[Congressional Record Volume 164, Number 80 (Wednesday, May 16, 2018)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2717-S2719]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                       NOMINATION OF GINA HASPEL

  Mr. SULLIVAN. Mr. President, I just had a very productive and 
informative meeting with the nominee to be the next CIA Director, Ms. 
Gina Haspel. I wanted to come down to the floor and say a few words. I 
was very impressed. I am going to certainly support her when she is 
voted on, I believe as early as tomorrow.
  There has been a lot of discussion about her background. She is the 
first woman to lead the CIA, first career member of the CIA. That is 
all important, but I think what is most important is that the American 
people and this body know that she is very well qualified. She is a 
very impressive person.
  First of all, she has been very highly decorated in her 30-plus year 
career at the Central Intelligence Agency. Her honors include the 
Intelligence Medal of Merit, a Presidential Rank Award, the Donovan 
Award, which is one of the highest awards in the CIA, and the George 
H.W. Bush Award for Excellence in Counterterrorism. She is thoughtful. 
She is honest.
  In many ways, she has overcome numerous obstacles. Let me talk a 
little bit about her bio. She is one of five children. Her father 
served in the Air Force, having joined at the age of 17. She grew up on 
military bases, like tens of thousands of Americans. Her original goal 
in life was to be a soldier. She told her dad she wanted to go to West 
Point. At the time, her father had to break the news to her that West 
Point was not admitting women. I think West Point lost out on that one. 
She ended up as a contractor for the military 10th Special Forces 
Group. Later, she realized that if she couldn't join the military, she 
was going to join the CIA, and that is what she did.
  She has done an outstanding job at the CIA. She began working at the 
CIA in 1985 during the closing days of the Cold War. She was stationed 
literally all over the world--in Africa, for example. She recruited and 
handled agents and survived a coup d'etat. She worked with government 
partners during the first gulf war. She ran different CIA stations 
around the world.
  She started with the Counterterrorism Center at the CIA on September 
11, 2001, and essentially has spent her life since that time focusing 
on keeping our country safe. She became the Chief of Staff to the 
Deputy Director of Operations and the Deputy Director for the National 
Clandestine Service. She is now the Deputy Director of the entire CIA--
the first woman to rise from the ranks as an initial member of the 
Agency to that title. And if confirmed, as I mentioned, she will be the 
first career CIA official and female to lead the Agency. That is really 
historic, but again, more important than history and more important 
than these labels is that she is very qualified.
  One thing that has been remarkable throughout this entire debate 
about her--and there has been a lot of debate in the Intelligence 
Committee--is the members of the military, members of the national 
security establishment, both Democrats and Republicans, and members of 
the Intel Committee who have come out and said: We support Gina Haspel. 
The list is extremely impressive. Let me give a couple examples: John 
Brennan, former Obama administration CIA Director; James Clapper, 
former Obama administration Director of National Intelligence; Senator 
Saxby Chambliss, former Senate Intelligence Committee vice chair; 
Representative Porter Goss, former CIA Director and House Intelligence 
Committee chairman; Gen. Michael Hayden, former Bush administration CIA 
Director; Senator Bob Kerrey,

[[Page S2718]]

