Gina Cheri Haspel (née Walker;[1] born
October 1, 1956[2])
is an American intelligence officer currently serving
as Director of the Central Intelligence
Agency (CIA), becoming the first woman to hold the post on a
full time basis.[3] She
had been previously the Deputy Director under Mike Pompeo in
the beginning of the Trump administration.[4][5][6]
She became Acting Director following Pompeo's resignation to
become United States Secretary of State and
was nominated by President Donald Trump to
become the official CIA Director. On May 17, 2018, she was confirmed as the CIA
Director, making her the first female CIA Director in history.[7] She
was the second female Deputy Director in history.[5][6][8][9][10]
Haspel has attracted controversy for her role as chief of a
CIA black site in
Thailand in 2002 in which prisoners were tortured with
so-called "enhanced interrogation techniques",
including waterboarding.[11][12][13][14][15] At
that time, the George W. Bush administration considered
the techniques legal based on a set of secret,
now-repudiated legal opinions that expansively defined
executive authority and narrowly defined torture.[16][17]
Haspel joined the CIA in January 1985 as a reports officer.[1][22] She
held several undercover overseas positions, for many of which she was station chief.[23][24] Her
first field assignment was from 1987–1989 in Ethiopia,[22][25] Central
Eurasia,[22] Turkey,[1] followed
by several assignments in Europe and Central Eurasia from 1990 to 2001.[22][18]
From 2001 to 2003, her position was listed as Deputy Group
Chief, Counterterrorism Center.[22]
Between October and December 2002, Haspel was assigned to
oversee a secret CIA prison in Thailand, code-named Cat's Eye, that housed
persons suspected of involvement in Al-Qaeda.
The prison was part of the US government's extraordinary rendition program after
the September 11 attacks, and used enhanced interrogation techniques such
as waterboarding that are considered by many to be torture although
those methods were deemed legal at the time by agency lawyers. According to a
former senior CIA official, Haspel arrived as station chief after the interrogation of Abu Zubaydah but was
chief during the waterboarding of Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri.[18]
From 2004 to 2005, Haspel was Deputy Chief of the National Resources Division.[25][22]
After the service in Thailand, she served as an operations
officer in Counterterrorism Center near Washington, DC.[22] She
later served as the CIA's station chief in London and, in 2011, New York.[18][26]More Here
