Would she torture again?
WANTED: qualified candidates to work for the world’s most scrutinised organisation. Applicants should be aware that the CEO has a history of undermining staff and firing them publicly. They should also know that his lawyer is under criminal investigation. Oh, and that the former head of the FBI is looking into how the CEO got the job. The successful candidate will face a televised inquisition by members of the Senate in which questions will be raised about their character.
Fifteen months into the presidency of Donald Trump, nobody who chooses to join his administration can say they have not been warned. His former press secretary has said he regretted misleading the public, under instruction from Mr Trump, on the first full day of the presidency. His former communications director said she told “white lies” for him. His former secretary of state did not deny reports that he called the president a “fucking moron”. The former head of the FBI says Mr Trump is “morally unfit” to be president. When asked what working for Mr Trump was like, his former chief of staff replied: “Take everything you’ve heard and multiply it by 50.”
And yet for America to have a functioning democracy, the president should be able to appoint a cabinet, made up of competent people willing to serve him. Mike Pompeo, who is set to be approved as secretary of state by the Senate this week, meets this standard. Mr Pompeo may be too eager to flatter the president but, sadly, that is a requirement for survival. He seems determined to restore confidence at the State Department, which became demoralised under Rex Tillerson. At the CIA he did not create any public scandal, unlike several of Mr Trump’s other nominees. It is hard to think of many better-qualified choices who would want to work for Mr Trump, and all too easy to think of worse ones.
Gina Haspel, Mr Pompeo’s successor at the CIA, who is due to appear in Senate hearings on May 9th, is a harder case. Ms Haspel is a highly regarded career officer, who can be expected to insulate the CIA from political interference by a president who does not recognise boundaries. But she ran a black site in Thailand where a prisoner was waterboarded. (She also transmitted her boss’s orders to destroy video evidence of interrogations, though an investigation found she was not at fault.)
Desperate times
In using waterboarding, Ms Haspel was following orders that she believed might help prevent future terrorist attacks, orders which had been approved by the White House’s legal counsel. Yet that defence is not enough, for two reasons.
First, the UN Convention against Torture, which America signed, bans punishment that causes physical or mental pain or suffering. The CIA was responsible for both at its black sites. “I couldn’t get away from the mental pictures of naked men chained to the ceiling in a cold, blazingly lit cell for endless days, defecating in their diapers, unchained only to be further abused,” writes James Comey, deputy attorney-general in the Bush administration, in his memoirs which came out earlier this month. Senator John McCain wrote of the harm the CIA did America, saying that it “compromised our values, stained our national honour, and threatened our historical reputation.” Torture, even when it is carried out in defence of America, is un-American. Ms Haspel should have seen that.
Second, the prohibition on torture is less secure than it was when Barack Obama left office. In 2015 Congress passed a law restricting the army and the CIA to using techniques approved in the Army Field Manual. However, when campaigning, Mr Trump said he favoured bringing back “a hell of a lot worse than waterboarding”, though there is no sign that he has sought to do so in office. Mr Pompeo has said he is open to using waterboarding; Jeff Sessions, the attorney-general, voted against the law of 2015 because he thought the CIA ought not to be constrained. In the right circumstances it is not hard to imagine the White House changing its legal guidance.
The CIA’s leading role in interrogation and Ms Haspel’s record put torture at the heart of her confirmation in a way that it has not been for other appointees. In her hearing she must set out what she considers to be torture, and then say whether she would follow an order from a president to carry out such treatment. Only if she acknowledges that what she did before was wrong should Ms Haspel win control of the CIA.