WASHINGTON _ During a tense Senate confirmation hearing last week, Gina Haspel rattled off a list of national security challenges she could face as the first woman to lead the CIA _ Russian aggression, Iranian ambitions in the Middle East, China's increasing global reach, destructive cyberattacks and deadly terrorist groups.
The senators barely touched those topics, however, instead focusing nearly all their questions on Haspel's role in the agency's then-secret network of overseas prisons where terrorism suspects were tortured in hopes of producing intelligence on future attacks after Sept. 11, 2001.
With the full Senate voting to confirm Haspel on Thursday, the career CIA officer's attention will pivot from a dark chapter in her past to a daunting _ and sometimes contradictory _ array of threats and opportunities around the globe.
The CIA is deeply involved in helping President Donald Trump prepare for a June 12 summit in Singapore where he will try to persuade North Korean leader Kim Jong Un to give up his nuclear weapons. Two weeks ago, however, Trump pulled the United States out of an international accord that has blocked Iran from building any nuclear weapons _ even though U.S. intelligence agencies had concluded Tehran was complying with the deal.
U.S. officials have also warned Congress that Russia will again try to meddle in American politics before the November midterm elections, much as they did in the presidential campaign in 2016. Although Trump has downplayed or dismissed those conclusions as a hoax, the Republican-led Senate Intelligence Committee this week backed intelligence agency findings that Moscow tried to help the president win by hacking computers and spreading misinformation on social media.
"These are fraught and complex and dynamic times," Susan M. Gordon, principal deputy director of National Intelligence, told reporters on a conference call this week.
Haspel will face challenges at the White House as well. Trump has referred to her fondly as "our Gina" and pushed hard for her confirmation, but it remains to be seen if she can forge the same close relationship with the president as her predecessor, Mike Pompeo, who is now secretary of state.
Trump often has been deeply suspicious of career national security officials _ Haspel has worked 33 years at the CIA, mostly undercover _ and sometimes refers to a "deep state" dedicated to undermining him. At times he has publicly derided U.S. intelligence agencies, even comparing them to Nazis.
"I think it was disgraceful, disgraceful that the intelligence agencies allowed any information that turned out to be so false and fake out," he said a week before he was inaugurated in January 2017, referring to a dossier of allegations about Trump's supposed ties to Russia. "That's something that Nazi Germany would have done and did do."
Haspel's Senate confirmation was largely expected after several Democrats signaled that they would cross the aisle to support her. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., opposed Haspel, but he did not cast a vote because he is home in Arizona battling brain cancer.
The vote followed a heated nomination battle that reopened the country's painful debate over the CIA's use of torture after the Sept. 11 attacks. Human rights activists, many Democrats and some Republicans said Haspel was unfit for the CIA's top job because in 2002 she ran a secret facility in Thailand where suspects were waterboarded and subjected to other abuses.
In 2005, she advocated for the destruction of 92 videotapes depicting the harsh interrogations. Although her supervisor at the time, Jose Rodriguez, issued the order, she drafted the cable directing CIA officers in Thailand to feed the tapes into an industrial shredder.
Haspel was not charged in a subsequent criminal investigation, and an internal review determined that she didn't break any agency rules.
Her opponents complained that the CIA refused to declassify relevant records about Haspel's role in the interrogations and the destruction of potential evidence.
"When the Senate votes on a nomination when all the relevant information is by design kept secret, how is this any different than a cover-up?" said Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., who voted against Haspel.
But Haspel found solid support among Republicans _ and from an unusual array of former CIA directors, deputy directors and other intelligence professionals.
Sen. Richard M. Burr, R-N.C., chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, called Haspel "the most prepared individual in the 70-year history of this agency."
"She is intimately familiar with the threats facing our nation," he said Thursday. "She has no learning curve."
Haspel has served as CIA acting director since Pompeo was confirmed as secretary of state on April 26. Before that she was his second in command, the first public job she's held at the agency after more than three decades undercover in Asia, Africa, Europe and at CIA headquarters in Virginia.