Democratic Senator from Nebraska, who was on the Senate Intelligence 
Committee and was the vice chairman; Henry Kissinger, former Secretary 
of State; Mike McConnell, former Obama administration Director of 
National Intelligence; ADM William McRaven, former commander of 
USSOCOM; Michael Morell, former Obama administration Acting and Deputy 
CIA Director; Michael Mukasey, former Bush administration Attorney 
General; Leon Panetta, former Obama administration CIA Director and 
Secretary of Defense;  Mike Rogers, Republican Congressman and former 
House Intel Committee chairman; George Shultz, an incredible statesman 
and former Secretary of State under President Reagan; and George Tenet, 
former Clinton and Bush administrations CIA Director.
  That is impressive. That is an impressive list. That is the who's 
who--Democrat and Republican--of who has been in charge of our 
intelligence services over the last two to three decades, and they are 
all supporting Ms. Haspel. She is qualified. She has the support of 
everybody.
  I want to briefly talk about essentially where the nomination has 
been focused. In Washington, a lot of times you can have an issue that 
comes up, and everybody focuses on it, and you miss the broader 
picture. The broader picture is that she is very well qualified and has 
the confidence, literally, of every senior official in the intelligence 
agencies she has served under, but the focus has been in many ways 
consumed by her role, which was a very low-level role, in what became 
known as the enhanced interrogation program that the CIA enacted after 
9/11.
  It is hard not to say that in the discussion of this, seeing what 
some of my colleagues have said and what some former Members of the 
Senate and House have said, there seems to be a lot of amnesia going on 
here.
  I think it is important to take us back to the day that Ms. Haspel 
started at the CIA's Counterterrorism Center, as I mentioned, on 
September 11, 2001. For those of us who remember, it was a very 
frightening time in our country. Almost 3,000 Americans were murdered 
and almost 8,000 were wounded.
  I wasn't here then, but in Washington, DC, whether it was from the 
President or Members of Congress, there was one demand for the CIA: 
Find out who did this. Find out who was responsible, and make sure they 
don't do it again. Find out who did this. Find out who was responsible, 
and do everything in your power to make sure the United States of 
America and our citizens don't get attacked again.
  That was the No. 1 focus from all the elected leaders in Federal 
Government to the CIA: Protect us. Find out where the next attack is 
coming from, and don't let us get hit again.
  If what ended up happening during this period of U.S. history--and a 
lot of people forget about it. A lot of people forget how scared we 
were. Very few people predicted that we weren't going to get hit again. 
As a matter of fact, everybody thought we would get hit again, maybe 
with a weapon of mass destruction.
  During the course of this time, the CIA started a program--when they 
started capturing terrorists who they thought had information--called 
enhanced interrogation techniques.
  There was a lot of worry about getting hit again. I won't go through 
all the examples, but there are members of the Intel Committee in the 
Senate and members of the Intel Committee in the House who were briefed 
on exactly what the CIA was doing--exactly what they were doing with 
these enhanced interrogation techniques. And that is where the amnesia 
comes in, because we have seen some Members of this body say: That was 
horrible. Yet they were briefed. As a matter of fact, there are reports 
that many Members of Congress said: Do more; find out who did this. 
That was the order that the CIA and the members of our clandestine 
services were given.
  There are numerous quotes from that time. Let me give one from former 
Senator John D. Rockefeller, West Virginia, who was the ranking member 
on the Senate Intel Committee. In 2003, on CNN's ``Late Edition,'' he 
was talking about how we had captured Khalid Shaikh Mohammed--KSM, as 
he was known--who was known to be the mastermind of 9/11. It was very 
clear that at least Senator Rockefeller was saying: Make sure that we 
get as much info as we can from this guy.
  Here is what he said:

       Happily, we don't know where [KSM] is.

  Meaning he was offsite, not in the country.

       He's in safekeeping under American protection. He'll be 
     grilled by us. I'm sure we'll be proper with him, but I'm 
     sure we'll be very, very tough with him.
       There are presidential memorandums that prescribe and allow 
     certain measures to be taken, but we have to be careful. On 
     the other hand, he does have the information. Getting that 
     information will save American lives. We have no business not 
     getting that information.

