Gina Haspel

Senate Confirms Haspel as CIA’s First Woman Director

In the end, the vote to confirm Gina Haspel as the next Director of CIA stayed pretty much divided along party lines with Republicans favoring her nomination and Democrats voting against it. It times it seemed that her nomination was going to fail due to numerous questions over her running an “enhanced interrogation” site in Thailand.

Haspel was confirmed by a 54-45 vote with two Republicans ( Sens. Rand Paul of Kentucky, Jeff Flake of Arizona), voting against her (John McCain was absent) and six Democrats voting for her, including Mark Warner (D-Virginia) the ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee.

“Gina Haspel is among one of the most qualified people to be nominated to be director of the CIA,” Warner said. “I feel safer knowing the CIA has Miss Haspel at the helm. … I believe Gina Haspel should be confirmed. I look forward to supporting her.”

Haspel has had a 33-year career, most of it as a covert agent and has been a Chief of Station in four different cities in the world. She was also named by Director John Brennan as the acting Director of the National Clandestine Service, which carries out covert operations around the world. Mike Pompeo made her the Deputy Director and since he became the Secretary of State, Haspel has been the Acting Director of CIA.

She worked her way up through the ranks and is widely respected by the rank and file of the agency as a tough, sensible career covert agent who is minus the egos most associate with Washington politics.

Haspel was also endorsed by former Directors of Central Intelligence from both the Republican and Democratic sides of the aisle as the ablest candidate to lead the agency for the foreseeable future.

However, she was dogged by allegations of torture at the CIA’s black site in Thailand where terrorist suspects were interrogated. The site set up in 2002 just after 9/11 was trying to glean as much information out of terrorists to prevent further attacks on U.S. soil.

Although ruled legal at the time by the Justice Department, many of the critics of her and the Agency claim that the site was conducting torture and during her confirmation, her critics were actively trying to derail her nomination based on decisions made that were far above her pay grade at the time.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., as usual, was particularly shrill in her criticism of anything put forward by the President

“No matter how you dress it up, torture is torture,” Warren said. “It’s inhumane, ineffective, and un-American. Gina Haspel advocated for torture.”

Haspel was also criticized for destroying the tapes of the interrogations in 2005, something she said was to protect the identity of CIA personnel as many were still in covert assignments.

Haspel is not only the first woman to head CIA but is the first career employee to head the agency since William Colby retired in 1976. Colby was an OSS operative in World War II and joined CIA at its outset, like Haspel, working his way up the ranks to head the agency.

Haspel is uniquely qualified to do the job and will have several difficult tasks to tackle immediately.

The growing tension between the US and China, where the latter is trying to increase its global footprint for the first time in its history by branching out with overseas bases, particularly pushing against the U.S.

The reignition of the Cold War with Russia is a sticky point with both the United States and our allies right now. Supposed Russian meddling in the 2016 Presidential election and the midterms right around the corner will be issues that the agency will have to deal with.

The Russians are already under heavy scrutiny for the nerve agent poisoning of Sergei Skripal in Salisbury, the UK combined with the continued use of chemical agents by their ally in Assad is an issue that is not going away.

With the civil war in Syria all but over and ISIS on the run, the administration has to decide what the next course of action is there. The U.S.-led coalition is in the middle of a bunch of bad actors that the agency will be forced to try to sift through. With the Russians and Syrians on one side, the Iranians and their forces on another. Turkey has entered the fray and considers the SDF, the U.S. trained Syrian Democratic Forces a terrorist organization.

Iran is another matter entirely. The Russians with their air defenses in Syria have yet to lift a finger to help the Iranians who have taken a beating from Israeli airstrikes. The Iranians are looking to expand their influence not only across the Middle East but in South America as well as their Hezbollah proxies are expanding there.

And of course, the United States is having one-on-one nuclear disarmament discussions with Kim Il-Jong of North Korea. The first time a standing U.S. president will meet with a Korean leader from the north since the Korean War started.

So there isn’t much on Haspel’s plate right off the bat. But if there is anyone who can handle all of that and more, it is her. CIA is in good hands.

Photo: Wikipedia

Gina Haspel Should be the Next Director of the CIA

The hearings that are on-going on Capitol Hill are being far more contentious than they should have ever been for President Trump’s nominee to become the next Director of the Central Intelligence Agency. Gina Haspel has been a dedicated public servant and has had a long distinguished career in the Agency working her way up the ladder to the Deputy Director position, she now holds and is currently the Acting Director since Mike Pompeo became the Secretary of State. Haspel is a perfect choice to lead the Agency into the next several years.

