AMY GOODMAN: -- and was jailed for nearly two years. Kiriakou personally knew Haspel when he worked at the CIA. This is what he said.
JOHN KIRIAKOU: We did call her Bloody Gina. Gina was always very quick and very willing to use force. You know, there was a group of officers in the CIA's Counterterrorism Center, when I was -- when I was serving there, who -- I hate to even make the accusation out loud, but I'm going to say it: who enjoyed using force. Yeah, everybody knew that torture didn't work. That's not even the issue. Lots of different things work. Was it moral, and was it ethical, and was it legal? I think the answers to those questions are very clearly no. But Gina and people like Gina did it, I think, because they enjoyed doing it. They tortured just for the sake of torture, not for the sake of gathering information.
AMY GOODMAN: So, that's John Kiriakou, who knew Gina Haspel at the CIA. John Prados, if you can elaborate on what he has just said?
JOHN PRADOS: Well, it's actually a very important point to make, because all of this malarkey about putting a woman at the top of the CIA disguises one of the main problems here, which is that what we're talking about is the head of an agency who faces outwards to the entire world. And if we put in place a person who is an acknowledged torturer, then the message that we are sending the world is that America is not your friend, America is not someone that you want to cooperate with. And the problem with this whole question of the secrecy of the documents and all of this is that no one outside the rarefied, classified levels of this secret society, if you want to call it that, knows what the story, the real story, is with Gina Haspel. So the consequence of that is essentially that the Senate is being asked, the American people are being asked, to accept a pig in a poke.
AMY GOODMAN: Which is why the American Civil Liberties Union has filed a Freedom of Information Act request seeking documents relating to the CIA's efforts to get the Senate to confirm Gina Haspel as CIA director. The CIA has said it's being, quote, "more robust than normal" in supporting Haspel's nomination. This includes a string of enthusiastic tweets and press releases endorsing Haspel's record. ACLU attorney Dror Ladin called these efforts propaganda, saying, "For years, the CIA waged a propaganda campaign to mislead the American public and its elected representatives about the CIA's brutal and unlawful torture program. ... The American people have a right to know about the new propaganda campaign that the CIA is now waging on behalf of Gina Haspel even as it hides her responsibility for torture and role in destruction of torture evidence." That's what the ACLU is saying. And, of course, Gina Haspel is now acting head of the CIA, so she is in charge of what gets out and what doesn't. You, John Prados, have written that the confirmation hearing would actually be an important event to get information out, if in fact you believe Democrats or Republicans will ask about her role in torture.
JOHN PRADOS: Well, actually, and let me add to what you just said. I work for the National Security Archive. We have also filed suit for those documents. And so, there's widespread efforts to open up the record. I don't think any of this is going to happen, though, before the nomination hearing. And that's part of our problem.
In any case, I want to also add to the conversation about the director of the CIA being sold, actually, like a box of cereal. For example, to this day, this morning, there is no publicly available document that even tells you what were Gina Haspel's duty stations during her 30-year career at the CIA. We know the things that we talked about earlier in the program, and that's almost the only open information that exists. There was actually a CIA release that gave some details about Ms. Haspel's career. But if you went to the CIA's website, you could not find that document. That's how open the agency's approach to informing the American public on this is.
AMY GOODMAN: How different is her nomination process from other high-level intelligence officials' nomination processes, like Michael Hayden, Porter Goss, George Tenet?
JOHN PRADOS: Very different. The standard has always been that there is a high degree of detail, a high degree of inquiry, applied in one of these situations. The nominee fills out an extensive questionnaire. This is made available to the public. The nominee appears at hearings, both open and private, and answers questions to the record -- questions for the record. And all of that becomes a package that's available to the American people. Ms. Haspel is going to go to her nomination hearing, as of now, without the public even being aware of what her duty stations at the CIA were.
AMY GOODMAN: And when you heard on Friday that she might withdraw her nomination, or the reporting in the Times she might withdraw as a candidate, what were your thoughts? What do you think this means? And even if she did withdraw or wasn't approved, she could stay as head of the CIA for as long as President Trump doesn't nominate or a nomination process goes forward for someone else, right?
JOHN PRADOS: That's actually correct, yes. But let me go back to my thoughts. My thoughts were, this shows that, in fact, they're starting to understand that there's a problem here. I think, initially, they might have thought that they could just waltz through this process and not pay attention. But when people started asking for information, they began in a posture of denial. And then, as they have come closer to the sort of moment, they're beginning to realize that this is a much more complicated thing than they thought.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, we will continue to follow this, of course. The hearing, at least for now, the confirmation hearing of Gina Haspel to be head of the CIA, is set for Wednesday. John Prados, senior fellow at the National Security Archive --
JOHN PRADOS: Thank you.
AMY GOODMAN: -- has written many books on intelligence and security. Thank you, John.
JOHN PRADOS: My pleasure.
AMY GOODMAN: His latest, The Ghosts of Langley: Into the CIA's Heart of Darkness.
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