President Trump’s pick to lead the CIA, Gina Haspel, made the rounds on Capitol Hill Monday, meeting privately with senators to dispel doubts that she doesn’t want the job and that she fears dragging the agency back into a debate about torture.
Just two days before her Senate Intelligence Committee confirmation hearing, the CIA shipped boxes of classified documents related to Ms. Haspel’s lengthy undercover career to Congress amid questions over the role she played in some of the agency’s most controversial interrogation policies of the post-9/11 era.
President Trump and his aides remained firmly committed to the nominee, who would be the first woman ever to lead the country’s premier intelligence agency. Early Monday, Mr. Trump tweeted that Democrats are trying to block Ms. Haspel “because she is too tough on terror.”
White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders told reporters Mr. Trump is “100 percent committed” to Ms. Haspel and brushed aside news reports that Ms. Haspel offered to withdraw over the weekend.
Ms. Haspel “wants to do everything she can to make sure that the integrity of the CIA remains intact,” Ms. Sanders said on Monday.
After the Senate panel votes on the nomination, the full Senate will consider the 33-year veteran of the CIA, who has spent the past year as deputy director. The chamber’s tight 51-49 party split means the vote will be a nail-biter.
Her battle also comes less than a month after a tougher-than-expected confirmation for Mike Pompeo — the previous CIA director — to become Mr. Trump’s secretary of state. A friend of Ms. Haspel, Mr. Pompeo also battled Democrats to clear a Senate committee before the full Senate voted to confirm him.
Having spent almost her entire CIA career in covert work or behind the scenes, Ms. Haspel’s effort to win over skeptical lawmakers attracted outsized attention on Capitol Hill Monday. A scrum of reporters scrambled alongside her as she made the rounds.
Heading to meet with Sen. Joe Manchin, a West Virginia Democrat whose vote could be critical in a close vote, Ms. Haspel smiled and said only she was “looking forward” to Wednesday. Mr. Manchin said later he had a “very open minded” about the nominee and was looking forward to her testimony.
While she has received effusive praise from fellow intelligence professionals across the political spectrum, Ms. Haspel’s opponents have demanded more details about her connections to post 9/11 terrorism suspect interrogation programs, especially at a secret CIA prison in Thailand, where techniques such as waterboarding — widely considered torture — were used on detainees in the years right after the 9/11 attacks..
On Friday, four Democratic senators — including California’s Dianne Feinstein, ranking Democrat on the intelligence panel — demanded that Director of National Intelligence, Dan Coats declassify information about her career. Critics argue that, as the current CIA acting director, Ms. Haspel is the one with the authority to declassify information about herself, creating a conflict of interest. They have also complained that the CIA is selectively releasing only positive information.
On Monday afternoon, representatives from the CIA wheeled a cardboard box of documents on Ms. Haspel’s career and assignments to a secure facility in the Capitol basement for lawmakers to scrutinize.
“As Acting Director Haspel promised, the CIA delivered a set of classified documents to the Senate today so that every senator can review [her] actual and outstanding record,” an agency spokesman said in a statement.
“These documents cover the entirety of her career, including her time in CIA’s Counter Terrorism Center in the years after 9/11. We encourage every senator to take the time to read the entire set of documents,” the agency added.
With a slim 51-49 majority in the Senate, Ms. Haspel faces a narrow path to confirmation, with Sen. John McCain, Arizona Republican, ill, and Sen. Rand Paul, Kentucky Republican, long a critic of the agency’s terror-fighting policies. Moderate Republicans, including Maine Sen. Susan Collins, may prove key to whether Ms. Haspel gets the job.
• Dan Boylan can be reached at dboylan@washingtontimes.com.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.