Let’s just cut to the chase. Nobody who has endorsed torture, much less supervised it, or approved the destruction of videotapes of captives being tortured should lead the Central Intelligence Agency. No matter how exceptional their skills, no matter how many times they have promised not to do what was previously done, no matter that a glass ceiling would be broken by putting a woman (or a Latino or an LGBTQ person) at the head of the nation’s best-known intelligence operation, a torturer should never again lead the CIA.
And anyone who has been in a position to stop torture but let it continue is a torturer. Gina Haspel is a torturer. And when she testifies at her nomination hearing to the Senate Intelligence Committee on Wednesday, that’s what really matters.
We don’t know the details of what she did during her time supervising interrogations at Detention Site Green on a military base in Thailand where the agency carried out torture in the form of waterboarding on a number of prisoners. That’s because the CIA and the White House under President Obama and his successor have refused to declassify the 6,000-page torture report.
But an investigation by Tim Golden, Stephen Engelberg, and Daniel DeFraia published at the Pulitzer Prize-winning ProPublica gives us enough background to know that at least one prisoner was tortured on Haspel’s watch in the post-9/11 effort to bring down Al Qaeda.
It’s a long article generated by review of thousands of documents and numerous interviews. Here’s a taste:
...a trove of partially declassified CIA documents, released earlier this year in response to a Freedom of Information Act request and provided to ProPublica, offers a glimpse at one coercive interrogation [Haspel] is known to have supervised.
Those records describe how Nashiri was slammed repeatedly against a wall, locked up in a tiny “confinement box” and told (inaccurately) that the black-clad security officers guarding him were Navy sailors who would pummel him if he did not divulge his secrets. One interrogator told Nashiri he needed to be “tenderized” like a piece of meat.
As Haspel prepares for confirmation hearings before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, the question is not whether her past will haunt her, but whether she can persuasively argue that her experience with harsh interrogations has convinced her not to allow their use again.
Call me unpersuaded. The senior senator from Oregon has his doubts, too. He told the ProPublica team:
“Nominees will say practically anything to get confirmed,” Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon, a Democratic member of the intelligence committee, said in an interview. “I believe the American people have a right to know who this nominee is. I believe there is a significant amount of information about the key period, from 2002 to 2007, which can be declassified without compromising our country’s security.”
And Wyden isn’t the lone skeptic on the panel.
"It’s completely unacceptable for the CIA to declassify only material that’s favorable to Gina Haspel, while at the same time stonewalling our efforts to declassify all documents related to her involvement in the torture program," said Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif. "Senators and the public need to know more about her record."
Despite Donald Trump’s campaign promise to do “a hell of a lot worse than waterboarding,” the United States should state, clearly, unequivocably, unqualifiedly, no hems, no haws, no buts, no howevers, that it will never again engage in torture as it did at secret sites after the 2001 terrorist attacks, and as it did or trained others to do for decades in Central America, Southeast Asia, and elsewhere.
Former CIA chief and NSA Director Michael Hayden said in a podcast last week that “mistakes were made” in what the agency has continued to label its “enhanced interrogation” program. This use of the passive voice has long been a staple of those who don’t wish to take responsibility for their actions.
These “mistakes” didn’t just happen. “Mistakes” are unintentional. These were not. High-level officials and top operatives in the field ordered actions that harmed people, both those who may have engaged in terror and those who were innocent of allegations against them.
By most accounts, Gina Haspel is highly respected and much admired by those who have worked with and for her. But her skills and her work ethic are not at issue. Confirming a torturer nominated by a pr*sident who has strongly indicated he thinks torture is okay sends the world a message that America should not be sending.