Title: Ep 4629 — Gina Haspel's Nomination
Show: Scott Horton
Date: 2018-03-21
URL: https://youtu.be/9D7u9ElyjZQ
Duration: 36:00

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[00:00] hey y'all check it out the audiobook has finally been released just go to fool's errand dot u.s. that's the shortcut it'll take you over to the Amazon page and very soon actually I got a brand new website going up at Scott worden org and so soon you'll be able to buy that audiobook directly from me but for now you can still get it at audible and at amazon.com the audiobook up fools air and time to end the war in Afghanistan and yes it's read by me and I'm sorry it took so long I Nick picked the hell out of it trying to get it ready for you guys and then plus it took them forever

[00:30] after I submitted it to finally release it but anyway there you go fool's errand u.s. amazon.com just search for my name Scott Horton fool's errand and the audiobook is up there for you also of course available in paperback and kindle if you want the eleven hundred and fifty footnotes wall is the improvement of investment climates by other means clouds of its for dummies [Music] the Scott Horton show taking out Saddam

[01:02] Hussein turned out to be a pretty good deal they hate our freedoms we're dealing with Hitler revisited we couldn't wait for that cold war to be over quickly so we can go and play with that toys in the sand go and play with our toys in the sand no nation could preserve freedom in the myths of continual warfare today I authorized the Armed Forces of the United States in military action in Libya that action has now begun when the

[01:35] president desert that means that it is not only aren't you guys introducing John Kiriakou he's the host of a show called loud and clear on Sputnik and he's the author of the book The Reluctant Spy about his time in the CIA he famously went to prison for blowing the whistle on some CIA torturers the

[02:06] only CIA man to go to prison regarding the torture program in any way the whistleblower and then he also co-authored a book with Joseph Hickman the great whistleblower from Guantanamo Bay who witnessed the murders are not witnessed the murders but witness the aftermath of the murders of three men there in 2006 and that's called the convenient terrorists all about Abu Zubaydah welcome back to the show how are you doing John thanks I'm doing well thanks thanks for having me good deal happy to have you here so listen there's

[02:38] some controversy going on let's start off with them is well Gina Haspel of course is the nominee Trump's nominee to replace Pompeo for CIA director and you've been saying that in various media various articles you've written including in the Washington Post that at the time you and your friends at CIA back then called her bloody Gina for her role in the torture program and I thought it was really funny actually the way the guy at NPR News gave you the

[03:10] third degree over a statement that you actually retracted although it's pretty clear what his agenda was oh yeah and the way that he handled that interview is amazing to see not really its NPR but still they're supposed to be the Liberals you know but instead Sean Hannity oh yeah oh yeah you know what the issue is with NPR is that there neo liberals just like the Hillary Clinton's just like all these other mainstream pro-war Democrats they're they're all in the same boat I'll tell you the truth I was surprised

[03:41] that he attacked my integrity I wasn't surprised that he attacked me but I decided to just give it right back to him I'm glad I did yeah well now and he had you getting it wrong and and you conceded it he read the words to you say here that she videotaped the torture of Abu Zubaydah you wrote that in our article for reader supported news a year ago so what happened with that yeah you know this was an opinion piece that I had done for reader supported news and I had pulled the information

[04:11] from the front page of the Washington Post and that's what I used what was on the Washington Post what everybody else was reporting because I have to put everything I write through the CIA's publications Review Board and so if I'm offering up something new something that's never been reported before they reject that and I didn't want to have it rejected and so I used what was publicly available so at the time that you made that error you were going off of other reporting but then people are citing you because hey you're John Kiriakou you're

[04:42] the guy who knows so then you become the primary source that people are quoting but then so you're saying now that that is wrong yeah she she got there just after the torture of Abu Zubaydah and she oversaw the torture of absurdity Monisha t so this brings up two points Scott number one does it really matter which one she tortured I mean is it better to have tortured one than the other or we should be forgiving of her torturing one and not the other well it's a almost sort of kinda a little bit

[05:13] I mean the first thing is just because the ProPublica story came out and was cited by Rand Paul and others that was they were partially citing you and they were partially citing others that she was in charge of torturing zubeida so for the retraction it just it was a huge story that had to be retracted regardless of the fact that well yeah but she tortured in a shiri instead and I guess there is a difference right because Anna shiri was actually guilty of I don't know if he was in on the 9/11 plot I think he was in on the 9/11 plot

[05:43] but he was certainly a real al Qaeda guy as opposed to Abu Zubaydah who was mostly just some schmuck right then you wrote the book on him not not necessarily Joe and I in the book we say that Abu Zubaydah was was not the mastermind the terrorist mastermind that the White House and the CIA said he was but he was certainly a bad guy he was the commander of Al Qaeda's two training camps in southern Afghanistan he was the the founder of Al Qaeda's safe house and to shower the house of martyrs he was the guy that that issued the paychecks

[06:15] and and made the fake passports and got you a ticket home if you were done with the fight so he was a bad guy and my second point though is is about ray Bonner the arter the author of that article first of all I don't think the article should have been retracted I think it should have been corrected because it was just that one sentence it should have been corrected but Ray Bonner here's this guy former New York Times journalist the the author of the article for ProPublica does this guy not do any research like the any research at

