As CIA Director Mike Pompeo was today appointed the new Secretary of State following Rex Tillerson's exit, Gina Haspel was roped in as the new chief of the spy agency.
As CIA Director Mike Pompeo was today appointed the new Secretary of State following Rex Tillerson's exit, Gina Haspel was roped in as the new chief of the spy agency.
As US President Donald Trump announced the exit of Tillerson, he said Gina Haspel would become the new Director of the CIA as the first woman on the post.
"Mike Pompeo, Director of the CIA, will become our new Secretary of State. He will do a fantastic job! Thank you to Rex Tillerson for his service! Gina Haspel will become the new Director of the CIA, and the first woman so chosen. Congratulations to all," Trump said on Twitter.
Haspel has a controversial past as a spymaster.
In a statement to The Washington Post, Trump praised Haspel.
"Gina Haspel, the Deputy Director of the CIA, will be nominated to replace Director Pompeo and she will be the CIA’s first-ever female director, a historic milestone. Mike and Gina have worked together for more than a year, and have developed a great mutual respect," he said.
Haspel said in a statement that she was looking forward to her job.
“After 30 years as an officer of the Central Intelligence Agency, it has been my honor to serve as its Deputy Director alongside Mike Pompeo for the past year,” she said. “I am grateful to President Trump for the opportunity, and humbled by his confidence in me, to be nominated to be the next Director of the Central Intelligence Agency.”
Here are 10 things about the new US spy chief:
1.Haspel joined the CIA in 1985.
2. As a CIA spy, Haspel has spent most of her career undercover.
3. Gina Haspel once ran a CIA prison in Thailand where terror suspects were tortured in now-banned CIA interrogation technique - waterboarding.
4. She played a direct role in the CIA’s “extraordinary rendition program,” under which captured militants were handed to foreign governments and held at secret facilities, where they were tortured by agency personnel, according to a report in The New York Times
5. she oversaw the torture of two terrorism suspects in 2002 and later took part in an order to destroy videotapes documenting their brutal interrogations at a secret prison in Thailand.
6. She oversaw the brutal interrogations of two detainees, Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri.
7. Zubaydah alone was waterboarded 83 times in a single month.
8. On June 7, 2017 European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights, a civil rights group, had asked German authorities to issue an arrest warrant for Haspel.
9. She was appointed the Deputy Director of the CIA on February 7, 2017.
10. She was reportedly passed over to lead the CIA in 2013, when Director John Brennan was made the agency chief.
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