
CIA new nominee director Gina Haspel ran a torture site and destroyed evidence - NicoJuicy
https://qz.com/1227879/who-is-gina-haspel-the-first-woman-nominated-to-run-the-cia-destroyed-evidence-of-us-torture/
======
apo
The inevitable result of illegal activity going unpunished: normalization.

The Obama administration had eight years to do something about this and
instead decided turn the other way. All we got was a mealy-mouthed admission
that "we tortured some folks."

~~~
croon
It's impressive that we've fallen so low that we're blaming the Obama
administration for not fixing what the Bush administration did. I see it as
normalization of the concept that you can't expect any rational action
whatsoever from the GOP anymore.

Edit: Reading from comments, I should clarify. I totally agree with OP, I just
find it incredibly sad.

~~~
kirse
Obama authorized 10x the number of drone strikes as Bush that killed over 391+
civilians while he was in office, and he did it on his own volition.
Ultimately any president has to make hard life-altering decisions, so lets cut
out the left vs. right nonsense.

Go ahead, read the article, don't let the facts hit you on the way out.

[https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2016/01/12/reflecting-...](https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2016/01/12/reflecting-
on-obamas-presidency/obamas-embrace-of-drone-strikes-will-be-a-lasting-legacy)

~~~
rvo
Obama is also I think one of very few presidents who explicitly targeted and
killed American natural born citizen. Not accidentally, but actually targeted.
Didn't even bother hiding it.

But I agree with the original point, GOP did start this mess on the lie of
weapons of mass destruction.

~~~
shams93
Well you go back to 911 itself and the government involvement with Osama Bin
Laden going back to the 1980s, go back to the CIA making my childhood
incredibly dangerous by dumping incredible amounts of guns and drugs into
cities such as Los Angeles. When do the American people get to tell the CIA
"you're fired!"

~~~
rvo
Those were massive fups.

That is very different from listing the name of an American on a "kill list"
and ordering a drone strike. Judge, jury and executioner.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anwar_al-
Awlaki](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anwar_al-Awlaki)

------
farnsworthy
"In 2002, she oversaw a secret prison in Thailand that tortured two terrorism
suspects. That torture took place within the CIA’s “extraordinary rendition”
program, in which suspected terrorists are sent to US allies, and interrogated
in “black sites” on their soil.

One of the men, known as Abu Zubayda, was waterboarded 83 times in one month
and was slammed into walls by the head. He was deprived of sleep and kept in a
coffin-like box. Interrogators later decided he didn’t have any useful
information.

ProPublica found that Haspel personally signed cables to CIA headquarters that
detailed Zubayda’s interrogation.

CIA videos of the torture were destroyed in 2005, on the orders of a cable
drafted by Haspel. Her then-boss Jose Rodriguez, the CIA’s director of
operations for counterterrorism, signed off on the order. “The cable left
nothing to chance. It even told them how to get rid of the tapes,” he wrote in
his memoir, according to ProPublica. “They were to use an industrial-strength
shredder to do the deed.”"

~~~
mobilefriendly
The Washington Post is a much better source than Quartz on this. Abu Zubayda
did produce much useful information but it was apparently before the "enhanced
interrogation techniques."

------
paganel
>He was reportedly persuaded by defense secretary Jim Mattis that the method
is an ineffective intelligence tool.

I'm glad that there are still people with some common sense and who hold
positions of power in the US defense/security apparatus.

~~~
jstanley
Although it's unfortunate that the argument against torture is not that it is
barbaric and inhumane, but that it is merely ineffective.

~~~
DyslexicAtheist
exactly this!

------
jasonvorhe
So, basically she's fully qualified to lead the CIA?

------
wallace_f
Geeze, Eisenhower and JFK really weren't kidding when they warned about this.

We need a modern human rights movement that respects all people in the world.
This isn't just a one-party problem, the Obama Targeted Killing Doc proves it
spans across both political parties(1). It is also fundamentally antithetical
to being American.

[https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/02/obama-
targeted-...](https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/02/obama-targeted-
killing-white-paper-drone-strikes/)

------
rvo
Welcome to the American security state

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/paloma/daily-2...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/paloma/daily-202/2017/10/18/daily-202-ex-
cia-officers-running-for-congress-as-democrats/59e6b25b30fb041a74e75de5/)

Entire government is run by shady people. Even tech boards of companies like
Dropbox have Secretary Rice on them.

~~~
ppbutt
Good info

------
jstanley
Why has this thread been flagged?

~~~
dang
Users flagged it, presumably because they don't think it fits the site
guidelines at
[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html).

~~~
jstanley
Wouldn't that normally come with the ability to "vouch"? But I saw no "vouch"
button for this one.

~~~
grzm
Vouch works only on [dead] submissions and comments. The counter to [flagged]
(as opposed to [flagged][dead]) is upvote.

~~~
jstanley
Got it, thanks.

------
ppbutt
CIA creates more terrorists than it purportedly defuses by seeding deep
resentment in people through the CIA's actions (torture being one of them).

~~~
cwkoss
Torture gives our enemies moral high ground.

------
Steko
Trump nominates torturer to lead CIA, HN erupts with anti-Obama comments...

~~~
existencebox
I'm frankly more taken aback by both how

1\. Comments regarding how pervasive bad operators are throughout our govt.
are flagged and downvoted to the bottom of the thread, even when they're the
most relevant to HN with respect to governmental participants on tech/startup
boards.

2\. That despite such a high score and comment volume, for what I'd say is a
rather important topic, this thread is already flagged to page 3 and below.

The entire handling of this thread, for the weight I'd give the topic, has
saddened me.

I'll try and make an HN-contributive point with regards to the OP out of this
meta-complaint in observing that while there's a lot of finger pointing and
blame in this thread, I don't see enough asking "Ok, so _now what_." How do we
push back against the normalization of torture? As observed elsewhere, govt.
employees who had a hand in some of this now hold positions within our
companies. Is it feasible/desirable to take a social role in making them
unwelcome there? This is certainly the path I'll be trying, for as little
influence as I have in my business dealings.

~~~
Sone7
My other comment on this page got 11 points in 6 minutes. But since then,
every time I refresh the page my comment shows up as 'compressed' (as if it
had been flagged), and it has been been on 11 points every time I've checked
(now an hour old).

Weird shit happening here for sure.

~~~
existencebox
To echo a sentiment I posted in another thread.

"I don't mean to 'complain about points' but it's rather absurd to look at the
wild swings from +8 to -8 and back again for any of my posts on this topic. It
speaks to me that there are at least two 'factions' with very polarizing
opinions on this, and the context has turned less from discussion into
silencing vs vouching. I certainly don't remember seeing these patterns as
strongly 5+ years ago."

I've become increasingly unhappy with the quality of discourse over the last
few years, especially on these "fringe" topics. It's doubly sad because I
haven't found comparably good levels of discussion that HN sometimes
generates, but for these other topics. (Ignoring the additional sadness that I
fear by sticking our heads in the sand about anything that smells like
politics we're in for a "Very fun" next few decades, I've historically been a
strong advocate that to draw a hard line in the sand between "this is tech"
and "this is politics" is to abscond a lot of responsibility _every_ expert
community should have for the political space they operate in)

------
sean_anandale
Relatedly, 1/4 of Democratic candidates this cycle are affiliates of the
national security state.

[https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2018/03/07/dems-m07.html](https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2018/03/07/dems-m07.html)

~~~
rvo
I gave a much more neutral source below.

~~~
sean_anandale
Jeff Bezos' blog is hardly neutral and it does not appear they did the
original research, but regardless, thanks for laundering the analysis through
legacy media.

