Gina Haspel, C.I.A. Deputy Director, Had Role in Torture

President Trump has said repeatedly that he thinks torture works. And newly-appointed Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has said that waterboarding and other techniques do not even constitute torture, and praised as “patriots” those who used such methods in the early days of the fight against Al Qaeda. This insanity must be stopped. — Molly

Rebecca Solnit: Oh, hello Bush era. "In 2017 the European Center for Constitutional Rights called on Germany's Public Prosecutor General to issue an arrest warrant against Haspel over claims she oversaw the torture."
 

 

By MATTHEW ROSENBERG

 

Updated March 13, 2018: President Trump announced that he had ousted Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson and intended to replace him with Mike Pompeo, now the C.I.A. director.

Mr. Trump also named Gina Haspel as his choice to become the next C.I.A. director.

WASHINGTON — As a clandestine officer at the Central Intelligence Agency in 2002, Gina Haspel oversaw the torture of a terrorism suspect and later took part in an order to destroy videotapes documenting the brutal interrogations at a secret prison in Thailand.

On Thursday, Ms. Haspel was named the deputy director of the C.I.A.

The elevation of Ms. Haspel, a veteran widely respected among her colleagues, to the No. 2 job at the C.I.A. was a rare public signal of how, under the Trump administration, the agency is being led by officials who appear to take a far kinder view of one of its darker chapters than their immediate predecessors.

Over the past eight years, C.I.A. leaders defended dozens of agency personnel who had taken part in the now-banned torture program, even as they vowed never to resume the same harsh interrogation methods. But President Trump has said repeatedly that he thinks torture works. And the new C.I.A. chief, Mike Pompeo, has said that waterboarding and other techniques do not even constitute torture, and praised as “patriots” those who used such methods in the early days of the fight against Al Qaeda.

Ms. Haspel, who has spent most of her career undercover, would certainly fall within Mr. Pompeo’s description. She played a direct role in the C.I.A.’s “extraordinary rendition program,” under which captured militants were handed to foreign governments and held at secret facilities, where they were tortured by agency personnel.

Please continue this article here: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/02/us/politics/cia-deputy-director-gina-haspel-torture-thailand.html