Washington,
\nGina Haspel, President Donald Trump\u2019s pick to head the CIA, has offered to withdraw her nomination after some White House officials raised concerns about her ability to get confirmed, the media reported.<\/p>\n
Haspel told the White House she was interested in stepping aside if it avoided the spectacle of a brutal confirmation hearing on Wednesday and potential damage to the Central Intelligence Agency\u2019s reputation and her own, The Washington Post reported on Sunday.<\/p>\n
She was summoned to the White House on Friday for a meeting on her history in the CIA\u2019s controversial interrogation programme – which employed techniques such as waterboarding that are widely seen as torture – and signaled that she was going to withdraw her nomination.<\/p>\n
She then returned to CIA headquarters, informed officials told The Washington Post.<\/p>\n
Taken aback at her stance, senior White House aides, including legislative affairs head Marc Short and press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, rushed to meet Haspel at her office late Friday afternoon.<\/p>\n
Haspel, who serves as the CIA\u2019s deputy director and has spent 33 years in the agency, most of it undercover, faces some opposition in Congress because of her connection to the interrogation programme, which was set up after the September 11, 2001, attacks.<\/p>\n
In 2002, Haspel oversaw a secret CIA detention facility in Thailand, where one Al Qaeda suspect was waterboarded.<\/p>\n
Three years later, Haspel was involved in the CIA\u2019s destruction of nearly 100 videotapes that recorded the detainees\u2019 interrogations, launching an investigation by a special prosecutor who ultimately decided not to bring charges against those involved.<\/p>\n
An administration official told The Washington Post that the nomination remains on track.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is a hearing prep session today, courtesy calls with senators Monday and Tuesday, and classified materials will be delivered to Senate security so senators can read the real record instead of relying on gossip and unfounded smears,\u201d the official added.<\/p>\n
A CIA spokesperson told CNN on Sunday: \u201cThere has been a fascinating phenomenon over the last few weeks. Those who know the true Gina Haspel\u2014who worked with her, who served with her, who helped her confront terrorism, Russia and countless other threats to our nation\u2014they almost uniformly support her.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Washington, Gina Haspel, President Donald Trump\u2019s pick to head the CIA, has offered to withdraw her nomination after some White House officials raised concerns about her ability to get confirmed, the media reported. Haspel told the White House she was interested in stepping aside if it avoided the spectacle of a brutal confirmation hearing on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":30373,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[87],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-30372","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30372","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30372"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30372\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30374,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30372\/revisions\/30374"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30373"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30372"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30372"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30372"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}