[06:49] all does he have no national security sources that he can that he can call on he has to rely on John kiriakos op-ed in reader supported news well I mean it certainly was a fair point that you made on NPR that he should have called you he should rather than just you know writing based on that you're pretty easy to get ahold of yeah I am but now it's so zubeida and I haven't read the book because man there's a lot of books I haven't read that I should have read but I'm getting a lot of mixed signals about Abu Zubaydah I mean I've heard him

[13:39] out of zubeida in regards to implicating Saddam Hussein you know specifically out of Abu Zubaydah I don't know that was after my time there but this was also an ongoing problem that was coming out of the White House you'll recall that on September 12 2001 richard perle famously went to the White House and said we've got to attack Iraq the Iraqis were behind this now of course the Iraqis weren't behind it the Iraqis were never behind it Osama bin

[20:27] FBI would elect to either ignore it or check it out and my guess is they would ignore something that ridiculous well in this story apparently they went you know all haywire which you know they got to pretend to be working doing something I guess true all right okay so now Gina Haspel I guess tell me everything that you can tell me about her you've already said that the retraction is correct that she arrived in Thailand after Abu Zubaydah had been transferred to is it

[20:59] are they right about this that he went from there to the torture prison in Poland that by the way used to be a Nazi base before it was a Soviet base before it was an American one well I got to tell you that I when I when I did the first op-ed for reader supported news the one that that was used in that Pro Publica piece the one I see here ago yeah for me here ago from February of two 17 I sent it to the CIA publications review board and they redacted everything having to do with Gina

[21:31] hospitals background except the the piece that that got out the sentence that got out saying that she was in Thailand so I I can't say what she's done overseas I can't even use the names of those countries all I can say is it's been reported widely in the press but I can't talk about those countries at all okay so well you were able to say before that it was correct that in the in the

[22:02] retraction that she didn't get there until after he was gone he said that I said that she got to the secret location after he was done okay yeah the Thailand part was mine never I've never used the word Thailand and even now just now you didn't okay no no but so so she was the chief of staff to Jose Rodriguez yes and so what exactly was his job again well at the time Jose was the director of the

[22:34] counterterrorism center at CIA he replaced cofre black in March of 2002 and as soon as he became the chief he pulled Gina Haspel in as his chief of staff and Jose had been chief of staff to Co for black before he became director so these are all very senior positions we're talking about all right and so yeah this is the thing now I forgot which congressman it was who literally used the phrase but she was just following orders oh my god yeah and I'm not sure who I'm plagiarizing here but it was somebody

[23:06] and it may have been in one of your recent articles that you wrote that she was giving orders yeah she was I mean so you can't tell me which country she was traveling in in this and that but can you explain to what degree she was a boss coming up with implement you know coming up with the policies about with the others and and then to what degree she's actually in charge of implementing them sure the policy was was created by a group of people it was collaborative

[23:36] in nature so you have all these senior intelligence service officers in the counterterrorism center they're coming up with with these techniques using the two contracts psychologist Mitchell and Jessen and then presenting it to the director and the general counsel and then it goes over to the White House for approval then to the Justice Department then back to the White House for the president's signature so that's how the policy was created once the policies created then

[24:06] it's up to to those components in CTC to carry it out so what's the most sensitive the most important position in that whole structure it's the chief of base for the secret site so who does Jose Rodriguez name he names the person that he trusts the most and that was Gina Haspel now there's been a lot made in the press too about whether Gina was the chief of the base the secret site or chief of the station

[24:37] for the whole country I would posit that the chief of station probably didn't even know that this was happening in his own country that's how sensitive this operation was so Gina Haspel was the top dog she was the one who oversaw everything and everybody involved Wow so now what do you make then of Diane Feinstein who knows all of this I mean listen Diane Feinstein is nothing but an endless list

[25:07] of problems and we could start yes direction but you know she's been pretty good on torture first Senator John she's been okay the problem with Dianne Feinstein though is that she is a longtime cheerleader for the CIA and the only time that she really took exception the only time she really got angry was when John Brennan finally confessed to having ordered his officers to hack into the Senate intelligence committees computer system which is an illegal act

[25:40] of course but was never prosecuted that was the only time that she's actually gone under the floor of the Senate and criticized the CIA now on the torture program she could have stopped it don't that when this whole thing was was going down she was the chairman of the Intelligence Committee she's the head overseer and all she had to do was to say listen I don't care what the Justice Department says you're not doing this that's what overseers are for but she never said any of that she just let it

[26:10] go forward yeah well and then I mean at least she did the the investigation later the same one that you're talking about where they accidentally gave her their own report and then and went and tried to get the FBI to prosecute the Senate staffers who'd they given it to for stealing it yeah which is amazing right they had the nerve it's incredible that they had the unmitigated gall to file a crimes report against the Senate staffers who were preparing the torture

