Posted on 03/19/2018 12:07:55 PM PDT by Starman417
I would take anything John Kirakou says with a grain from the salt pit. I question his credibility.
What does anyone really know about Gina Haspel, President Trump's nominee to be the next director of the CIA? Not a heck of a lot. So far what we have is media and ideology-driven hysteria: She mocked torture victim; oversaw Zubaydah's interrogation; destroyed evidence tapes. None of it is true.
The torture alarmists' fevered imaginations have painted her to be unfit for the job due to preconceived notions and the distorted narrative regarding the CIA RDI program; along with assumptions about her involvement with it.
Last week, ProPublica- cited by many media outlets- offered some major retractions to their attempt at filling in the many blanks regarding Gina Haspel's history with CIA interrogations. 4 major news organizations had to make retractions (regardless, Rand Paul's mind apparently is made up; at least John McCain is entertaining hearing her answer questions at her confirmation hearing).
So what do we know about her? Spin, thus far:
The role that President Donald Trump’s nominee for CIA director had in torturing detainees has become increasingly unclear after a series of influential news organizations backed off stories claiming she’d overseen one suspect’s torture in 2002.How were the black sites "illegal" operations when they were endorsed by the U.S. government with the cooperation of Thailand's government?The recent corrections may increase pressure on the CIA to declassify documents that would explain Gina Haspel’s role in the “rendition, detention and interrogation” program that the agency established after 9/11 to hold and brutally question terrorism suspects at secret prisons overseas.
Four senators, including Republican Rand Paul of Kentucky, have said they will vote against Haspel. A fifth, Republican John McCain of Arizona, has said Haspel must explain her involvement.
Paul stepped up his opposition Sunday, saying on CNN’s State of the Union that he would “do whatever it takes, and that includes a filibuster” to block Haspel’s confirmation. On CBS’s Face the Nation, Paul said, “My main concern about her is that she oversaw an illegal black ops operation in Thailand.”
But certainty about her role in the program has been shaken by an extraordinary series of corrections since Thursday; four news organizations, including the New York Times, have amended or retracted articles that said Haspel was in charge of the torture of the first terrorism suspect captured after the Sept. 11 attacks.
John Brennan:
Haspel’s defenders, including former CIA director John Brennan, a harsh critic of Trump, have made the point that the torture program had received legal approval from the Justice Department in mid-2002. Brennan told MSNBC last week that Haspel did her job “consistent with what CIA’s legal authorities were. And don’t forget that the detention interrogation program was authorized by the president of the United States [George W. Bush] and deemed lawful by the Department of Justice.”Some of her other colleagues also have characterized her as a "consummate professional".
"Now, with the benefit of time, I think the country would be well-served by a reasoned, non-emotional discussion about whether any kind of interrogation technique, beyond a standard Q&A, is ever justifiable — or effective, for that matter," Rizzo told NPR's Morning Edition.However, Rizzo, who said he has known Haspel since the 1990s, remains a supporter of the tough interrogation methods.
"I have some regrets, but I still continue to believe the program was effective," he said. "I have a strong feeling that the information in question — and there was a lot of it — would not have come nearly as quickly without resorting to aggressive measures."
He does not think those measure amounted to torture.
"I do not believe that the word 'torture' was and is legally accurate," he said. "There were very harsh, very brutal methods. But not torture."
Many of the articles I've seen still perpetuate the misleading claim that Abu Zubaydah was waterboarded 83 times (that number refers to the amount of pours/splashes); and that he was shoved into a wall (look up the OLC Memo on what "walling' entails).
Ali Soufan has long made claims regarding intelligence gathered prior to EITs applied to Zubaydah (I have his book, "The Black Banners" where he also writes about it); and most recently, penning an article for the Atlantic to voice his opposition to Haspel's nomination. His claims and the timeline of events, however, are challenged by Marc Thiessen, Jose Rodriguez, and James Mitchell in their respective books. It's a bit dated now, but I wrote about Zubaydah here and here.
