CIA/NATIONAL SECURITY/TRUMP PEOPLE/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT: “When President Trump picked Gina Haspel to run the Central Intelligence Agency, he opted for a seasoned veteran of the nation’s spy apparatus, a career professional removed from the partisan skirmishes of recent years who had the respect of many fellow intelligence officers. But Ms. Haspel’s greatest strength as a nominee, her extensive record, has become her greatest weakness as critics pick apart her role in some of the agency’s darkest chapters involving torture and secret prisons, a history that will be front and center at her much-anticipated confirmation hearing on Wednesday [5-9-18] before the Senate Intelligence Committee. Her nomination nearly unraveled last week because of that record when White House aides examined for the first time C.I.A. message logs that made clear just how accepting she had been of since disavowed interrogation techniques. Ms. Haspel briefly contemplated withdrawing for fear that the president’s team would not give her its full support, according to current and former officials. She changed her mind only after Mr. Trump and top aides reassured her. In a Twitter post on Monday [5-7-18], Mr. Trump signaled his eagerness to fight for Ms. Haspel, casting the congressional debate over her nomination as a question of whether she or her adversaries were more devoted to protecting national security.”
-Peter Baker and Matthew Rosenberg, “Gina Haspel Has the Experience to Run the C.I.A., and That May Be Her Biggest Problem,” The New York Times online, May 7, 2018