The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence plans to vote secretly and favorably Wednesday to send to the full Senate the nomination of torturer Gina Haspel to be chief of the Central Intelligence Agency. A secret vote for someone much of whose record on the job remains secret. The only secret about the vote is not whether any Democrats will go along, but how many.
Not only has a lockstep Republican majority on the committee been a slam dunk from the get-go—despite Sen. Susan Collins’ typical mewling pretense that she’s a moderate maverick—but Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin III’s stance in Haspel’s favor after last week’s hearings was also widely predicted weeks ago.
Haspel obviously doesn’t need SSCI Vice Chairman Mark Warner’s vote to gain the Senate panel’s imprimatur. But since her hearing Haspel has nevertheless been chatting up Democrats like him on and off the committee to persuade them to approve her. She asserts that whatever she did when she briefly ran a secret torture site in Thailand in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, she won’t ever do that again. Pinky swear.
In a letter to Warner on Monday, Haspel was as disingenuous in seeking his support as she was in the hearing. She writes that she and the CIA have learned “the hard lessons” of 9/11 over the past 17 years, noting that she won’t condemn the “hard calls” that produced “valuable evidence” but damaged the CIA’s reputation. The agency, she writes, should never have run the “enhanced interrogation” program. She also states:
As Director, I would refuse to undertake any proposed activity that is contrary to my moral and ethical values.
Just two problems. First, the torture didn’t produce valuable evidence. And second, we know from her hemming and hawing at the hearings in response to Sen. Kamala Harris’s persistent questioning that, even in hindsight, Haspel is incapable of labeling torture for what it is, and cannot bring herself to call it immoral. That’s all we need to know about the impact of her “moral and ethical values” on the agency, which has a long history of torture preceding 9/11.
But Warner has bought it and said Tuesday he will support Haspel.
Haspel needed the Democratic votes because she won’t have the ailing Sen. John McCain in her corner. And she can’t count on Sen. Rand Paul’s vote either. He has said he opposes her confirmation, although he’s proven to be the king of fickleness when it comes to other votes, like the switcheroo he pulled on Mike Pompeo’s confirmation vote for secretary of State.
How successful Haspell will be in her lobbying effort will determine whether just a couple or several Democrats choose to give the media an excuse to call confirmation of her nomination a bipartisan affair. Besides Manchin, Democrat Sen. Joe Donnelly of Indiana has already announced he will vote for her. Other Democrats who have yet to say how they will vote and who are running to retain their seats this year are Claire McCaskill of Missouri and Bill Nelson of Florida. Sen Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota said Tuesday that she will vote to confirm.
Much has been made of the need for red-state Democrats to improve their chances of re-election with votes like one favoring Haspel. But instead of trying to find ways to justify a “yes” vote, they ought instead to be publicly supporting a “no” vote by telling their more conservative constituents that they are merely following the lead of McCain.