Meet the CIA’s New Torturer in Chief (Video)

Gina Haspel is President Trump’s new pick to head the CIA. In an interview on The Real News Network, journalist Marcy Wheeler said Haspel has played a key role in the agency’s torture program—and in covering it up.

“She was the chief of station for the first black sites for Thailand, where the first black site, where our torture program was,” Wheeler told Aaron Maté on The Real News. “She oversaw the torture of Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri in 2002, when really the CIA was just experimenting with it. In that role, because people are already saying that she was just doing what she was told, she was just following orders, in that role, she was also particularly sadistic. She at times when other people said Abu Zubaydah’s fully compliant, he’s told us all he knows, would say, ‘You go back and keep torturing him until he tells us more.’ That’s her role in torture.

“And then while she was still chief of station there in 2002, she said, ‘Let’s get rid of all of the videos we took of this torture.’ CIA didn’t permit her to do that in 2002 because there were ongoing investigations, but when, in 2005, she and Jose Rodriguez, who kind of instituted the torture program, when they were at a much more senior level at CIA, she said, ‘Hey, great idea. Let’s get rid of those videos that we took back in 2002, even though there are court rulings that say we should not be able to get rid of them.’ So, she oversaw the destruction of them, so both the torture and the cover up of the torture. That’s who we’re getting to run the CIA.”

Watch the full conversation between Wheeler and Maté in the video above.