Gina Haspel

Gina Cheri Walker Haspel (born October 1, 1956) is an American national security expert who was the seventh director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) from May 21, 2018, to January 20, 2021. She was the agency's deputy director from 2017 to 2018 under Mike Pompeo, and became acting director on April 26, 2018, after Pompeo became U.S. secretary of state. She was later nominated and confirmed to the role, making her the first woman to become CIA director on a permanent basis.

Early life

Haspel was born Gina Cheri Walker on October 1, 1956, in Ashland, Kentucky. Her father served in the United States Air Force. She has four siblings.

Haspel attended high school in the United Kingdom. She was a student at the University of Kentucky for three years and transferred for her senior year to the University of Louisville, where she graduated in May 1978 with a Bachelor of Science in languages and journalism. From 1980 to 1981, she worked as a civilian library coordinator at Fort Devens in Massachusetts. She received a paralegal certificate from Northeastern University in 1982 and worked as a paralegal until she was hired by the CIA.

Early career

Early CIA career

Haspel joined the CIA in January 1985 as a reports officer. She held several undercover overseas positions. Her first field assignment was from 1987 to 1989 in Ethiopia, Central Eurasia, Turkey, followed by several assignments in Europe and Central Eurasia from 1990 to 2001. From 1996 to 1998, Haspel served as station chief in Baku, Azerbaijan.

From 2001 to 2003, her position was listed as Deputy Group Chief, Counterterrorism Center.

Between October and December 2002, Haspel was assigned to oversee a secret CIA prison in Thailand Detention Site GREEN, code-named Cat's Eye, which housed persons suspected of involvement in Al-Qaeda. The prison was part of the US government's "extraordinary rendition" program after the September 11 attacks, and used torture techniques such as waterboarding. According to a former senior CIA official, Haspel arrived as station chief after the interrogation of Abu Zubaydah but was chief during the waterboarding of Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri.

On January 8, 2019, Carol Rosenberg, of the Miami Herald, reported that partially redacted transcripts from a pre-trial hearing of Guantanamo Military Commission of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, seemed to indicate that Haspel had been the "Chief of Base" of a clandestine CIA detention site on the Guantanamo Bay Naval Station, in the 2003–2004 period.

Torture and destruction of evidence controversy

She has attracted controversy for her involvement in the use of torture in 2002, as Deputy Group Chief of the Counterterrorism Mission Center. During that year, she was chief of a CIA black site in Thailand where prisoners were tortured with so-called "enhanced interrogation techniques", including waterboarding. At that time, the Bush Administration considered the techniques legal based on a set of secret, now-rescinded legal opinions which expansively defined executive authority and narrowly defined torture. Haspel's involvement was confirmed in August 2018 when a Freedom of Information lawsuit by the George Washington University-based National Security Archive brought to light CIA cables either authorized or written by Haspel while base chief at the Thailand black site. The cables describe acts of deliberate physical torture of detainees, including waterboarding and confinement, which Haspel personally observed.

In late October 2002, Haspel became chief of base for that "black site" CIA prison located in Thailand. She worked at a site that was codenamed "Cat's Eye", which would later become known as the place where suspected al Qaeda terrorist members Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri and Abu Zubaydah were detained and tortured with waterboarding. In early February 2017, The New York Times and ProPublica reported that these waterboardings were both conducted under Haspel. In March 2018, US officials said Haspel was not involved in the torture of Zubaydah, as she only became chief of base after Zubaydah was tortured. ProPublica and The New York Times issued corrections to their stories but noted that Haspel was involved in the torture of al-Nashiri. In August 2018, cables from the site, dating from November 2002 and likely authorized by if not written by Haspel, were released due to a Freedom of Information lawsuit, and described the torture of Nashiri in detail, including slamming him against a wall, confining him to a small box, waterboarding him, and depriving him of sleep and clothing, while threatening to turn him over to others who would kill him. Interrogators involved would also call Nashiri "a little girl", "a spoiled little rich Saudi", and a "sissy".

Haspel played a role in the destruction of 92 interrogation videotapes that showed the torture of detainees both at the black site she ran and at other secret agency locations. A partially-declassified CIA document shows that the instruction for a new method of record keeping at the black site in Thailand, re-recording over the videos, took place in late October 2002, soon after Haspel's arrival.

In December 2014, the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR), a non-governmental organization that uses litigation to seek enforcement of human rights, asked that criminal charges be brought against unidentified CIA operatives after the US Senate Select Committee published its report on torture by US intelligence agencies. On June 7, 2017, the ECCHR called on the Public Prosecutor General of Germany to issue an arrest warrant against Haspel over claims she oversaw the torture of terrorism suspects. The accusation against her was centered on the case of Saudi national Abu Zubaydah. No such arrest warrant was issued.

On May 1, 2018, Spencer Ackerman, writing in The Daily Beast, reported that former CIA analyst Gail Helt had been told some of the controversial torture recordings had not been destroyed, after all. On May 9, 2018, the day prior to Haspel's confirmation vote, The New York Times reported that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, architect of the 9/11 attacks, requested to submit six paragraphs of information for the Senate committee to review before its vote. She testified many years later to the U.S. Senate about this subject:

I don't believe that torture works....Having served in that tumultuous time, I can offer you my personal commitment, clearly and without reservation, that under my leadership CIA will not restart such a detention and interrogation program.

After her service in Thailand, she served from 2004 to 2005 as Deputy Chief of the CIA's National Resources Division.she served as an operations officer in Counterterrorism Center near Washington, D.C. She later served as the CIA's station chief in London and, in 2011, New York.

National Clandestine Service leadership

Haspel served as the deputy director of the National Clandestine Service, deputy director of the National Clandestine Service for Foreign Intelligence and Covert Action, and chief of staff for the director of the National Clandestine Service.

In 2005, Haspel was the chief of staff to Jose Rodriguez, Director of the National Clandestine Service. In his memoir, Rodriguez wrote that Haspel had drafted a cable in 2005 ordering the destruction of dozens of videotapes made at the black site in Thailand in response to mounting public scrutiny of the program. At the Senate confirmation hearing considering her nomination to head the CIA, Haspel explained that the tapes had been destroyed in order to protect the identities of CIA officers whose faces were visible, at a time when leaks of US intelligence were rampant.

In 2013, John Brennan, then the director of Central Intelligence, named Haspel as acting director of the National Clandestine Service, which carries out covert operations around the globe. However, she was not appointed to the position permanently due to criticism about her involvement in the Rendition, Detention and Interrogation program. Her permanent appointment was opposed by Dianne Feinstein and others in the Senate.

Deputy Director of the CIA

On February 2, 2017, President Trump appointed Haspel Deputy Director of the CIA, a position that does not require Senate confirmation. In an official statement released that day, House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes (R-CA) said:

With more than thirty years of service to the CIA and extensive overseas experience, Gina has worked closely with the House Intelligence Committee and has impressed us with her dedication, forthrightness, and her deep commitment to the Intelligence Community. She is undoubtedly the right person for the job, and the Committee looks forward to working with her in the future.

On February 8, 2017, several members of the Senate intelligence committee urged Trump to reconsider his appointment of Haspel as deputy director. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) quoted colleagues Ron Wyden (D-OR) and Martin Heinrich (D-NM) who were on the committee: