Gina Haspel Should Be in the Dock at the Hague
By John Kiriakou, Reader Supported News
19 March 18
Gina Haspel's appointment as CIA director sends a message that is clear to
the CIA workforce, to our allies around the world, and to our enemies. That
message is that any CIA officer can break the law with impunity and still
get promoted; indeed, one can even be promoted to director. The message is
that, when push comes to shove, the United States doesn't care about human
rights. We pretend to. We insist that other countries do. But that's all for
show. If you are a strategic ally of the United States (Saudi Arabia,
Bahrain, and Ukraine immediately come to mind) you can do whatever you want
and we'll look the other way. The message is that we don't care about
international law, even though we know that our torture program and the
illegal prison at Guantanamo are the leading recruitment tools for terrorist
groups around the world.
But we should care. And we should start by rejecting the nomination of Gina
Haspel as CIA director. Here's why.
As has been reported widely in the press, Gina Haspel was the chief of a
secret prison overseas where alleged al-Qaeda prisoners were tortured in
violation of US law and the United Nations Convention Against Torture. Her
supporters will tell you that reasonable people can agree to disagree on
"enhanced interrogation techniques." I say that that's impossible. First,
the U.S. government executed Japanese soldiers after the Second World War
because they had waterboarded American prisoners of war. Let me repeat that.
Waterboarding was an executable offense in 1945.
Second, in January 1968, The Washington Post published a photo of an
American soldier waterboarding a North Vietnamese prisoner. On the day that
photo was published, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara ordered an
investigation. The soldier was arrested, charged with torture, convicted,
and sentenced to 20 years in prison. Between then and now, the law never
changed. We changed. Why were waterboarding and other torture techniques
illegal in 1945 and in 1968, but somehow magically legal in 2002? When we
say that passage of the McCain-Feinstein Amendment in 2015 finally outlawed
torture, that's wrong. Torture has been outlawed for many decades. We just
pretended that it wasn't.
But that's what the CIA does. It pushes the envelope as much as it can.
That's its nature. Only strong oversight committees on Capitol Hill can rein
it in. And that hasn't happened in many years.
Another reason Haspel must be rejected is her clear and well-documented
disdain for the law. In 2005, her boss, the notorious former CIA
Counterterrorism Center director and later deputy director for operations
Jose Rodriguez, ordered her to destroy 92 tapes showing the CIA torture of
alleged al-Qaeda prisoners Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri. The
White House counsel and the CIA's general counsel had both told Rodriguez
not to destroy the tapes. They could have been evidence of a crime. At the
least, they were a federal record that, by law, was supposed to be retained
until it was properly declassified. But Haspel personally wrote the cable to
the secret site ordering their destruction. Her defense, that she was "just
following orders," is reminiscent of Nuremberg and, in fact, is not a
defense at all.
Constitutional scholar and former assistant attorney general Bruce Fein said
it best: "An ethos honoring the rule of law is imperative in an agency
shrouded in secrecy and thus undeterred by sunlight, the best of
disinfectants. When a government official becomes a lawbreaker with
impunity, it invites every man and woman to become a law unto themselves. If
there are better ways to encourage lawbreaking at the CIA and popular
disrespect for the law than by Ms. Haspel's promotion, they do not readily
come to mind."
That brings us back to the oversight committees. Readers will know that I
routinely criticize members of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence
as lemmings and cheerleaders. I can't begin to tell you how much I hope I'm
wrong. Let's assume that the Republicans are (nearly) unified in their
support of Haspel. Then the Democrats also have to be unified. Republican
Rand Paul already has voiced his opposition to Haspel and has said that he
will filibuster the nomination. Republican John McCain has hinted at his
opposition. But Democrats Dianne Feinstein and Mark Warner are wobbly.
Feinstein, who blocked Haspel's nomination as deputy director for operations
in 2013, just because of Haspel's torture history, commented recently that
she had gotten to know Haspel in the interim: "We've had dinner together,"
she said, as if that has anything to do with anything. Warner made an even
worse statement: "My mind is very open on this nomination." That doesn't
instill confidence.
In past opinion pieces, I've urged readers to "ride our elected officials."
I've never meant it as much as I mean it now. Please call your senators at
202-224-3121 and tell them to vote against Gina Haspel's nomination. The
ACLU, Expose Facts, Psychologists for Social Responsibility, and myriad
other groups are doing the same. We only have a little bit of time. We have
to organize quickly and not back down. We have to tell the CIA that it
cannot violate U.S. and international law and not have a price to pay. Gina
Haspel should be in the dock at The Hague. She shouldn't be in the CIA
director's office.
John Kiriakou is a former CIA counterterrorism officer and a former senior
investigator with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. John became the
sixth whistleblower indicted by the Obama administration under the Espionage
Act - a law designed to punish spies. He served 23 months in prison as a
result of his attempts to oppose the Bush administration's torture program.
Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission
to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader
Supported News.
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