Nancy Pelosi Knew About Enhanced Interrogation Before Gina Haspel

The airtight case for Haspel as CIA Director

I was anxious about Gina Haspel's confirmation hearing. Here is a woman who has spent her life purposefully in the shadows, brought before a committee whose members bask in the spotlight. Here is a career intelligence officer, a keeper of secrets, an agent of dissimulation whose professional future depends, at least in part, on her ability to speak directly and persuasively in a public forum. And close to the entirety of her life remains classified, making her job all the more difficult.

But my fears were misplaced. Haspel played a tough hand extremely well. The headline will be her promise that the CIA won't restart enhanced interrogation during her tenure. But her best moments occurred during questioning. She exposed Dianne Feinstein in a misstatement, defended her integrity against Martin Heinrich's virtue signaling, left Jack Reed speechless, and described the perfidy of Khalid Sheikh Mohamed and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri. KSM was the architect of the 9/11 attack and the murderer of Daniel Pearl, and al-Nashiri was behind the bombing of the U.S.S. Cole, in case you've forgotten.

Many have. Indeed, Haspel noted that the debate surrounding rendition, detention, and enhanced interrogation, and society's condemnation of these policies, took place after the sense of constant threat Americans felt in 2001 and 2002 dissipated. It is one thing to pronounce judgment on Haspel and her agency after the laws have been changed and practices investigated. It is another to imagine how one would have acted in her shoes, working to prevent another mass casualty attack in a confusing, turbulent, and dangerous moment.

Ask Nancy Pelosi. She was one of the first Americans outside the Agency to learn of the enhanced interrogation program. Did she resign in protest? Leak to the media? Loudly condemn the practice upon learning of it?

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