If she is confirmed, and it isn’t a very sure thing she will be, she’ll be the first woman director for the agency in their 70 plus year history. She is already the first woman to hold the Deputy Director’s position. And that is long overdue. But being a qualified woman is just a small part of the reason she should be confirmed. As a career intelligence professional, she’s the most qualified person period.

She began her agency career in 1985 in Africa and worked her way up thru the ranks and has been a Station Chief in four different postings. She was also named by Director John Brennan as the acting Director of the National Clandestine Service, which carries out covert operations around the world.

Many women have been in the Clandestine Service since OSS operatives in World War II including Julia Child and the famous “Limping Lady” Virginia Hall, the only civilian to be awarded the Distinguished Service Cross as a Jedburgh in occupied France. Although women have and continue to serve in sensitive positions in the agency, none have risen as far as Haspel.

What is holding Haspel back is her assignment as the Black Ops chief at a base in Thailand where al Qaeda terrorists were sent for “enhanced interrogation” which included waterboarding and sleep deprivation. Many critics of the program called it torture. Whatever it was, at the time it was legal.

America wasn’t worried about the rights of terrorists after 9/11 and the Bush administration cleared it thru the Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) which operated far above Haspel’s pay grade at the time. Haspel herself told the Senate that she doesn’t support and will not condone the use of torture under her watch.

As former CIA operative Jack Devine wrote in an opinion piece on NBC News, he considers Haspel as the best person for the job despite the “torture” issue.

“When evaluating Haspel’s record on this issue, as Congress surely will do during its confirmation hearings, we must keep in mind both the national mindset at that time the torture occurred and the reality of Haspel’s role in it. This is not to minimize the program, but rather to contextualize it.”
“In the aftermath of 9/11, the American people were looking for a forceful and robust response against Osama Bin Laden and his terrorist cohorts. There were very few voices of restraint, including in most senior leadership positions across President George W. Bush’s administration.”

In the days after 9/11 no one in America was worried about the rights of terrorists, just to stop the next attacks.

“Three former CIA directors — George Tenet, Porter Goss and Michael Hayden — have all insisted that torture did indeed save American lives, led to the capture and demise of the Al Qaeda organization and disrupted terrorist plots. They also insist that Bush approved the program, his attorney general deemed it legal and the Congressional leadership did not raise objections.”

Under the Obama administration, they laid that torture business to rest. An investigation found no wrongdoing on the part of the agency employees and decided that no further action was called for. They then spelled out in no uncertain terms that that kind of operation would not be used again.

And yet now, they (Congress) are trying to derail Haspel from attaining a rank she is eminently qualified to hold. They should listen to the intelligence professionals from both the left and the right who support her nomination. Those include former Obama CIA director Leon Panetta, Michael Hayden, former head of both the CIA and the National Security Agency under George W. Bush, James Clapper, former director of national intelligence in the Obama administration. Haspel has the backing of John Brennan, CIA director under Obama. Brennan it should be noted is a vocal critic of President Trump.

Jeremy Bash, who was the CIA’s Chief of Staff in the Obama Administration called Haspel the “nominee that both parties should love.”

He wrote that “Quite simply, she is among the most qualified people ever nominated to lead the CIA.”
“Democrats and progressive organizations should be encouraged that a nonpartisan, professional woman has been nominated to be CIA director,” he wrote. “Democratic and Republican Senators should welcome Haspel’s clear-eyed approach to Russia, her expertise in counterterrorism, her record of nonpolitical service and the fact that she is no crony of the president or anyone at the White House.”

This stonewalling by the Democrats is nothing more than a way to trump Trump. They are smarting over the Iran nuclear deal and the President’s acerbic ways, especially on social media. The president gets a lot of criticism for his supposed poor treatment of women and minorities and when he nominates a superbly qualified non-partisan woman to take the job, the same progressives that decry Trump then bend over backward to derail the nominee.

We’re entering a period of intense challenges in the intelligence field. The tensions with Russia are the worst since the Cold War. China has modernized and expanded its military influence across the globe and they too are becoming more and more belligerent towards the United States. Iran is trying to increase their influence throughout the Middle East thru their proxies and increasingly so in Latin America. We have long wars that show no sign of ending in Afghanistan and Iraq. Syria is powder keg with factions from all sides in close proximity to each other.

