Gina Haspel, President Trump's pick to run the CIA, is expected to
field tough questions Wednesday during her confirmation hearing before
the Senate intelligence committee, as many officials in her corner
provide glowing endorsements of the woman who spent decades as a career
undercover spy.
Haspel, 61, is expected to say that if she is confirmed
by the Senate, the spy agency will not restart a detention and harsh
interrogation program like the one used to get terror subjects to talk
after 9/11 -- and generated controversy worldwide.
She will say: “Our strategy starts with strengthening
our core business: collecting intelligence to help policymakers protect
our country and advance American interests around the globe. It includes
raising our investment against the most difficult intelligence gaps,
putting more officers in the foreign field where our adversaries are,
and emphasizing foreign language excellence. And, finally, it involves
investing in our partnerships — both within the U.S. government and
around the globe.”
In other excerpts, Haspel pledges to work closely with
the Senate oversight committee. And, she says there has been an
outpouring of support from young women at the CIA who hope she becomes
the first woman to run the agency.
Many former top intelligence officials also praise her 33-year tenure at the agency in foreign and domestic assignments.
“She has served in some really tough places, high-risk
hardship posts, and has performed some extraordinary operations,” former
CIA official Henry “Hank” Crumpton, who was Haspel’s boss in the
agency’s National Resources Division, told The Washington Post.
As The Hill reported,
36 former CIA chiefs, intelligence community leaders and lawmakers
signed a letter of endorsement to the Senate Intelligence Committee,
calling her “a critical asset for our nation at this time in our
history... when our intelligence community is under significant pressure
at home and abroad.”
The letter reiterated that although “Haspel was often
called upon to make tough choices and to work on matters that some find
deeply controversial... she did so with dedication and commitment to the
cause of freedom, democracy, and the rule of law.”
Meantime, dozens of defenders from both parties have pulled out the stops to support her nomination process, as Fox News previously reported.
The White House released talking points Tuesday night
ahead of the confirmation hearing insisting that “Haspel has served her
nation honorably and acted legally,” and that any objections were
putting political interests ahead of national security and her tenure of
defending Americans.
Quoting her backers from the intelligence community,
the White House called Haspel the best choice to safeguard the U.S. — ”a
woman of integrity” with a “high moral character,” who is “unfailingly
honest” and “committed to the rule of law.”
“She’s never lobbied for a job,” one of her former CIA bosses said in The Post. “The jobs searched for her.”
At the hearing Haspel is expected to face a grilling
from senators who want details of her connections to the controversial
“enhanced interrogation” program, which critics have called torture.
Critics have argued that while U.S. military personnel
had been punished for human rights abuses at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq
and elsewhere, few intelligence professionals during previous
administrations were reprimanded for their activities with the detention
and interrogation program that had been approved by the White House and
reviewed and approved by the Justice Department.
Last month, the CIA released a memo showing Haspel was
cleared of wrongdoing in the destruction of videotapes at a covert
detention site in Thailand, after her boss dispatched the order in 2005.
The memo, written in 2011, summarizes a disciplinary review conducted
by then-CIA Deputy Director Mike Morell. He said that while Haspel was
one of the two officers “directly involved in the decision to destroy
the tapes,” he “found no fault” with what she did.
As the hearing nears, Haspel’s critics have stepped up
their opposition, arguing that anyone who willingly participated in one
of the CIA’s darkest chapters should not be at the helm of the spy
agency. They've argued that having Haspel as the face of U.S.
intelligence would undercut America’s effort to champion human rights.
A confirmation of Haspel could be interpreted overseas
as implicit approval of a harsh detention and interrogation program,
Robert Ford, former U.S. ambassador to Syria and fellow at the Middle
East Institute in Washington, said.
Republican Sen. Tom Cotton refuted oppositional claims in a commentary in Fox News.
“Instead of demonstrating a troubling tendency to go rogue, Haspel’s
tenure shows a fierce dedication to the CIA’s mission and to keeping
this country safe,” the Arkansas senator wrote.
