Our former boss, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), has announced he will do “whatever it takes” to block Gina Haspel from becoming director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Paul is right. Haspel has been actively complicit in the torture of terrorism suspects. Her elevation to the head of the CIA would set a terrible precedent for the rule of law in the United States and its reputation around the world.
Haspel has been a key figure in the CIA’s shadowy past...
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This CIA Is Resisting Transparency Already
Equally as troubling is the statement that Haspel’s confirmation will send regarding comportment of our nation’s intelligence agencies. America’s legacy of state-sponsored torture continues to linger. It has pushed our already secretive intelligence community to new levels of furtive, underground activities. The CIA has gone to extreme lengths to keep the details of its torture policy from becoming public, redacting most of the Senate’s torture report then “accidentally” destroying its own record of it.
Through these and other measures, the CIA has been able to all but completely sidestep any accountability for this shameful chapter of our history. Placing Haspel, a known adherent of these troubling practices, at the head of the agency would end any necessary reckoning the CIA—as well as Congress and the rest of the country—must do with our legacy of torture.
To many, it will affirm the cynical view that the CIA is an agency free from oversight, accountable to no one; that all activities are within its purview, unless and until one gets caught. It will tell the rest of the world that the United States has learned nothing from the last two decades, and that the ideals we spout are simply rhetorical gloss on much deeper, darker practices.
Impunity breeds repetition. If the United States is truly a country that, as Paul has said, “stands for freedom from torture, not freedom to torture,” then the Senate must reject Haspel’s nomination to lead the CIA.
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More:
http://thefederalist.com/2018/03/26/...rson-lead-cia/
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Rachel Bovard is senior director of policy at the Conservative Partnership, and former legislative director for Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.). Brian Darling is former counsel and senior communications director for Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky).
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