Gina Haspel is “the worst person” to lead the Central Intelligence Agency due to her first-hand torture experience, former CIA analyst Ray McGovern told RT. If approved by the Senate, she’ll likely continue the practice, he says.
“She is the worst possible person to head the CIA … She was told to do torture, pure and simple,” McGovern, who has publicly protested Haspel’s nomination, said.
After weeks of controversy over Haspel’s role in running the CIA black site in Thailand, in which prisoners were “questioned” under the Rendition, Detention and Interrogation Program authorized by George W. Bush in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, the 33-year veteran edged a step closer to leading the agency after the Senate Intelligence Committee voted on Wednesday to advance Trump’s nomination.
“She will do what she is told to do. That is how she got to where she is. So president [Donald] Trump nominated her. President Trump says erroneously ‘torture works,’ and we’ll do waterboarding and worse. So it does not make any sense to pick somebody, who won’t do that, to be the head of the CIA,” McGovern believes.
While the full Senate can vote to approve Haspel’s nomination as early as next week, McGovern expressed hope that the US people can influence lawmakers so that they do not appoint the “torture queen” the as the spy agency’s first female director.
“The Senate Committee that sent that recommendation to the full Senate today is the same one that bought into this charade about Russian interference in our election. This is the Committee that defends the intelligence community, defends the torturers, defends the people that eavesdrop on all Americans. This is the Committee that is sort of joined at the hip with the intelligence people that it is supposed to supervise,” McGovern said.
READ MORE: Senate Intelligence Committee votes to advance Gina Haspel’s nomination as CIA director
The 78-year-old former CIA officer was last week injured by police as he was being dragged out of Haspel’s Senate confirmation hearing. McGovern was charged with resisting detention and disrupting the Congress after what he says was taking the hearing’s chairman “at his word” and posing multiple questions to the committee.