Intel chief: Trump CIA pick will ‘fully’ explain torture involvement

The top U.S. intelligence official said Wednesday that President Trump’s pick to lead the CIA “plans to be totally transparent” in explaining her role in now-illegal interrogation practices.

Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats told reporters that a lot of information has been mischaracterized in regard to CIA Deputy Director Gina Haspel’s involvement in the George W. Bush administration’s use of “enhanced interrogation techniques” in the post-9/11 era.

“I have looked deeply into this and she will be making that [information] fully available to the relevant committees,” Coats said at a media breakfast in Washington.

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Coats would not commit to fully declassifying all information on Haspel’s involvement in the the techniques — now classified as illegal torture — including interrogations at a so-called black site prison and the destruction of videotapes documenting the waterboarding sessions of an al Qaeda suspect there.

“We want to declassify as much as possible without jeopardizing someone’s, what we call sources and methods, but every effort will be made to fully explain exactly what her role was and what wasn’t,” Coats said.

Haspel will soon have a confirmation hearing and full Senate vote on her nomination.

Ahead of the hearing, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), asked Haspel in a letter for “clarification in writing on several matters that are essential” to the Senate’s consideration of her nomination to succeed CIA Director Mike Pompeo.

McCain was tortured as a prisoner of war in Vietnam, and said the use of torture post-9/11 “compromised our values, stained our national honor, and threatened our historical reputation.”