WASHINGTON _ Gina Haspel, President Donald Trump's nominee to lead the CIA, said the agency should never have started the interrogation program that has been the most controversial part of her background during the confirmation process.
"With the benefit of hindsight and my experience as a senior agency leader, the enhanced interrogation program is not one the CIA should have undertaken," she wrote in a Monday letter to Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), the vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee.
The letter goes a step further in criticizing previous decisions at the agency, something Haspel was reluctant to do during her confirmation hearing last week despite pledging to never revive the secret prison network created by the CIA after the Sept. 11 attacks. She ran one of those facilities in Thailand.
It's unclear whether Haspel's letter will win over any senators on the fence about her nomination. She wrote that she "won't condemn those that made these hard calls" and she did not say whether tactics like waterboarding were immoral.
However, Haspel may have the support needed to win confirmation and become the CIA's first woman director. Sen. Joe Donnelly (D-Indiana) announced over the weekend that he would be the second Democrat to vote for her, following Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.). Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), who was tortured as a Vietnam War POW, opposes her nomination, as does Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.).
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