President Donald Trump’s nominee to lead the CIA, Gina Haspel, still has yet to find the support in Congress needed to pass a confirmation vote, The Hill reports.
Although Haspel, a 33-year veteran of the intelligence community, has received copious praise from members of the agency, some outside it have raised concerns over the brutal interrogation techniques used at the CIA black site prison in Thailand that she ran beginning in 2002, and her order to destroy tapes documenting two men’s interrogations in 2005. A Justice Department investigation "found no prosecutable offense, nor… a violation of Agency regulations," according to a 2011 memo from then-deputy director Michael Morell.
Some of Haspel’s critics, like Sen. Son Wyden, D-Ore., dismissed this memo as “highly incomplete," but claiming it does confirm "some extremely troubling facts about Deputy Director Haspel."
Wyden added on Friday that his “concerns about Ms. Haspel are far broader than this episode or anything else that has appeared in the press.”
On Monday, a group of over 100 former military officials, including former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Hugh H. Shelton, retired Marine Corps Gen. John R. "Jack" Dailey and retired Air Force Gen. Walter Kross, sent an open letter challenging Haspel’s appointment, and calling for her agency records to be declassified.
"Given the serious allegations made against Ms. Haspel, we urge you to insist on full declassification, with appropriate redactions to protect sensitive national security information, of all information regarding her role in the rendition, detention, and interrogation program," reads the letter.
"We did not accept the 'just following orders' justification after World War II, and we should not accept it now," they continue. "Waterboarding and other forms of torture or cruel and inhuman treatment are -- and always have been -- clearly unlawful."