The CIAs New Deputy Director Ran a Black Site for Torture
Glenn Greenwald February 2 2017
IN MAY, 2013, the Washington Posts Greg Miller reported that the head of the CIAs clandestine service was being shifted out of that position as a result of a management shake-up by then-Director John Brennan. As Miller documented, this official whom the paper did not name because she was a covert agent at the time was centrally involved in the worst abuses of the CIAs Bush-era torture regime.
As Miller put it, she was directly involved in its controversial interrogation program and had an extensive role in torturing detainees. Even more troubling, she had run a secret prison in Thailand part of the CIAs network of black sites where two detainees were subjected to waterboarding and other harsh techniques. The Senate Intelligence Committees report on torture also detailed the central role she played in the particularly gruesome torture of detainee Abu Zubaydah.
Beyond all that, she played a vital role in the destruction of interrogation videotapes that showed the torture of detainees both at the black site she ran and other secret agency locations. The concealment of those interrogation tapes, which violated both multiple court orders as well the demands of the 9/11 Commission and the advice of White House lawyers, was condemned as obstruction by Commission Chairs Lee Hamilton and Thomas Keane. A special prosecutor and Grand Jury investigated those actions but ultimately chose not to prosecute.
That CIA officials name whose torture activities the Post described is Gina Haspel. Today, as BuzzFeeds Jason Leopold noted, CIA Director Mike Pompeo announced that Haspel was selected by Trump to be Deputy Director of the CIA. This should not come as much of a surprise given that Pompeo himself has said he is open to resurrecting Bush-era torture techniques (indeed, Obamas CIA Director, John Brennan, was forced to withdraw from the running in late 2008 because of his support for some of those tactics only to be confirmed in 2013). Thats part of why it was so controversial that 14 Democrats including their Senate Leader Chuck Schumer, Dianne Feinstein, Sheldon Whitehouse and Tim Kaine voted to confirm Pompeo.
https://theintercept.com/2017/02/02/trumps-cia-chief-selects-major-torture-operative-to-be-agencys-deputy-director/