, I would say one of the things that has always characterized her is her commitment to her colleagues.”
As Haspel heads to her confirmation hearing, she’ll face plenty of fire. Critics charge that she directed torture of suspected terrorists. Also, any Trump nominee will be the enemy of the “resistance.” But if senators listen to the people who worked with Haspel, they’ll hear songs of support.
