Gina Haspel (shown), whom President Trump has nominated to become the CIA director, offered to withdraw her nomination to the post on May 4 after some White House officials expressed concern that her role in the agency’s “enhanced interrogation” of terrorist suspects might prove to be too controversial to pass muster in the Senate.
The Washington Post reported that senior White House aides were so worried by Haspel’s offer to withdraw herself from consideration that they rushed to Langley, Virginia, to meet with the acting CIA director at her office late on May 4. Discussions continued for several hours, officials said, and the White House was not entirely sure she would stick with her nomination until the following afternoon, according to the officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
After being reassured by the White House that she had the president’s full support, Haspel decided to remain the nominee.
Trump defended Haspel in an early morning tweet on May 7, writing:
My highly respected nominee for CIA Director, Gina Haspel, has come under fire because she was too tough on Terrorists. Think of that, in these very dangerous times, we have the most qualified person, a woman, who Democrats want OUT because she is too tough on terror. Win Gina!
The Senate confirmation hearings to consider Haspel’s appointment as CIA director will begin on May 9. While Trump asserted that Democrats are opposed to Haspel to head the CIA “because she is too tough on terror,” constitutionalists such as former Representative Ron Paul, as well as a writer for The New American whose March 15 article was entitled, “Trump’s CIA Pick Should be Charged as a War Criminal for Practicing Torture,” are opposed to Haspel not because she is tough on terror, but because she advocates methods that are inhumane and evade constitutional protections by being practiced at CIA “black hole” sites outside of U.S. jurisdiction.
The New American reported that in 2002 Haspel was placed in charge of what is believed to be the CIA’s first overseas detention site. That site, in Thailand, was known as a place where waterboarding was a common occurrence.
Observing that Haspel “helped develop an interrogation regimen that our own government admitted was torture” and “that she oversaw an infamous ‘black site’ where torture took place,” Paul wrote: “In a society that actually valued the rule of law, Haspel may be facing time in a much different kind of federal facility than CIA headquarters.”
Photo: AP Images
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