Gina Haspel and the torture tape destruction

An interesting development has occurred in the runup to confirmation of Gina Haspel for CIA director. The CIA is anxious to have her appointed, as opposed to an outsider, and has been running a publicity campaign extolling her virtues. (Frankly, I'm surprised Trump hasn't chosen some totally inexperienced friend of his, like he has with other agencies. He wasn't approving of the CIA during his campaign, and his supporters still complain about the "Deep State" being against him.  But maybe somebody showed him what the CIA has on him.)

First, some background on the torture tapes:

The Central Intelligence Agency was still defending, as late as last year, a 2005 decision by Gina Haspel and her former boss, Jose Rodriguez, to destroy videos of CIA torture at a black site Haspel oversaw, according to previously unpublished documents obtained by ThinkProgress.

Remarkably, the CIA argued that it did not need to preserve videotapes of its “enhanced interrogations” — torture sessions with suspects that involved methods like wall slams, confinement boxes, and waterboarding — because they were like formal government meetings, and therefore less stringent guidelines applied when it came to preserving records of such a “meeting.”

[...]

National Archives guidance from 1995 determined that a recording of a formal meeting can be destroyed if an accurate transcript exists.

  Think Progress

Now I've heard everything. Formal government meetings.

“[W]e disagree that an ‘interrogation’ would qualify as a ‘meeting,’” [National Archives chief records officer, Laurence] Brewer responded.

[...]

President Donald Trump nominated Haspel as CIA director  [...] . She was a “strong advocate” for destroying the torture tapes, a former CIA officers told The New York Times, and she reportedly sent the Nov. 8, 2005, memo that approved their destruction.

[...]

NARA opened its investigation on Dec. 10, 2007, four days after The New York Times first reported that the CIA destroyed the tapes. But the CIA said it could not cooperate until after the Justice Department finished a separate criminal investigation into both the tape destruction and the interrogations themselves. That investigation ended without prosecutions in 2012. NARA followed up with the CIA about its own investigation in March 2016. NARA did not respond when asked why it took four years to follow up on the investigation.

The videos were also the subject of a court order in a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties Union. The judge in that case sanctioned the CIA over the tapes’ destruction, but he declined to hold the agency in contempt.

It's alsmot as if the CIA is above the law.

Even before Haspel arrived at Cat’s Eye [the CIA black site in Thailand where the tapes were made], there was a debate within the CIA about what to do with the videotapes. Internal cables and emails released to the American Civil Liberties Union in a separate lawsuit show that some within the agency felt that the tapes created an unacceptable security risk [for the interrogators], that they needed to be destroyed, and that the law didn’t specifically preclude their destruction.

[...]

Other internal CIA memos from 2002 and early 2003 instructed Cat’s Eye to retain the videos, and internal memos from 2003 and 2004 show a discussion within the CIA about whether the videotapes would be covered by federal records laws.

The decision by Rodriguez, who was then head of CIA’s Directorate of Operations, to approve destruction of the videos was controversial within the agency and the White House, emails released to the ACLU show. Then-CIA Director Porter Goss expressed agreement with the decision.

[...]

“As Jose said, the heat from destroying [the tapes] is nothing compared to what it would be if the tapes ever got into [the] public domain — he said that out of context they would make us look terrible; it would be ‘devastating’ to us,” the email, whose author is redacted, said.

"Out of context"??

I'd think a written description would also be devastating, but I'm guessing those could be redacted to nothing.

A follow-up email to Foggo from the same redacted author later that same day was less confident.

“Dusty – ok – on the Zabaydah [sic] tapes — I am no longer feeling comfortable,” it began.

The email went on to claim that Rodriguez hadn’t consulted John Rizzo, the CIA’s then acting general counsel, or the CIA’s Inspector General before giving the OK to destroy the tapes. That cut the White House out of the loop, too, allegedly angering then White House Counsel Harriet Miers.

Did she not know the CIA isn't exactly beholden to the White House? Was she worried that someone in the White House might be implicated?

