Spencer Ackerman reports that a coalition of human rights groups is organizing to “intensely” oppose the appointment of Gina Haspel as director of the Central Intelligence Agency. (Ackerman is married to Amanda Simon at Amnesty International, one of the human rights groups involved.)
There were no legal consequences when Gina Haspel oversaw the torture of two men at a secret CIA prison in Thailand 16 years ago. There were no legal consequences 13 years ago when Haspel aided in the destruction of 92 videotapes showing Abu Zubaydah and Abdul Rahim Nashiri’s torture. But now that Haspel is two Senate votes away from running the CIA, a coalition of civil liberties groups is gearing up to ensure that she will at least face political consequences.
Those groups tell The Daily Beast that they intend to fight Haspel intensely. Their plans are still coming together, and their goal is ambitious: to defeat a CIA director with substantial agency support nominated by a Republican president before a Republican-controlled Senate. But this is a fight they feel compelled to wage, having spent Barack Obama’s presidency loudly warning that without prosecutions for torture, it will be a matter of time before torture returns.
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Civil liberties groups tend not to win these sorts of congressional fights. But they see Haspel as so directly implicated in waterboarding, mock executions and the persistent physical and mental consequences of those acts that she might prove to be the exception.
‘She Should Be in Jail’—Rights Groups Rally to Stop Torture Overseer Turned Trump CIA Pick Gina Haspel, Spencer Ackerman, Daily Beast
Numerous government officials connected to Bush-era torture were later placed in high level government positions, and have survived nomination battles. Ackerman stresses that Haspel’s very direct operational involvement in the torture at the Thailand black site, gives her nomination a different quality.
While some officials involved in the legal aspects of the torture program have been nominated for higher appointments, Haspel would be the first such nominee who played an operational role in mock executions and waterboarding.
Alberto Mora, who as Navy General Counsel had opposed John Yoo’s legal memos end-running the prohibition against torture, and had tried to end unlawful interrogation tactics at Guantanamo, makes the same point.
Although most of her career has taken place in the shadows and part of it was reportedly distinguished, Haspel is most prominently known for being intimately involved in carrying out the agency’s catastrophic Bush-era torture program or, as it was euphemistically called back then, the CIA’s Rendition, Detention and Interrogation program. As such, she bears great personal responsibility for a program famous for its exceptional savagery and brutality, managerial incompetence and consistent ill-judgment.
Haspel was no mere CIA paper-shuffler. By all accounts she was an engaged participant in the torture program. She reportedly ran the CIA’s torture “black site” in Thailand and directly supervised the inhuman interrogations of Al Qaeda suspects Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri. Later, when a congressional committee sought to exercise its constitutional oversight of the RDI program, Haspel was instrumental in the destruction of the videos of the black site waterboarding sessions—against the advice of superiors in the Bush administration. This act alone, which I believe was almost certainly motivated by a desire to destroy the evidence that waterboarding exceeded the legal threshold for torture and thus to evade both personal and institutional accountability and oversight, should be sufficient to disqualify her from confirmation.
Gina Haspel Is a Torturer. What Else Does the Senate Need to Know?, Alberto Mora, Politico
Interviewed by Amy Goodman, former CIA officer John Kiriakou notes just how personal Haspel’s involvement in the torture was.
Gina was always very quick and very willing to use force. You know, there was a group of officers in the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center, when I was—when I was serving there, who—I hate to even make the accusation out loud, but I’m going to say it: who enjoyed using force. Yeah, everybody knew that torture didn’t work. That’s not even the issue. Lots of different things work. Was it moral, and was it ethical, and was it legal? I think the answers to those questions are very clearly no. But Gina and people like Gina did it, I think, because they enjoyed doing it. They tortured just for the sake of torture, not for the sake of gathering information.
“She Tortured Just for the Sake of Torture”: CIA Whistleblower on Trump’s New CIA Pick Gina Haspel, Democracy Now
Last year, Raymond Bonner at ProPublica had highlighted details about Haspel’s very direct involvement in torture.
At one point, Haspel spoke directly with Zubaydah, accusing him of faking symptoms of physical distress and psychological breakdown. In a scene described in a book written by one of the interrogators, the chief of base came to his cell and “congratulated him on the fine quality of his acting.” According to the book, the chief of base, who was identified only by title, said: “Good job! I like the way you’re drooling; it adds realism. I’m almost buying it. You wouldn’t think a grown man would do that.”
CIA Cables Detail Its New Deputy Director’s Role in Torture, Raymond Bonner, ProPublica
Technical note: In the formal constitutional process for presidential nomination of public officials, and their appointment with the advice and consent of the Senate, Haspel’s nomination is currently at the “Twitter” stage.