[26:41] report it was shocking to me hey you know any of us that the CIA is a separate co-equal branch of government at least I mean they certainly weren't calling her ma'am in that case right they were calling her Diane you know that's right that's right well she she blocked Gina Haspel in 2013 from becoming deputy director of the CIA for operations d-do she would have replaced jose rodriguez when he retired

[27:13] and the reason she did that is because she said that she had questions about Gina's activities at the secret site so a couple of days ago when Gina's named director a reporter for Politico asked Feinstein her thoughts and she said that she's gotten to know G in Haspel as deputy director that they've had dinner together and she's gonna need to answer some questions but that Feinstein has great respect for her well that's

[27:44] exactly the opposite of what she was saying in 2013 and the only thing that's changed is that they've had dinner together yeah so what kind of oversight is that yeah not much so Rand Paul's come out against her yeah but he's not on the committee you know yeah he'll get to vote in the in the general thing but so is anybody on the cheri Committee liable to put her through the wringer at all and then it doesn't matter does it because even her confirmation hearing will be in secret right yeah yeah her confirmation hearing

[28:17] there will be a couple of minutes of open session where you know the TV cameras can show show her sitting there in front of the panel but the hearing itself the meet of the hearing it's all going to be in the Senate Intelligence Committee vault it's a classified hearing and it'll be closed off so there's only one member of the committee that has come out solidly against her and that's Ron Wyden a Democrat of Oregon there have been a couple of other senators Bernie Sanders Elizabeth Warren Brian Schatz of Hawaii who have said

[28:50] that that they're opposed and then that they'll vote no last night Ron Paul or I'm sorry Rand Paul said that he would filibuster both Pompeo and Haspel and that's great but the last time he tried to filibuster a nominee he only lasted a day or two so what we need is we need somebody to bottle it up in committee I don't think that Wyden has the wherewithal to do that if you can't bottle up in committee you're gonna need a lot of senators to filibuster or

[29:21] failing that you're gonna need 40 no votes so that they can't end cloture well and thank goodness for partisanship on this you know the Liberals and the progressives the leftist I'll give them credit have really stayed good on war this whole time but but people between them and Trump have been really silent on war through the whole years they're trying to find a way to slink back to being guests on this stuff and so here's an opportunity for them to say look

[29:51] Bushehr a torturer so we can you know try to you know find a way to oppose so and this is the thing is and I've heard you talk about this about you know just the broader statements about the corruption of American society at this point and certainly in the government where this is even a question where this could be allowed to happen it's the same as you know in 2004 that you know yeah of course John Kerry is just as bad as George Bush in every way and even voted for the war but yeah

[30:21] George Bush lied us into war he has to be fired it doesn't matter Jimmy Carter's the one running against him it doesn't matter who's running against him he must be held accountable for lying us into war and I remember telling that to people and them going huh it didn't even occur to them that yet know the thing is is if you're a guilty war criminal then at the very least we don't promote you to the highest level exactly exactly it's like we've gone nuts and when I say something but you know I give a lot of interviews Scott and when I

[30:53] when I go on these shows and I say listen we're supposed to be a country of laws we're supposed to be a country that respects its constitution people people write me off as this you know libertarian fringe weirdo that when when what I'm saying is is mainstream and it's exactly what the founding fathers were saying yeah well and you know this is the thing to man is about the law is it was already against the law of torture people but what Obama did was he said I have

[31:23] ordered an end to these programs but he didn't say in his executive order that I am ordering the executive branch of government to once again recognize the fact that the law bans torture it always did and you know the anti torture statutes are still there I mean I think am I right that George Washington's orders from the Revolutionary War still stand you're not allowing this stuff yes besides that we've got a federal torture Act where which which specifically prohibits exactly those techniques that

[31:54] we used and and we executed Japanese soldiers for waterboarding American prisoners of war after after World War two so the law never changed yeah Ronald Reagan Justice Department he and ed Meese prosecuted a Texas sheriff for waterboarding summer that's right which and now look they did I mean come on you know you're a CIA guy so I don't know if you want to say this or or if it's for or against interest to emphasize this but the CIA has been torturing people since they're created

[32:24] since before and you know when they were the OSS I'm sure as well and they are legendary instructors torture to torturers in their employ and right-wing fascist dictatorships all across this planet so it's not that they don't torturous just that it's always been illegal this whole time yeah it has been I think over the years that's been that's been the case now that changed that changed in 1975 and 76 with the with the Church Committee and the pike committee on Capitol Hill but after 9/11

[32:58] we really seriously back slid yeah all right man well so I'm trying to think of what questions I'm not asking about Haspel that you could answer I know that you're under restrictions as a former CIA officer yeah yeah I really can't say any more than that well thanks again for coming on the show man really appreciate it thanks my pleasure take care all right you guys that's John Kiriakou former CIA officer host loud

[33:28] and clear on Sputnik he wrote The Reluctant spy and then he co-authored with Joseph Hickman a book called the convenient terrorists all about Abu Zubaydah and his cousin Abu Zubaydah all right so you just learned stuff on skyward you show Scott Horton org youtube.com slash Scott Horton show fool's errand us the audiobook is out by the audiobook fool's errand u.s. and anti-war calm libertarian Institute org and follow me on Twitter at Scott Burton

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