Gina Hospel: New CIA Chief, A black site torture specialist
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WASHINGTON- Donald Trump announced that he picked the CIA's deputy director, Gina Haspel, to replace Pompeo as head of the agency. If confirmed by the Senate, she would become the first woman to hold the post.
Haspel, while a career CIA officer from the operational side of the organization, will be a controversial choice on Capitol Hill. Senator Ron Wyden and other Democrats opposed her nomination as deputy director last year.
She oversaw a "black site" detention facility in Thailand where a Senate Intelligence Committee report found that Abu Zubaydah and other suspected al Qaeda extremists were subjected to waterboarding, a form of simulated drowning, and other "special interrogation methods" widely considered torture.
Haspel also became embroiled in another controversy later, as deputy to Jose Rodriguez, the controversial head of the CIA's Counterterrorism Center. He wrote in his memoir that in 2005 she ordered the destruction of dozens of videotapes of interrogations at the camp. For that reason, she was denied the job of deputy director of the National Clandestine Service. - Agencies
