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Gina Haspel: Torturers Should be Punished, not Promoted

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Water and rack in the torture museum in the Ca...
Water and rack in the torture museum in the Castle of the Counts, Ghent, Belgium: The victim is forced water and then stretched out. Useful knowledge for the CIA (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

US president Donald Trump should never have nominated Gina Haspel to head the Central Intelligence Agency.

When Haspel offered to withdraw her name from consideration, as the Washington Post reports she did during a White House meeting in early May, her offer should have been gratefully accepted.

The US Senate should vote against confirming her appointment — ideally, by a margin of 100-0. Each “yes” vote will darken the stain on America’s honor represented by Haspel’s career thus far.

Gina Haspel doesn’t belong at the head of the CIA. She doesn’t belong in the CIA at all. Nor does she belong in any other position of government authority.

Gina Haspel belongs in prison.

As “Chief of Base” at a secret CIA prison in Thailand called “Cat’s Eye,” Haspel oversaw the torture, including “waterboarding,” of Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, suspected mastermind of the October 2000 attack on the USS Cole in Yemen.

Later, as Chief of Staff to Jose Rodriquez, head of the CIA’s National Clandestine Service, Haspel drafted a cable ordering destruction of videotapes documenting the torture of al-Nashiri and of another prisoner, Abu Zubaydah.

So far as I can tell, neither of the above claims is disputed by Haspel or by anyone else.

Torture is a crime under both US law and international law. And in the form of “waterboarding,” it is a crime for which the US executed six Japanese generals after World War 2.

United States Code, Title 18 §2340A provides for a fine and up to 20 years imprisonment for torture not resulting in death.

As for the videotapes, US Code 18 §1519 mandates similar punishment for one who “knowingly alters, destroys, mutilates, conceals, covers up, falsifies, or makes a false entry in any record, document, or tangible object with the intent to impede, obstruct, or influence the investigation or proper administration of any matter within the jurisdiction of any department or agency of the United States …”

I can’t seem to find the parts of those code sections where the perpetrator is to be promoted to the top position in the Central Intelligence Agency.

Maybe Haspel was “small fry.” Perhaps she only oversaw torture of one person in one place. Perhaps drafting that cable ordering the evidence destroyed was just a coincidental assignment.

But not having caught the bigger fish yet is no excuse for throwing this one back, let alone promoting her to head the very organization under whose auspices she committed her crimes.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

Op-Eds

CFPB Makes War on the Poor in the name of “Protecting” Them

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Daniel Press of the Competitive Enterprise Institute calls the US Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s name “the ultimate misnomer.” He’s right. The “Protection” part only makes sense in the manner of mob racket slang: “Nice loan operation you got there. Be a shame if anything happened to it.”

The CFPB’s latest attack on the poor is a rule putting new restrictions on much-maligned “payday lenders.” Or, to come at it from the other direction, new restrictions on the ability of people to borrow money.

If you’ve ever lived on the low end of the income scale (and yes, I have), chances are you’ve run into unexpected, even emergency, situations where you need cash and need it now. If you’re on that low end of the income scale, you probably don’t have a credit card, or substantial savings, or the ability to take out a bank loan (you may not even have a bank account).

Back when I was in that kind of situation (I distinctly recall once needing to pay for a prescription for a sick toddler, with no health insurance to take the edge off the price) the first-line solution was the local pawn shop. Take something that’s worth a little money — your television, for example — get the money you need, then pay it back ASAP or over time, with interest, and get your TV back. Or, if you can’t manage the payments, it eventually gets sold.

Pawn shops still exist, but I suspect payday lending has cut into their business quite a bit. If you’re employed and get a regular paycheck, a payday lender will advance you some money, which you pay back with interest.

Yes, it’s high interest by comparison to, say, a home mortgage. Yes, some people get dragged down into recurring cycles of borrow and pay. Being poor sucks. Believe me, I know.

But CFPB’s “solution” is far worse than the alleged problem. Their rules just make it harder for you to get a loan, as if some Washington bureaucrat knows your finances and your needs better than you do. You and that bureaucrat have a lot in common: Both of you want to run your life.

People who need money will do what they have to do to get that money. The bottom line of these rules is that CFPB would rather you went to a loan shark, or robbed a liquor store, or sold your children into sex slavery, than paid interest rates they consider too high.

The only worthwhile rule pertaining to payday lending (or any other kind of lending) is to require that lenders be clear and truthful about their terms. Beyond that, the decision to borrow is rightfully yours, not CFPB’s.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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Op-Eds

Trump: For Whom the Nobel Tolls?

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Nobel Committee Chairman Thorbjorn Jagland pre...
Nobel Committee Chairman Thorbjorn Jagland presents President Barack Obama with the Nobel Prize medal and diploma during the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony in Raadhuset Main Hall at Oslo City Hall in Oslo, Norway, Dec. 10, 2009. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Sure things don’t exist in international relations, but  we seem to be witnessing an impending settlement of the nearly 70-year-old Korean War. Kim Jong Un recently became the first ruler of North Korea to officially visit the South, where he conferred with president Moon Jae-In. De-nuclearization and a peace treaty look like real possibilities. Kim is also working out plans for a summit with US president Donald Trump.

Who gets the credit? According to Moon and to 19 Republican members of the US House of Representatives, Trump is the man of the hour and deserves the Nobel Peace Prize for bringing the two Koreas to the negotiating table.

Well, maybe so.  There’s a lot to happen yet — the peace process is approaching, as Winston Churchill might say,  the end of the beginning rather than the beginning of the end — but the thaw undeniably came immediately after, and therefore can plausibly be attributed to, months of bellicose rhetoric from Trump. If things work out, he should indeed get a good deal of credit.

But frankly I’m not sure why he would want the Nobel Peace Prize, given that trophy’s tarnished history. Four past presidents have won the prize. It’s not obvious that any of them really deserved it.

Theodore Roosevelt was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1906 for his mediation work in the Russo-Japanese war. But as late as four years prior to winning the prize, he had busied himself overseeing the butchery of somewhere between 250,000 and a million civilians (as well as 16,000   fighters) in the Philippine-American War.

Thirteen years later, after campaigning on his promise not to take the US into World War One and then promptly doing so at the cost of 116,000 American lives (and no telling how many additional and unnecessary deaths among the forces of other countries), Woodrow Wilson won the prize for his work in establishing the League of Nations.

Most people think of Jimmy Carter, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002, as the peacenik of American presidents. It’s true that he avoided taking the US directly to war as president, but he oversaw and continued or escalated US support for regimes and actions (such as the Indonesian invasion of East Timor) that resulted in hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of deaths.

And then, of course, there’s Barack Obama. He received the prize almost immediately after his election to the presidency and before he had time to do anything of substance. Having received it, instead of going out and earning it, he continued the wars started by his own predecessors and started new ones of his own.

The Nobel Peace Prize is, so far as I can tell, an annual tribute to political hypocrites who make war while talking peace. South Korea’s president is quoted by his office as saying “It’s really President Trump who should receive [the prize]; we can just take peace.” If the peace comes about, any credit accruing to Trump should buy him something more worthwhile than such a bloodstained trophy.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY