It's Time to Say Goodbye to Gina Haspel
By John Kiriakou, Reader Supported News
16 November 20
The CIA's director, "Bloody" Gina Haspel, appeared to be in the hot seat
last week, with rumors rampant that she's lost the support of her patron,
President Donald Trump. After rumors hit CNN and the Washington Post that
Trump was unhappy with Haspel and was thinking of firing her, the scrappy
bureaucratic survivor took to Capitol Hill to meet with Republican leaders
and members of the Senate Intelligence Committee to shore up her support.
I wondered why she even bothered. There are about six weeks left in this
administration. And Haspel must live in a dream world if she thinks that the
same Democrats who voted against her in the Senate would suddenly change
their minds and cast votes in her favor in the unlikely event that Joe Biden
decided to keep her on. Remember, the deciding factor in Trump's decision to
name Haspel CIA director in the first place was that she supported the
George W. Bush-era torture program, she headed one of the torture sites, and
she was the CIA's senior officer at Guantanamo when prisoners were being
tortured there. Trump liked that.
So why has Haspel's admiring boss suddenly turned on her? According to CNN,
"Some Trump advisors believe Haspel has been 'insubordinate' to both the
President and Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe, arguing that
she routinely circumvents the chain of command to further her own agenda and
that of the CIA." Specifically, she apparently has gone to Capitol Hill to
brief members of Congress "on internal executive branch discussions before
the President or Ratcliffe had come to a final decision. She did this
without asking other principals involved what they were thinking. It was an
attempt to pressure the White House toward a certain outcome that she
wanted," according to an unnamed source familiar with internal White House
discussions.
I can tell you from my 15 years of CIA experience (and another two years at
the Senate Foreign Relations Committee) that if Haspel did indeed brief
members of Congress on internal executive branch deliberations, that is a
fireable offense. From an officer's first day at the CIA, management at
every level stresses the "chain of command." You never, ever go above your
boss's head or around him or her to somebody else. That she would go to the
oversight committees and speak out of school about the White House, if that
is what she did, would mean a certain trip to the unemployment line. I
remember once when I was a junior officer saying to a colleague that it must
be nice to be in the Senior Intelligence Service, the CIA's top leadership
cadre, where you can run the show and do what you want. "I don't know," he
responded. "I think the bigger they are, the harder they fall." He was
right.
Trump also is angry with Haspel because the CIA director has pushed
back-hard-on Trump's quest to declassify documents related to alleged
Russian involvement in the 2016 election. Trump has long sought to prove
that the Russians had nothing to do with his victory over Hillary Clinton.
But the CIA just won't play ball and release the documents that Trump wants.
In fact, this isn't unique to Haspel. No CIA director wants to declassify
documents. Ever. Why do you think we're still waiting for documents related
to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy to be declassified after
57 years, despite the fact that we have a 30-day mandatory declassification
law in this country? When I was at the CIA (I left in 2004) we were still
working on declassifying-or denying the declassification of-documents
related to Nazi war criminals. Seriously.
To tell you the truth, I don't care why Trump wants to fire Haspel. I just
want him to go ahead and do it. Gina Haspel should never have been the CIA
director in the first place. Her actions in the torture program should have
disqualified her. The message of her appointment was simple: Engage in war
crimes, in crimes against humanity, and get promoted. You might even become
director. Don't worry about the law. Don't worry about ethics or morality.
Go ahead and do it anyway. We'll cover for you. And you can destroy evidence
of torture, too.
Even a broken clock is right twice a day. Donald Trump was dead wrong to
hire Gina Haspel three years ago. He was wrong to keep her at the CIA all
this time. But now he wants to fire her. He's finally right. And that is
what we should celebrate.