The Director of Central Intelligence needs to be a season professional, not just another political appointee. If confirmed she’ll not only be the first woman as head of Central Intelligence but the first Director since Richard Helms in 1966 to be a career employee who rose up through the ranks to take charge. It is long overdue.

Photo: Wikipedia of Central Intelligence Director nominee Gina Haspel at the swearing-in ceremony of Mike Pompeo as the next Secretary of State.

What Happened at the CIA Black Site in Thailand?

As soon as President Trump nominated Gina Haspel to become CIA director, the specter of the United States’ use of torture, would again be raised. The CIA used what it called at the time, “enhanced interrogation techniques” but stopped about a decade ago.

While many in Congress will be looking to ask pointed questions of Haspel about the practice, Trump, while a candidate for President stated that “torture works” and that he wanted to bring back outlawed techniques like waterboarding and “much worse.”

In 2002, Haspel was in charge of a secret “black site” prison in Thailand where detainees were subject to abusive interrogation techniques. In a 6,700-page classified report on the CIA’s interrogation programs, the Senate Intelligence Committee documented among other things what agency contractors and personnel did at the site to Abu Zubaydah—a Saudi-born Palestinian citizen accused of a “key role” in al-Qaeda, including possible advance knowledge of major attacks—and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri—a Saudi national suspected of involvement in al-Qaeda’s bombing of the American destroyer USS Cole in 2000. (Both are now imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay, where they are considered “high value” detainees.)
The use of the CIA’s enhanced interrogation techniques—including walling, attention grasps, slapping, facial hold, stress positions, cramped confinement, white noise and sleep deprivation—continued “in varying combinations, 24 hours a day, for 17 straight days,” through August 20, 2002. When Abu Zubaydah was left alone during this period, he was placed in a stress position, left on the waterboard with a cloth over his face, or locked in one of two confinement boxes. According to the cables, Abu Zubaydah was also subjected to the waterboard “2-4 times a day … with multiple iterations of the watering cycle during each application.”
The “aggressive phase of interrogation” continued until August 23, 2002. Over the course of the entire 20-day “aggressive phase of interrogation,” Abu Zubaydah spent a total of 266 hours (11 days, 2 hours) in the large (coffin size) confinement box and 29 hours in a small confinement box, which had a width of 21 inches, at depth of 2.5 feet, and a height of 2.5 feet. The CIA interrogators told Abu Zubaydah that the only way he would leave the facility was in the coffin-shaped confinement box.
According to the daily cables from DETENTION SITE GREEN, Abu Zubaydah frequently “cried,” “begged,” “pleaded,” and “whimpered,” but continued to deny that he had any additional information on current threats to, or operatives in, the United States.
By August 9, 2002, the sixth day of the interrogation period, the interrogation team informed CIA Headquarters that they had come to the “collective preliminary assessment” that it was unlikely Abu Zubaydah “had actionable new information about current threats to the United States.” On August 10, 2002, the interrogation team stated that it was “highly unlikely” that Abu Zubaydah possessed the information they were seeking. …
DETENTION SITE GREEN personnel also informed CIA Headquarters that it was their assessment that the application of the CIA’s enhanced interrogation techniques was “approach[ing] the legal limit.” The chief of CTC [the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center], Jose Rodriguez, responded:
Strongly urge that any speculative language as to the legality of given activities or, more precisely, judgment calls as to their legality vis-a-vis operational guidelines for this activity agreed upon and vetted at the most senior levels of the agency, be refrained from in written traffic (email or cable traffic). Such language is not helpful.

CIA personnel at the site were disturbed at the treatment of Abu Zubaydah and their reactions were worthy of note in cable traffic to Washington. Several members of the team were reduced to tears at the effect of the continued waterboarding when they all felt that he didn’t have any further useful information.

The cable also stated that several CIA employees would probably ask to be reassigned from this posting. And that many questioned the legality and futility of continuing this.

It won’t ease on the questions, but as the head of the site, Haspel can point to all of the cable traffic originating the site and make the argument that she was in favor of stopping the enhanced interrogations. It is going to make for an interesting confirmation hearing.

To read the entire article from Government Executive, click here:

Photo courtesy Wikipedia