CIA/NOMINATIONS/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT/TRUMP PEOPLE: “President Donald Trump’s pick to be America’s top spy said she wouldn’t allow the Central Intelligence Agency to undertake ‘immoral’ actions even if ordered to do so by the president, and pledged not to restart the agency’s controversial interrogation program. Gina Haspel, addressing the Senate Intelligence Committee that is first considering her nomination to lead the CIA, didn’t fully repudiate the program that many critics say amounted to torture. She said, however, that the agency had learned ‘tough lessons’ after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks and that the CIA under her stewardship would focus on gathering and analyzing intelligence rather than capturing, interrogating or detaining suspected terrorists. Pressed on whether she would follow an order from the president that was deemed legal but that violated her conscience, she said: ‘I would not allow the CIA to undertake activity that I thought was immoral even if it was technically legal. I would absolutely not permit it.’”
-Byron Tau and Nancy A. Youssef, “CIA Pick Haspel: Agency Won’t Go Back to Post-9/11 Interrogation Tactics,” The New York Times online, May 9, 2018 1:26 pm