Senate confirms Haspel, first female CIA director

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Veteran spy Gina Haspel will become the first female director of the CIA after six Democrats joined Republicans in a Senate confirmation vote overriding concerns about her role in the spy agency's harsh interrogation program after 9/11.

The 54-45 vote split both parties, and the margin was the closest for a CIA nominee in the nearly seven decades a nod from the Senate has been required. Haspel, who has spent nearly all of her 33-year CIA career in undercover positions, is the first career operations officer to be confirmed since William Colby in 1973.

Haspel, 61, is a native of Kentucky but grew up around the world as the daughter of an Air Force serviceman. She worked in Africa, Europe and classified locations around the globe and was tapped as deputy director of the CIA last year. She worked under former CIA director Mike Pompeo until President Donald Trump moved him to secretary of state.

Haspel was backed by many in the CIA rank-and-file and was robustly supported by senior intelligence officials, including six former CIA directors and three former national intelligence directors, who said she earned the chance to take the helm of the nation's premier spy agency. National Intelligence Director Dan Coats said Haspel has integrity and both frontline and executive intelligence expertise. "We salute Director Haspel, a trailblazer who today becomes the first woman to lead the CIA," he said.

Her opponents argued it wasn't right to promote someone who supervised a covert detention site in Thailand where terror suspects were waterboarded, an interrogation technique simulating drowning. They said the U.S. needed to slam closed what was one of the CIA's darkest chapters tainting America's image with allies abroad.

Several senators said Haspel was not forthcoming in answering questions about her role in the torture program or the CIA's decision to destroy video-taped evidence of the sessions. They also had questions about her rejection of the now-banned techniques.

Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., said in a floor speech Haspel "offered up almost the classic Washington non-apology." He asked how the Senate could take seriously Haspel's "conversion on torture?"

Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., said the world was watching the confirmation vote, which he called a "referendum on torture." He said the so-called "enhanced interrogation techniques" the CIA used at black sites, including slamming detainees against walls and confining them in coffin-shaped boxes, amounted to "government-sanctioned torture."

Haspel has vowed never to restart such a program and says her "strong moral compass" would prevent her from carrying out any presidential order she found objectionable. That was enough to coax some senators into the "yes" column. But Leahy said he still questioned her judgment and lamented she has never publicly condemned torture as "immoral."