Debating the merits of “enhanced interrogation techniques,” the Senate Intelligence Committee interviewed 61-year-old career CIA operative Gina Haspel. If confirmed, Haspel would be the first woman to run the 70-year-old spy agency, largely blamed for failing to intercept Osama bin Laden’s Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, killing 2996, injuring 6,000. Apart from missing Bin Laden’s Sept. 11 massacre, the CIA didn’t do too well estimating two years later Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction, prompting former President George W. Bush to attack Iraq March 20, 2003. Haspel joined the CIA in 1986, working her way up the ranks to her current position of CIA’s Deputy Director. No one at the CIA has more experience than Haspel to run the department, despite nagging questions about her work running a Black Site in Thailand after Sept. 11.
Preparing to vote on her nomination, Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Az.), no fan of President Donald Trump, wants to know what role, if any, Haspel played in disposing of videotapes of enhanced interrogations of Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Rahim al Sashiri at a Black Site she ran in Thailand. Haspel supervised the Thai Black Site where videotapes were made and eventually destroyed when the controversy over enhanced interrogation techniques reached a fever’s pitch in 2005. Developed by Air Force psychologists John “Bruce” Jensen and James Elmer Mitchell, enhanced interrogation techniques were reverse engineered from the Air Force’s SERE [Survival, evasion, resistance and escape], training manual, helping prisoners of war resist enemy brainwashing. Jensen and Mitchell were paid $81 million to devise ways to crack detainees plucked off the Afghan battlefield after Sept. 11.
Responding to the “morality” of enhanced interrogation techniques, including waterboarding, stimulus deprivation, starvation, sexual or religious humiliation, confinement in small spaces, loud music, extreme heat and cold, etc., Haspel told senators she was operated under the law at the time. When pressed about the morality of enhanced interrogation techniques or its relationship to torture, Haspel frustrated Democrat senators, refusing to pass judgment, explaining the prerogative at the time of preventing another Sept. 11 attack. Whatever the legality under the Bush-43 Justice Department, there was no legality to destroying videotapes of CIA enhanced interrogation techniques. Sen. Diane Feinstein (D-Calif.) asked Haspel whether she agreed with destroying the tapes. Flake went further wanting to know what role Haspel played in disposing the tapes.
Asking Haspel under oath about her role in the missing tapes, Feinstein wanted answers. “Senator, I absolutely was an advocate if we could within and conforming to U.S. law, and if we could get policy concurrent to eliminate the security risk posed to our officers be those tapes,” Haspel told Feinstein. Haspel essentially admitted she supported the idea of disposing the tapes. Yet when the CIA was engaged in the controversial practices, Haspel approved videotaping for posterity Jensen and Mitchell’s brainchild, repackaging torture euphemistically as enhanced interrogations. If Haspel were really concerned about her CIA personnel, she never would have approved taping controversial practices, whether or not approved by former Atty. Gen. Alberto Gonzales, Bush-43 or Vice President Dick Cheney. Cheney said today he continues to back the CIA’s enhanced interrogation techniques.
Sen. John McCain (R-Az.), who suffered from torture at the Hanoi Hilton for five years during the Vietnam War, now suffering from terminal brain cancer, emphatically rejects enhanced interrogation techniques as a form of torture. While refusing to admit the immorality of CIA’s practices, Haspel admitted at her confirmation hearing that the videos were so graphic that they would endanger CIA officers. What Haspel really meant by “graphic,” was the enhanced interrogation techniques were so horrific, so unsightly, so unacceptable, they would embarrass the CIA and U.S. government. If Haspel were really worried about CIA officers, she would have never taped the sessions. Flake asked that the CIA’s Durham Report, documenting the destruction of tapes, would be declassified to fully evaluate Haspel’s role. Flake wants to see the declassified report before casting his vote for Haspel
Whatever one thinks of enhanced interrogation techniques, Haspel’s confirmation hinges on her role in destroying CIA evidence. Already admitting she favored destroying the tapes probably tells the whole story that she signed off or at least supported the disposal. Haspel has vast CIA experience for running the CIA. No senator has doubts about that. But if there’s any question that she approved or endorsed destroying CIA evidence of CIA enhanced interrogation techniques, Haspel must be rejected. No senate confirmation committee can approve someone who knowingly backed the destruction of evidence for whatever reason. Ailing Sen. John McCain already expressed his view that Haspel is not fit to run the department. Liberal groups, like the ACLU, oppose Haspel’s nomination because she admitted to using enhanced interrogation techniques while running her Black Site in Thailand.
