"Erm. This is me and I'm pretty sure I never ran a CIA black site for Torture."
I've scoured the Internet and could not find a SINGLE photo of Gina Haspel. Odd to say the least.
Reports and posts across several online forms have circulated pictures of BBC reporter Emily Maitlis mistakenly identifying her as Gina Haspel.
Who is Gina Haspel?
If you search Google images for photos of Haspel results with Emily Maitlis appear as well as pictures of new CIA director Mike Pompeo but no images of Haspel.
Her appointment as CIA deputy director in February of 2017, was praised by Washington insiders such as former NSA director James Clapper. Haspel is a career CIA officer and is esteemed by her colleagues for being an advocate of integration in the US Intelligence community. Haspel joined the CIA in 1985 and has spent most of her career working undercover. This might explain why it is so difficult to obtain a photograph of the deputy director.
However, she also has many detractors who have pointed to her participation in the CIA Rendition and Interrogation Program as deeply disturbing.
Here are five facts about Haspel:
- Haspel has been linked to the CIA’s "enhanced" interrogation program, which was highlighted in the 6,000-page report by the Senate Intelligence Committee detailing the agency’s use of techniques widely considered as torture.
- In 2002, she ran a CIA prison in Thailand where terror suspects were waterboarded and underwent other interrogation techniques.
- She oversaw brutal interrogations of two detainees, Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, at the black site in Thailand.
- Haspel's name was in the cable carrying the orders to destroy video tapes of the sessions carried out at the CIA station in Thailand.
- She was also the chief of staff to Jose Rodriguez, who headed the CIA's Counterterrorism Center.
Interrogation Program
It has been reported in the Intercept and other news outlets that Haspel was deeply involved in the CIA interrogation programs and had an 'extensive role' in torturing detainees. She oversaw a number of interrogations and waterboardings at the CIA's Thailand Black site where Abu Zubaydah was horribly tortured.
Abu Zubaydah's torture is detailed in the Senate Select Committee's Report on the CIA torture program.
The waterboarding technique was physically harmful, inducing convulsions and vomiting. Abu Zubaydah, for example, became"completely unresponsive, with bubbles rising through his open, full mouth.'"^ Internal CIA records describe the waterboarding of Khalid Shaykh Mohammad as evolving into a "series of near drownings."^
As Glenn Greenwald writes:
Beyond all that, she played a vital role in the destruction of interrogation videotapes that showed the torture of detainees both at the black site she ran and other secret agency locations. The concealment of those interrogation tapes, which violated multiple court orders as well as the demands of the 9/11 commission and the advice of White House lawyers, was condemned as “obstruction” by commission chairs Lee Hamilton and Thomas Keane. A special prosecutor and grand jury investigated those actions but ultimately chose not to prosecute.
