Editorial: Gina Haspel’s evasive answers about CIA torture are disqualifying

When Gina Haspel, President Trump’s pick to head the Central Intelligence Agency, appeared for her confirmation hearings before the Senate Intelligence Committee this week, she faced one crucial challenge — and it wasn’t to convince the committee that she possesses the necessary experience and aptitude for the position. That has been obvious since the day the 33-year veteran of the agency was nominated to succeed Mike Pompeo, now the secretary of State.

Much more important was how Haspel would address a shameful chapter in the agency’s history in which she played a part: the use of torture against suspected terrorists after 9/11. Haspel took charge in 2002 of a secret CIA detention facility in Thailand where a terrorism suspect was waterboarded on her watch. In 2005 she drafted a cable, ultimately issued by her superior, ordering the destruction of dozens of videotapes of brutal interrogation sessions.

Haspel’s testimony on the torture issue was unsatisfactory — so unsatisfactory that we believe the Senate should refuse to confirm her despite her impressive professional credentials.

Haspel declined to discuss her role in the interrogation and waterboarding of Abd al Rahim al Nashiri, telling Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) that she couldn’t answer questions about the subject in public session because her “operational history” was classified under agency rules — and she wouldn’t declassify the records.

Even more troubling, Haspel refused to clearly condemn the agency’s past misdeeds. Under persistent questioning by California’s other Democratic senator, Kamala Harris, Haspel declined to say whether waterboarding and other “enhanced interrogation techniques” used in the agency’s defunct detention and interrogation program were immoral.

She did make several reassuring statements that focused on the future. She said, for instance: “Senator, what I believe sitting here today is that I support the higher moral standard we have decided to hold ourselves to.” She also told senators that “under my leadership, CIA will not restart” a detention and interrogation program. Finally, and to her credit, she promised that she wouldn’t allow the CIA to undertake “immoral” activity even if were technically legal.

But her failure to fully explain her actions while torture was being inflicted on her watch, and her refusal to unequivocally declare such behavior immoral, are deeply troubling. What symbolic message does the United States send to its own citizens and to the rest of the world if, after just a few years have passed, it elevates to such a senior position an unrepentant participant in that shocking and deplorable historical episode?

Given the passage of time, it might be worth recalling what the euphemism “enhanced interrogation techniques” concealed and why it’s important that Haspel resoundingly repudiate them.

In its findings about the CIA’s detention and interrogation program, the Senate Intelligence Committee offered the following stomach-turning examples (in addition to waterboarding): sleep deprivation, in which detainees would be kept awake for 180 hours, usually standing or in painful “stress positions”; exposure to extreme cold; subjection to “rectal rehydration” and to “rough takedowns,” in which “approximately five CIA officers would scream at a detainee, drag him outside of his cell, cut his clothes off, and secure him with Mylar tape. The detainee would then be hooded and dragged up and down a long corridor while being slapped and punched.” There was also psychological abuse, such as mock executions and situations in which detainees were told that family members would be killed or sexually abused.

In opposing Haspel’s nomination, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said: “Her refusal to acknowledge torture’s immorality is disqualifying.” We agree.

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