Credit: Wikipedia /  Former Director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Gina Haspel.

By Gary Raynaldo    DIPLOMATIC  TIMES

CIA Director Gina Haspel during the Trump administration quietly resigned from the agency a day before the President-elect Joe Biden was inaugurated.  “The CIA workforce thanks director Haspel for her 36 years of dedicated service to the American people,” CIA said.  It  was no secret that Haspel  had a contentious relationship with President Trump during the final year of his administration.  The then-CIA Director Haspel threatened to resign in early December after President Trump  reportedly sought  to install loyalist Kash Patel, a former aide to Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), as her deputy.  According to AXIOS,  ‘the revelation stunned national security officials and almost blew up the leadership of the world’s most powerful spy agency. Only a series of coincidences — and last minute interventions from Vice President Mike Pence and White House counsel Pat Cipollone — stopped it.’  She was appointed director of the CIA in 2018, becoming the first woman to hold the role, and replaced Mike Pompeo, who had been promoted to US Secretary of State.  Despite being dogged by allegations of her apparent involvement in the CIA’s torture program, Haspel was  narrowly  confirmed to run the US spy agency after writing in a letter to the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee that the program had “ultimately done damage” to the US’ “standing in the world.”  Earlier in her career, Haspel oversaw a CIA “black site” prison in Thailand, known as Detention Site Green.   Declassified cables have revealed the brutality used to interrogate suspects there, including one detailing the harrowing waterboarding of a prisoner periodically for nearly three weeks.  Just over a year after the Sept. 11 attacks, the CIA  dispatched Haspel, a veteran clandestine officer, to oversee a secret prison in Thailand. Shortly after, agency contractors in the frantic hunt for the conspirators waterboarded a Qaeda suspect multiple times and subjected him to horrific  interrogation techniques, according to  the New York Times.  

“It has been the greatest honor of my life to lead this remarkable organization,” Haspel wrote in a statement shared by the CIA on Twitter.”

The #CIA workforce thanks Director Haspel for her 36 years of dedicated service to the American people.
 
You have broken barriers and empowered the next generation of CIA officers. pic.twitter.com/ELzP8XzIKt

— CIA (@CIA) January 19, 2021