Dianne Feinstein Calls for Release of Trump CIA Pick's Torture Documents

By Jordain Carney, The Hill

15 March 18

 

en. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) is urging the CIA to release documents related to Gina Haspel, President Trump's nominee to lead the spy agency, and her involvement in post-9/11 torture program.

Feinstein sent a letter to CIA Director Mike Pompeo, along with Haspel, who's currently the deputy director, saying senators need a "complete picture" as they weigh the nomination.

"I write to request the declassification of pertinent agency documents related to Ms. Haspel’s role in the CIA’s Rendition, Detention and Interrogation Program," Feinstein wrote.

Feinstein, a former chairwoman and current member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, added that in addition to lawmakers the American people "deserve to know the actual role the person nominated to be the director of the CIA played in what I consider to be one of the darkest chapters in American history.”

Trump announced on Tuesday that he was nominating Haspel to succeed Pompeo, who has been nominated to lead the State Department. If confirmed, she'll be the first female director of the CIA.

But her nomination is already running into roadblocks on Capitol Hill.

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) said on Wednesday that he would oppose her. His defection leaves Republicans with the bare 50 votes needed to let Vice President Pence break a tie, assuming no other GOP senators oppose her and Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), who is undergoing treatment for brain cancer, returns to vote and supports her.

Democratic Sens. Ron Wyden (Ore.) and Elizabeth Warren (Mass.) have already come out in opposition to Haspel's nomination.

Haspel oversaw the use of interrogation methods now widely seen as torture under President George W. Bush and briefly ran one of the CIA's first "black site" prisons.

Feinstein added that senators had to weigh Haspel's record, "including troubling press reports on her involvement with torture programs," but needed more than just media reports.

"While public reporting is useful, it is no substitute for the actual truth held in CIA cables, emails and internal memos," she wrote.

Feinstein has been one of the Senate’s harshest critics of “enhanced interrogation techniques” and the architect of the so-called torture report.

She has stressed this week that she has not made a decision on Haspel but sounded open to her nomination.

“We’ve had dinner together. We have talked. Everything I know is she has been a good deputy director,” Feinstein said on Tuesday.

She added on Wednesday that "I need to have another long talk with Gina Haspel, and I will do that. I do not announce my position before the committee hearing."

Feinstein in 2013 blocked Haspel’s promotion to run clandestine operations at the agency over her role in interrogations at a CIA “black site” prison and the destruction of videotapes documenting the waterboarding of an al Qaeda suspect there.

Feinstein, who is up for reelection in 2018, has faced backlash this week for her Tuesday comments, with progressive groups and her primary challenger urging her to take a tough stance on the new CIA nominee.

"It is very concerning Senator Feinstein is ‘open to supporting’ CIA nominee Haspel, who ran a ‘black site’ prison that waterboarded and beat prisoners. Believes she has been a ‘good’ deputy CIA Director," her rival, Kevin de León, said on Twitter.