I consider Ali Soufan a patriot and an expert in his field to be respected, even as I disagree with much of what he says about the CIA interrogation program.
Another "insider", however, I deem a traitor. Former CIA officer John Kirakou is also attempting to redeem his reputation (how can he, when he once again stands on the wrong side of the fence on this one?), reiterating his persecuted sense of victimhood and martyr complex, writing a WaPo op-ed with an eye-catching headline blurb: I went to prison for disclosing the CIA’s torture. Gina Haspel helped cover it up.
(Excerpt) Read more at floppingaces.net...
Why are so many RINOs and libs in a sweat over the operation in Thailand?
Thailand was where al Nashiri and Abu Zubaida / Zubayda were interrogated.
The cases of these two are central to Feinstein’s bleedingheart attack as well. [That’s a good key word on FR’s search feature for more info, by the way]
And they are why the daughter of the former Carter US ambassador to the UN duing the Iran hostage crisis has been coming unhinged in The Nation and on air over Pompeo and Gina.
They are central because these two link to terrorist attacks in which Iran and Hezbollah are involved as well as al Qaeda.
Neither do I. I hope she does this on Hillary.
It’s not that they really care about torturing muslims. What they are scared of is the intel that was extracted from al Nashiri and abu Zubayadah about Iran and the late Imad Mugniyeh, the USS The Sullivans attack, the US Cole attack, and the 1998 US embassies plot that the media and Palestinian “peace process” pushers in the Deep State have been hiding because so many want to revitalize the US relationship with Iran, regardless of Iran’s leadership, and that means they have to keep up the dance with the Hezbollah Palestinians.
This is why there is a deep hatred for Trump an Netayahu.
She allegedly headed the branch that made video of interrogations disappear like a Clinton email server ...in lib antasies, this means she deprived Ratner and a lot of lib lawyers the opportunity to go after Bush and Cheney on human rights and the media a lot of leaked video that could have been used to trash the US.
Zubaydah also happens to be a Palestinian, a member of a protected class in the minds of leftists everywhere, who due to a literary device he use in his diary, had their defense all planned out for him as a schizophrenic with split personality disorder being picked on by the Bush admin.
The last thing the “peace processers” wanted was for America to find out that a guy central to the attacks on the US was a Palestinian. They much preferred the Saudi narrative.
They used a power drill next to his head. Ooh, horrors... the Iraqis used to use those to actually drill through kneesand CNN still covered for Saddam.
It’s the wrong kind of woman. They want leftists first! If a minority happens to be conservative, it is the wrong person.
Fact is we know nothing of Gina Haspel, and she could vote like a screaming liberal Democrat. They just despise her now, for the sole reason that Trump picked her and so they are looking for a reason, any reason to fire her. Waterboarding, OK, that’s a reason, and the DNC-Media will make it work. They will trash her entire career now and drag her through the mud; and then they will wonder aloud why everyone hates the DC new media.
Is that Bloody ‘geena’ or Bloody ‘jina’?
Did she have blood coming out of her eyes..... or whatever?’
The horror!
More like Red, after she was Bauerized.
Well, we might use the Philippine HUK tried and true method of binding the hands behind the back and tie a bag full of starved wharf rats around the subjects head,
As interpreted by whom? This guy seems blissfully unaware of what was acceptable at the time it was written and for quite a while afterwards until folks interested in overthrowing the country set to work in the courts protecting their backsides by trying to make sedition and treason and terrorism safer occupations. The modern definition of cruel and unusual would have made my ancestors laugh; at the time the constitution was written there were county courthouses that hand manacles attached to the porch posts for lack of a proper jail and most places had a town pillory.
Good point.
Kiriakow - buddy of Ray McGovern and Pat Lang of VIPS...
John Kiriakou’s wife just happens to have been a CIA Iran analyst.. had to leave her job when he got caught.
So we had a John Kerry senate staffer married to a CIA intel analyst specializing in Iran, all the while John Kerry’s gearing up to be the leading proponent of this Iran deal.
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