  This is a year and a half after 9/11, and this is the vice chairman 
of the Intel Committee saying: Get it. Press it.
  The CIA used these techniques, but here is the important thing. At 
the time they were told to go do this, it was reviewed by the Justice 
Department, which said: This is legal. You are allowed to use these 
techniques to try to get additional information. This is legal. Go do 
this. The Government of the United States is telling you that you have 
the authority to do it. It is legal.
  That is undisputed. As a matter of fact, the enhanced interrogation 
techniques were actually developed at our military training facilities 
that we have in different parts of the country, called SERE schools--
``Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape'' schools. That is where 
the techniques were developed.
  There was another reason why people at the time thought that this 
could be legal, because these interrogation techniques and training are 
actually used on our own military. For years, members of the military 
had been going to SERE school, and they underwent these interrogations. 
They underwent waterboarding. It was our own citizens. As a recon 
marine, I went to SERE school, and these techniques were applied to me, 
including waterboarding.
  The CIA was told: Make sure this doesn't happen. The Members of 
Congress were briefed. Intel committee members, like Senator 
Rockefeller, were saying: Do more. The Justice Department comes out and 
says: This is all legal. Go do it. Make sure we are not attacked again. 
Oh, by the way, you are using techniques that we use on our marines and 
soldiers.
  And that is what they did.
  Gina Haspel was not high up. She had nothing to do with this. She was 
a GS-15 when this was going on. Yet my colleagues who are looking for 
reasons to vote against her are using this as an episode, saying: Well, 
because she was involved at a low level, we are going to vote against 
her.
  Think about that. Members of the clandestine service were going out 
and risking their lives, being told to do something by the government, 
being told it was legal to do something by the government, being 
encouraged by Members of this body and the House to go do it, and now 
that one of them has risen through the ranks, with a stellar career, we 
are going to have Members come to the floor and say: No, we are going 
to consider her not qualified because she was a GS-15 and didn't design 
the program during this very, very difficult and challenging time in 
American history. If you don't think that breeds cynicism or if you 
don't think that breeds distrust between the Congress and the 
intelligence service, well, it does. It does.
  I even had a friend of mine, and I got recalled to Active Duty for a 
year and a half at the end of 2004. We were staff officers to the 
CENTCOM commander. So we were in the Middle East most of that time. He 
was an agency representative, and he actually predicted this was going 
to happen to me a long time ago. I don't think it is appropriate for my 
colleagues on the other side of the aisle to somehow use this against 
Ms. Haspel, a low-level employee, who was told to go do it. Congress is 
aware. Some Members even said do more--legally justified, used it at 
SERE school with our military. Now we are going to hold that against 
this very well-qualified nominee.
  Let me just add something because I know it is part of the 
discussion. In retrospect, over time, many Members look back on that 
period and say: Well, maybe we shouldn't have done that. Maybe these 
enhanced interrogation

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techniques aren't legal. Maybe that is a bad reflection on our country.
  So there was a debate on this. That is fine. That is the way it 
should be.
  As a matter of fact, one of the Senators whom I have the most respect 
for in this entire body, Senator McCain--who knows a lot about torture 
and a lot about interrogation and has been a hero and is well 
respected--led that debate on the Senate floor that said that these 
enhanced interrogation techniques--waterboarding--aren't what we should 
be doing in this country. So let's clarify this. Yes, a previous 
administration said this is legal. We do it to our own soldiers and 
marines and Navy SEALS, but we are going to look at a higher value on 
what we believe is right and what Americans should be doing or should 
not be doing.
  So we actually had a debate in 2016 on this floor as part of the 
National Defense Authorization Act, where Senator McCain led an effort 
with an amendment that said: From here on out, the techniques that our 
CIA operatives would be able to use and that should be approved are 
only those in the Army Field Manual. Those are OK--not the rest of what 
happened in terms of the enhanced interrogation techniques. Then this 
body passed that. As a matter of fact, I voted for the McCain amendment 
out of respect, appreciation, and the arguments that John McCain was 
making. So we clarified the law.
  In many ways, that is how the system is supposed to work. In 
challenging times with a lot of turmoil, yes, these operatives were 
pushing the envelope, but it was legal. We should take a step back and 
say: Maybe that shouldn't be what we should be doing going forward. And 
we changed the system through debate on the floor, led by Senator 
McCain.
  Let me just end by saying that here is how it is not supposed to 
work. We have a very dangerous situation, like we had after 9/11. We 
asked our best and brightest to risk their lives to defend this 
country, to do really tough operations all around the world. We go tell 
them to do things. This body is briefed on it. We tell them it is 
legal, and then later, we said: Do you know what? Now we are going to 
hold that against you.
  Not only is that unfair, but if we continue doing that, how hard do 
you think it is going to be to get the top people in our country to 
want to join the CIA or the special forces or the military? We tell 
them to go do this, to protect your Nation; it is legal. And then 10, 
15 years later, we say: No, maybe it wasn't.
  I want to thank Ms. Haspel for wanting to serve her country at the 
highest level, for her example, and all the other members of the CIA's 
clandestine services, who have been on the frontlines protecting this 
Nation. I certainly hope my colleagues who are looking at that period 
of history, looking to hold it against her, recognize the broader 
context. Not only were she and the other members of the Agency asked to 
do that kind of work, but they were told it was important to protect 
the country and that it was legal.
  When her nomination comes to the floor tomorrow, I certainly hope my 
colleagues keep this all in mind, look at her broad qualifications, and 
vote for her to be the next CIA Director.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The majority leader.

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