President Donald Trump’s nominee to lead the CIA, Gina Haspel, is not withdrawing her nomination and believes she has the right “kind of experience the nation needs right now,” NBC News national security analyst Jeremy Bash said Sunday on MSNBC.
“She's going going full steam ahead,” said Bash, who served as chief of staff to CIA director Leon Panetta during the Obama administration.
“She'll be at the hearing Wednesday morning. She's not withdrawing her nomination. She believes that her experience 33 years at the CIA mostly undercover, seven overseas tours, that she brings exactly the right kind of experience that the nation needs right now.”
Haspel reportedly sought to withdraw her nomination over concerns about her role in the agency’s interrogation program, and on Friday told the White House she would step aside to avoid a Senate Intelligence Committee confirmation hearing Wednesday.
Trump named Haspel, the first woman tapped to head the agency, to succeed Mike Pompeo, who became secretary of state last month.
“I think there is – there was concern, I think she broached it that, hey, if we're going to re-open some of the wounds from 2002, 2003, when three individuals in U.S. custody were waterboarded, including Khalid Sheikh Muhammad who beheaded Daniel Pearl, the "Wall Street Journal" reporter, if we're going to go back to these discussions, go back to those debates, that might harm the CIA as an institution,” Bash said. “I think in her mode of really putting the agency before herself, she said, if it's going to harm the CIA, I don't need to be part of this. I think everyone around her said, no, you are the right person to do this, the White House bumped her up, and she's going full steam ahead.”
Raj Shah, the White House principal deputy press secretary, called Haspel a “highly qualified nominee who has dedicated over three decades of service to her country.”
“Her nomination will be not be derailed by partisan critics who side with the ACLU over the CIA on how to keep the American people safe,” he said.