OPINION: Senate Should Block New CIA Director Nomination

President Donald Trump announced on March 13 that he would reshuffle his cabinet by dismissing Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and replacing him with CIA Director Mike Pompeo, reported the New York Times. This move comes just a day after Tillerson delivered his strongest-yet criticism of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

“From Ukraine to Syria—and now the U.K.—Russia continues to be an irresponsible force of instability in the world, acting with open disregard for the sovereignty of other states and the life of their citizens,” said Tillerson. He was reportedly referencing a political assassination in London that British Prime Minister Theresa May has all but confirmed was carried out by Russian state intelligence, according to the New Yorker. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi responded that “Tillerson’s firing sets a profoundly disturbing precedent in which standing up for our allies against Russian aggression is grounds for a humiliating dismissal.” Troublingly, this is not the most important consequence of the president’s bizarre personnel change.

Trump named current-Deputy Director of the CIA Gina Haspel to replace Pompeo, a former Tea Party representative picked to lead the spy agency by the then-president elect in November 2016, according to the Washington Post. Haspel’s pedigree is different from that of Pompeo, who was a political appointment said to leave most of the agency’s day-to-day operations to career officers. In contrast, Haspel has served as a CIA operative for 33 years in clandestine missions around the globe and leadership positions at headquarters in Langley, Virginia, reports the Washington Post. While Haspel’s depth of experience would seem an encouraging sign for a would-be member of the least-experienced cabinet in history, her experience is what should disqualify her from elevation to one of the country’s most important leadership positions.

According to a review of declassified CIA communications by ProPublica, Haspel was the officer in charge at a black-site prison in Thailand in 2002 during the torture of Abu Zubaydah, a Palestinian man believed to be a leader of Al Qaeda. Haspel personally oversaw the torture of Zubaydah through the use of waterboarding, stress positions, and sleep deprivation. After no valuable information was gained from the torture, it was realized that Zubaydah was not in fact a member of Al Qaeda and had no knowledge about planned terrorist attacks against the United States.

CIA cables obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union say that Haspel was one of two people with the power to stop the torture of Zubaydah. She never did so, instead “[congratulating] him on the quality of his acting” as he drifted in and out of consciousness, according to ProPublica. Post-Holocaust Jewish-American philosopher Hannah Arendt’s theory of the banality of evil, that evil is most commonly perpetrated by those who unquestioningly follow orders to do evil, still does not excuse Haspel. She was the one giving the orders and the one following through on them—and, therefore, she is doubly guilty.

Torture does not work. CIA interrogator Glenn Carle has said that “information obtained under duress is suspect and polluted from the start and harder to verify,” according to Newsweek. But its ineffectiveness is not so important to making a decision on its use as is its inhumanity. Not only does torture not work; it is also morally wrong.

The use of torture—euphemized as “enhanced interrogation” by the Bush administration—is a stain on the history of America and represents an abdication of our country’s moral leadership. Because of her complicity in the reprehensible program of torture perpetrated by the CIA under past administrations, Haspel should be blocked by the Senate from assuming the position of CIA director.