James Cavallaro - The CIA has a long history of torture. Gina Haspel will be perfect for the job
In the coming days,
Gina Haspel will testify before the Senate in connection with her nomination by
Donald Trump to direct the Central Intelligence Agency. Much has been written about
whether someone who oversaw a secret CIA detention site where detainees
were tortured should be eligible to head the nation’s leading
intelligence agency. At first blush, this
may appear to be the central debate. What ethical transgressions are
inconsistent with an agency-level directorship in the United States government?
Certainly, participation in torture should render a candidate unqualified. Yet,
on further inspection, the focus on whether Haspel’s abusive conduct
disqualifies her from CIA leadership
cloaks a far more important and revealing debate.
Judging candidates to
direct the CIA presupposes knowledge of the history of the CIA and a vision for
its role – if any – in a society that purports to be democratic. Interrogating,
so to speak, that knowledge and understanding that vision have been painfully
absent from the national debate. As someone who has
spent the past three decades promoting and defending human rights and democracy
in this hemisphere, I have a particularly dour view of the history of the CIA.
I have seen and engaged with the consequences of the agency’s ruthless
disregard for human dignity and fundamental rights in the Americas.
I have worked with
victims of torture committed by military regimes that applied the Kubark
torture manual developed by the CIA. In El Paso, Texas, I worked with
refugees from El Salvador’s brutal death squads, including children who
journeyed alone to the US after losing both parents to CIA-supported death
squads. In Chile in
the 1980s, I worked with family members of those disappeared by the Pinochet
regime, installed with the support of the agency in 1973. In Central America, I
worked on behalf of survivors of a genocide facilitated by our government,
again, with CIA support. More recently, as a commissioner on the Inter-American
Commission on Human Rights, I worked with states in the Americas still
struggling with transitional justice, seeking to come to terms with violent
histories of authoritarian abuses, all supported by the “company”.
The CIA’s illegal
interventions, support for murderous regimes and efforts to undermine
democratically elected governments are not limited to the Americas. The CIA and
British intelligence intervened in Iran in 1953, inciting a disastrous military
coup against democratically elected Iranian prime minister Mohammad Mosaddegh
after the nationalization of Iran’s oil industry… read more:
