The coordinator of the U.S. intelligence community promised Wednesday that President Donald Trump’s CIA nominee will make every effort to explain her role in alleged torture activities after the 9/11 attacks.
Gina Haspel, deputy secretary at the CIA, has been criticized for her reported role leading a black site in Thailand that conducted enhanced interrogations, and for participating in designing waterboarding tactics that the government later classified as torture.
Many of those reports are “simply not true,” Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats told reporters Wednesday, according to the Associated Press Coats. He added that Haspel is “exceptional, professional and talented individual.”
Several senators, including Kentucky Republican Sen. Rand Paul, have criticized Haspel’s nomination and promised to try to block it. Paul said he would do “whatever it takes” to block Haspel’s confirmation and the confirmation of current CIA director Mike Pompeo, whom Trump nominated to be Secretary of State after firing Rex Tillerson. (RELATED: Rand Paul Will Do ‘Whatever It Takes’ To Block Trump Nominees)
“Gina plans to be totally transparent in regards to this issue,” Coats said. “I have looked deeply into this and she will be making that fully available to the relevant committees.”
“We want to declassify as much as possible without jeopardizing someone’s sources and methods,” Coats said, but would not commit to releasing a full unclassified report, according to The Daily Beast. “Every effort will be made to fully explain exactly what her role was and what it wasn’t.”
If confirmed, Haspel would be the first woman to lead the CIA, and has garnered support from a bipartisan group of intelligence community leaders. For example, former CIA director John Brennan, who recently suggested on TV that Russian President Vladimir Putin may have compromising information on Trump, said Haspel would provide “unvarnished, apolitical, objective intelligence input” to the president.
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