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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]This doesn't sound promising. Leave it to Trump to pick a woman who is famous for torturing people.
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https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/02/us/politics/cia-deputy-director-gina-haspel-torture-thailand.html?ribbon-ad-idx=6&rref=homepage&module=Ribbon&version=origin&region=Header&action=click&contentCollection=Home%20Page&pgtype=article
New C.I.A. Deputy Director, Gina Haspel, Had Leading Role in Torture
As a clandestine officer at the Central Intelligence Agency in 2002, Gina Haspel oversaw the torture of two terrorism suspects and later took part in an order to destroy videotapes documenting their brutal interrogations at a secret prison in Thailand.

On Thursday, Ms. Haspel was named the deputy director of the C.I.A.

The elevation of Ms. Haspel, a veteran widely respected among her colleagues, to the No. 2 job at the C.I.A. was a rare public signal of how, under the Trump administration, the agency is being led by officials who appear to take a far kinder view of one of its darker chapters than their immediate predecessors.

Over the past eight years, C.I.A. leaders defended dozens of agency personnel who had taken part in the now-banned torture program, even as they vowed never to resume the same harsh interrogation methods. But President Trump has said repeatedly that he thinks torture works. And the new C.I.A. chief, Mike Pompeo, has said that waterboarding and other techniques do not even constitute torture, and praised as “patriots” those who used such methods in the early days of the fight against Al Qaeda.

Ms. Haspel, who has spent most of her career undercover, would certainly fall within Mr. Pompeo’s description. She played a direct role in the C.I.A.’s “extraordinary rendition program,” under which captured militants were handed to foreign governments and held at secret facilities, where they were tortured by agency personnel.

The C.I.A.’s first overseas detention site was in Thailand. It was run by Ms. Haspel, who oversaw the brutal interrogations of two detainees, Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri.
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Also, see the New Yorker piece.  This isn't a woman who was just an administrator saying torture was OK, this was a woman who was ... "present at a C.I.A. black site in Thailand when Zubaydah and al-Nashiri were being tortured. It’s not clear whether she took part in the interrogations themselves. Abu Zubaydah’s interrogation, which is recounted in the Intelligence Committee’s landmark investigation, was particularly gruesome. According to the report, he was waterboarded eighty-three times; at one point, he became non-responsive, with water bubbling up from his lungs. Doctors had to revive him. During his confinement, Zubaydah lost sight in his left eye." All this before the CIA interrogation team gave up and admitted that Zubaydah didn't have any information.  She also participated in a subsequent cover up of these activities by ordering the destruction of video tapes of the interrogation.  See more at [url]https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/the-new-c-i-a-deputy-chiefs-black-site-past[/url]

And, Haspell is trying to invoke the "state secrets privilege" to avoid testifying in the lawsuit against the psychologists who helped run the CIA torture program.  See [url]https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/08/us/justice-department-cia-psychologists-interrogation-program.html[/url]

I will be writing my Senator to ask that he vote against Haspel, and I will be demanding that Democrats who sit on her confirmation hearing ask the specific questions she is refusing to answer in the CIA case.  There is no "state secrets privilege" vis-a-vis Congress.   She can ask for a closed session or she can refuse to answer, but I'd like to see Dem senators reading descriptions of the torture and asking if she ordered or participated.  Let her be on video record forever refusing to answer.

BTW, the,"The European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights filed a legal intervention with German prosecutors last year calling for an arrest warrant for Haspel for her role in torturing detainees in Thailand.“Those who commit, order or allow torture should be brought before a court — this is especially true for senior officials from powerful nations,” Wolfgang Kaleck, the group’s general secretary, said in filing the documents in June 2017. “The prosecutor must, under the principle of universal jurisdiction, open investigations, secure evidence and seek an arrest warrant. If the deputy director travels to Germany or Europe, she must be arrested.”" See [url]https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2018/03/13/gina-haspel-trump-nominee-first-woman-leader-cia/419547002/[/url]

#NotinMyName[/quote]

Water boarded 83 times in a month.  That’s some stupendous leadership right there.[/quote]

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