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Haspel: CIA Shouldn’t Have Conducted Torture Program

The CIA director nominee now says the program “did damage to our officers and our standing in the world.”

In a letter to the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, Mark Warner (D-VA), Gina Haspel said that the CIA should not have conducted its post-9/11 “enhanced interrogation” program, according to The New York Times. “[T]he program ultimately did damage to our officers and our standing in the world,” the CIA director nominee wrote. “With the benefit of hindsight and my experience as a senior agency leader, the enhanced interrogation program is not one the C.I.A. should have undertaken.” At her confirmation hearing last week, Haspel notably refused to condemn the program but vowed never to “restart” an interrogation program. Senate Intel is slated to vote on her nomination Wednesday. Haspel has been under scrutiny for her involvement in the controversial interrogation program, which included running a CIA prison in Thailand where an al-Qaeda detainee was subjected to various torture tactics.