WASHINGTON- Donald Trump announced that he picked the CIA’s deputydirector, Gina Haspel, to replace Pompeo as head of the agency. Ifconfirmed by the Senate, she would become the first woman to hold the post.
Haspel, while a career CIA officer from the operational side of theorganization, will be a controversial choice on Capitol Hill. Senator RonWyden and other Democrats opposed her nomination as deputy director lastyear.
She oversaw a “black site” detention facility in Thailand where a SenateIntelligence Committee report found that Abu Zubaydah and other suspectedal Qaeda extremists were subjected to waterboarding, a form of simulateddrowning, and other “special interrogation methods” widely consideredtorture.
Haspel also became embroiled in another controversy later, as deputy toJose Rodriguez, the controversial head of the CIA’s CounterterrorismCenter. He wrote in his memoir that in 2005 she ordered the destruction ofdozens of videotapes of interrogations at the camp. For that reason, shewas denied the job of deputy director of the National Clandestine Service.- Agencies