The Patriot Post® · The Left Smears the Incoming CIA Director
With the decision by President Donald Trump to move CIA Director Mike Pompeo to secretary of state came the need for a new CIA director. Gina Haspel, a highly decorated, longtime CIA employee who was involved in covert actions, was chosen for the post. The Left immediately started to smear her.
As part of her service to this country in the shadows that are part and parcel of what the intelligence community does to keep us safe, she oversaw a CIA “black site” in Thailand that housed two high-ranking members of al-Qaida, Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri. The latter was a mastermind of the attack on USS Cole (DDG 67). Both were subjected to enhanced interrogation techniques — because they weren’t gonna talk for beer and cigarettes. Haspel was also reportedly involved in destroying video evidence of those interrogations. Keeping secrets is, after all, what the CIA does.
The “Gitmo bar” coalition — you know, the folks who make Hanoi Jane look like a bush-league supporter of America’s enemies — is already denouncing her selection. So is Sen. Ron Wyden. Glenn Greenwald, who last year smeared SEAL Team Six, is piling on, as is NSA leaker Edward Snowden. In other words, Haspel has the right opponents.
Haspel was among some American patriots, including José Rodriguez, Dr. James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen, who were handed a very difficult task. They had to get information about pending attacks from terrorists who had no inclination or incentive to cooperate. Contrary to the lies that Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) pushed forward in a half-baked report on American “torture,” they succeeded in their mission.
Sadly, Feinstein teamed up with John McCain to tie the CIA’s hands, and in doing so, left us in today’s situation where our enemies now know our interrogation playbook — in fact, they can readily obtain versions online. It was a dishonorable and ungrateful way to repay the service Haspel and others performed for this country.
It seems that a party once eager to break the glass ceiling has a problem with a woman whose confirmation would break the CIA’s glass ceiling. Quite frankly, that opposition isn’t a disqualification, it’s a résumé enhancement.
Update 3/16: “The online news site ProPublica said Thursday night that it had retracted part of an article alleging Gina Haspel, President Trump’s new choice to head the CIA, oversaw the waterboarding of an Al Qaeda suspect at a so-called agency ‘black site’ in Thailand,” Fox News reports. Furthermore, comments attributed to her by Sen. Rand Paul, who opposes her nomination, were not actually made by her. It would seem that the best option here is to not “Bork” her nomination.