President Donald Trump’s appointment of Gina Haspel as director of the CIA is the clearest sign yet that the president has come down on the side of those at the Agency who were the architects of the Bush-era torture policy. Haspel was a protégé of Jose Rodriguez, the CIA’s notorious former Counterterrorism Center (CTC) director and, according to The Washington Post and The New York Times, she was the chief of the secret prison where Abu Zubaydah and others were tortured. Furthermore, the Times reports, it was Haspel who ordered the destruction of video tapes showing the Abu Zubaydah torture sessions, on orders from Rodriguez.
