[Congressional Record Volume 164, Number 57 (Tuesday, April 10, 2018)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2026-S2027]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                       Nomination of Gina Haspell

  Mr. President, in addition to the six nominees whom we will confirm 
this week, I want to talk about two in particular, two outstanding 
individuals who have been nominated by the President to some of the 
most important positions in the Federal Government. These posts are the 
Director of the Central Intelligence Agency and the Secretary of State.
  Gina Haspel has been nominated for the first position. She joined the 
CIA in 1985, which was during the final years of the Cold War. She is a 
career intelligence officer and has served for more than 30 years 
overseas, around the world, and in Washington. She has held various 
leadership roles at the Central Intelligence Agency, including that of 
Deputy Director of the National Clandestine Service. You can imagine 
this is some of the most sensitive and important work that is being 
done in the intelligence community, and she has been right in the 
middle of it. She has also worked in the Counterterrorism Center, where 
her first day of work was on September 11, 2001--that fateful day when 
the Twin Towers fell and the Pentagon was attacked.
  Throughout her career, Ms. Haspel has held some of the most demanding 
and least publicly acknowledged assignments in the far-off reaches of 
the globe--in places like Africa and the Middle East. She did not 
always seek out these difficult roles; she took them because she saw 
them as her duty. That is the challenge, honestly, when it comes to 
somebody who has had an incredible career like Gina Haspel's, because 
so much of what she has done, she has done in a classified setting. We 
cannot really talk about the details without jeopardizing the sources 
and methods of our intelligence-gathering or without revealing 
information which could undermine our national security.
  There have already been some attacks on Ms. Haspel, which, I think, 
are, honestly, a caricature of her 30-plus years of service to the 
country. We ought to applaud, not denigrate, people who are willing to 
sacrifice their safety, their comfort, and their security to make us 
safer and more secure as the American people. Unfortunately, that 
doesn't always happen.
  She has received numerous awards which lend credence to her 
reputation and illustrate that other accomplished professionals hold 
her in high regard. These awards include the Presidential Rank Award, 
which is the most prestigious award in the Federal civil service. She 
has also received the Intelligence Medal of Merit, among others.
  Her integrity and professionalism are beyond question. A bipartisan 
group of intelligence officials who has served in previous 
administrations has testified to her qualifications and her fitness for 
this particular position as the Director of the CIA. For example, 
former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, who served for 
50 years in the intelligence community under Republican Presidents and 
Democratic Presidents, said he thinks the world of Ms. Haspel. She is 
capable, smart, experienced, and well respected by Agency rank-and-file 
and is a great person, he said.
  Leon Panetta, who served as the Chief of Staff to Bill Clinton when 
he was the President and who later served as the CIA Director and the 
Secretary of Defense under President Obama, said that he is glad we 
will have the first woman as the head of the CIA and that Gina knows 
the CIA inside and out.
  Former CIA Director John Brennan, who also worked under President 
Obama, has cited her ability to ``provide unvarnished, apolitical, 
objective intelligence to [President] Trump and to others.''
  Just yesterday, 53 former senior U.S. officials sent the Senate 
Select Committee on Intelligence a letter in which they expressed their 
wholehearted support for Ms. Haspel. This group includes former 
Secretaries of State Henry Kissinger and George Shultz and former 
Attorney General Michael Mukasey, among others.
  As I said, we know that some partisans have already sought to twist 
and distort Ms. Haspel's record and the decisions that were made in 
real time by accomplished professionals at a time when our country was 
under attack.
  In Ms. Haspel's case, there have been questions about interrogation 
tactics that had been used in the early days of the War on Terror 
following 9/11. These questions are really pretty easily answered. The 
program complained of was investigated twice by career lawyers in the 
Justice Department--one under President Bush and another

[[Page S2027]]

under President Obama. Ms. Haspel and others were found to have done 
nothing unlawful. As my colleague, the junior Senator from Arkansas, 
has said, Ms. Haspel did not go rogue or make these policies on the 
fly. She dutifully executed the approved policy as determined by the 
Department of Justice. Moreover, she did so at one of the most 
dangerous moments in our Nation's history.
  I am confident that Ms. Haspel will be confirmed because if she is 
not, it will send a horrible message to other highly qualified people 
who feel the call to serve our Nation, and it will send a horrible 
message to other CIA officers who follow lawful orders and protect our 
country on a daily basis. It will make our intelligence professionals 
more risk averse and consequently endanger our national security and 
American lives.