The email then mentions the person who drafted the memo approving the tape destruction. While the name is redacted in the email, The New York Times reported that person was Haspel.

“Cable was apparently drafted by [redacted] and released by Jose; they are only two names on it so I am told by Rizzo,” the email said. “Either [redacted] lied to Jose about ‘clearing’ with [redacted] and IG (my bet) or Jose misstated the facts. (It is not without relevance that [redacted] figured prominently in the tapes, as [redacted] was in charge of [redacted] at the time and clearly would want the tapes destroyed.)”

Barry Eisler, best-selling author and ex-CIA operative, wrote a thriller in 2014 called "Inside Out" using this story of the tapes, which includes the fact that it was first reported that two tapes were destroyed, and over a year later reported it was not two, but ninety-two tapes that were destroyed.

In Eisler's story, it turns out that the tapes weren't actually destroyed, and the race is on to recover them before they get out.

Well, guess what...

Some videotapes recording the torture of a CIA detainee may have survived the 2005 destruction facilitated by Donald Trump’s nominee to run the agency. That’s according to an ex-CIA analyst who reviewed massive amounts of internal CIA documentation about torture and said she was told by a colleague that some of the tapes survived.

The analyst’s assertions are the basis for a new motion filed in federal court by the legal team of tortured terror suspect Abu Zubaydah, whose waterboarding and other brutal interrogation was the subject of most of the 2002-era videos.

[...]

If any tapes still exist, their existence has implications for Gina Haspel’s potential CIA directorship. In November 2005, Haspel drafted a cable for her boss, clandestine-service chief Jose Rodriguez, ordering the destruction of the videotapes. For years Rodriguez had urged his superiors to destroy the tapes, out of a stated fear that the brutality depicted on them would inevitably leak .

[...]

The former CIA analyst does not have first-hand knowledge that the tapes survived. Her account comes from an April 2013 conversation with a CIA colleague who told her that some of Abu Zubaydah’s tapes still existed at the time of their discussion. Her colleague, whom The Daily Beast has not interviewed and whose identity The Daily Beast does not know, denied to investigators for Abu Zubaydah’s legal team any memory of telling the ex-analyst about the tapes.

But the now-retired analyst, Gail Helt, said she memorialized their conversation in a notebook she kept at the time, a copy of which The Daily Beast has seen. Haspel’s nomination has compelled her to disclose what she heard, Helt said.

  Daily Beast

What does Gail Helt have against Gina Haspel?  Surely we'll be hearing that Helt has a personal beef and is a terrible person.

If those tapes still existed in 2013 and someone in the CIA knew it, is it likely they still exist? Intriguing, to say the least. Check out Eisler's book.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE: It seems Gina Haspel offered to withdraw her name from consideration.

Haspel told the White House she was interested in stepping aside if it avoided the spectacle of a brutal confirmation hearing on Wednesday and potential damage to the CIA’s reputation and her own [saying that she didn’t want to be “the next Ronny Jackson,” one official said].

[...]

Taken aback at her stance, senior White House aides, including legislative affairs head Marc Short and press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, rushed to Langley, Va., to meet with Haspel at her office late Friday afternoon. Discussions stretched several hours, officials said, and the White House was not entirely sure she would stick with her nomination until Saturday afternoon.

[...]

An administration official said the nomination remains on track. “There is a hearing prep session today, courtesy calls with senators Monday and Tuesday, and classified materials will be delivered to Senate security so senators can read the real record instead of relying on gossip and unfounded smears,” the official said.

[...]

“There is no one more qualified to be the first woman to lead the CIA than 30+ year CIA veteran Gina Haspel,” [spokesperson Sarah Huckabeek-Sanders] tweeted. “Any Democrat who claims to support women’s empowerment and our national security but opposes her nomination is a total hypocrite.”

  WaPo

Sorry, Sarah. We can support women and oppose torture proponents at the same time. Just like when we didn't vote for Hillary, that did not, as Democrats tried to claim, mean we were against having a woman president. We were all for it. Just not that woman.