Introducing Haspel, Trump stated that "instead of apologizing for our nation, we are standing up for our nation." He spoke these words knowing that Haspel oversaw the CIA's first black site in the "war on terror," where two Muslim prisoners were waterboarded repeatedly. Why? Because torture is American.
Prior to her confirmation, there seemed to be three common mainstream responses to Haspel's nomination: 1) The torture she oversaw wasn't torture/was acceptable under the circumstances; 2) Those who were tortured provided valuable intelligence, therefore justifying this abuse; and 3) Torture is "un-American" because it is morally and legally impermissible.
To those who fell into the third response, including senators and advocates alike, Haspel was seen as unqualified to lead the CIA precisely because of her role in facilitating torture. But to suggest that this disqualifies someone from a position in a particular agency is to say that her actions were deviations from the norm. On the contrary, history strongly suggests that Haspel's atrocious past is just what the CIA is looking for and what the US government will endorse. More specifically, and seen through a systemic lens, the torture she oversaw is completely in line with the violence that is condoned, perpetrated and overseen by the CIA in general.
Though torture is a tactic familiar to the CIA, during the "war on terror," its legality became malleable. For instance, take the case of former Deputy Assistant Attorney General John Yoo, who in 2002 wrote memos authorizing torture. By the standards created by John Yoo's legal gymnastics, in order for abuse to rise to the level of torture, abusive treatment had to result in organ failure or death. Moreover, when asked by Doug Cassel, former director of Notre Dame Law School's Center for Civil and Human Rights, if the president had the authority to crush the testicles of a child and whether anything could prevent him from doing so, Yoo responded that there was no law to prevent him from doing so.
At the same time that Yoo was concocting legal strategies to make torture legal, the CIA began its Rendition, Detention and Interrogation (RDI) program in 2002, which allowed for the capture and detention of prisoners. The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence torture report identified 119 prisoners who went through the CIA's RDI program from 2002-2008, all of whom were Muslim and who were subjected to a use of tactics ranging from stress positions to cramped confinement, to the use of diapers, to mock burials. Given the brutality of these tactics, the CIA sought preemptive immunity from the Justice Department's Criminal Division prior to torturing one of its first prisoners in custody, Abu Zubaydah, who was waterboarded 83 times -- torture that was overseen by Gina Haspel.
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