Executive Calendar

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I wish to return to a theme that I have been addressing the last few days, and that is the nomination of Ms. Gina Haspel to be Director of the CIA.

Yesterday, the entire country--indeed, the entire world--saw Ms. Haspel's performance before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. Speaking for myself, I could not have been more impressed, and taking an informal poll among others, I think many people felt the same way.

It is a tough requirement of her confirmation process for somebody who has spent 33 years working for the CIA in some of the most obscure--and unknown to the rest of us--spots around the world to have to come and answer questions about her career, much of which happens to be classified information.

We had an open session and then a classified hearing where she and we on the committee could protect the sources and methods and alliances we have around the world that help us collect intelligence for our policymakers and help to keep our country safe. As expected, she faced intense rounds of questioning, as I said, both in an open session and behind closed doors. I believe she did so with patience, courtesy, and poise.

She articulated her view on a number of topics, of course. She defended her record against a series of false accusations and said repeatedly what those of us who have supported her already knew. She believes that U.S. Government actions must be held to a strict moral standard. If confirmed, she would not obey an order she believed to be unlawful, and in her new role, she would not restart interrogation programs inside the CIA.

I want to highlight three developments that I believe lend credence to many of Ms. Haspel's statements during yesterday's hearing. First are the comparisons that have been drawn with John Brennan, former CIA Director under President Obama.

As many others have pointed out, Mr. Brennan served as the No. 4 official at the CIA--much higher up the food chain, so to speak, than Ms. Haspel, who was a GS-15. Yesterday, I asked someone to tell me, as a civilian intelligence officer, how that rank would compare to the military. I was told that would be the equivalent of roughly a major or maybe a lieutenant colonel in the military. I think that is significant when you think that Mr. Brennan was the No. 4 official at the CIA, and at relevant times Ms. Haspel was an intelligence officer in a mid-level position to be sure.

Getting back to Mr. Brennan, he had direct personal knowledge of the interrogation program many have questioned Ms. Haspel about. She told us she was not a part of it, had not been read into the program, and did not interrogate anyone.

Mr. Brennan was confirmed by a vote of 63 to 34, with only 2 Democrats and 1 Independent voting against him. If Mr. Brennan was confirmed, despite his history at the CIA at a time when this program was being implemented, Ms. Haspel should be confirmed as well.

It is worth noting that Mr. Brennan himself agrees. He has called Ms. Haspel ``an exceptionally well-respected professional within the CIA,'' one ``who has held a number of senior-level positions over the years, and has acquitted herself very competently.'' He said she will be able to provide ``unvarnished, apolitical, objective intelligence . . . to [President] Trump and to others.''

Given this body's past support of Mr. Brennan's nomination and our Democratic colleagues' current opposition to Ms. Haspel, it strikes me that she and our current President are being held to a standard to which Mr. Brennan and President Obama were not held. In other words, it is a double standard. I think that is highly regrettable and indefensible.

The truth is that all the Senate Democrats currently on the Intelligence Committee who were Senators at the time of John Brennan's confirmation voted to confirm him, so I believe they have no good reason not to vote to confirm Ms. Haspel as well.

I also remember when President Obama declassified certain Office of Legal Counsel memos in 2009. He promised the men and women of the CIA:

We will protect all who acted reasonably and relied upon legal advice from the Department of Justice that their actions were lawful.

They need to be fully confident that as they defend the Nation, I will defend them.

I hope we will hear from President Obama as he keeps the promise he made back in 2009 to defend those who acted on legal advice from the Department of Justice in good faith. I think we all need to remember those words by President Obama and apply them when considering Ms. Haspel's nomination.

The second thing I want to mention is a letter dated just yesterday that was sent to Chairman Burr and Vice Chairman Warner of the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. It was signed by more than 30 former senior government officials with national security experience in administrations of different parties or on Capitol Hill. They called Ms. Haspel ``an excellent choice to lead the CIA at a time when our intelligence community is under significant pressure at home and abroad.'' They praised her as a leader with ``discipline and guts to take the CIA into the future,'' saying that she is highly regarded in the storied halls of Langley. That letter was signed by former CIA and National Security Agency Director Michael Hayden, former NSA Director GEN Keith Alexander, former Attorney General Michael Mukasey, and many others.

I have said it before, but I will say it again. Those people who know Ms. Haspel best, who have worked alongside her on a daily basis, who have been in meetings with her and have witnessed her decision making like this woman. They respect her, and they think she is the best of the best, so enough already. I think we should listen to the people who know her the best.

The third item related to Ms. Haspel that I will mention was a telling exchange she had with our colleague and friend, the senior Senator from California, Ms. Feinstein. Senator Feinstein asked about a certain book that at least one journalist has claimed proves Ms. Haspel ``ran'' an interrogation program in the days after 9/11. In graciously responding to our colleague's question, Ms. Haspel pointed out something important: The author of the book in question has said definitively that he ``never intended to suggest in [the] book that Gina Haspel was in charge of the CIA's interrogation program. She was not.''

In other words, he corrected a misimpression that was created by the way the book was written and made clear she was not in charge of the CIA interrogation program. The author went on to say that he fully supports Ms. Haspel's nomination.

I think that short episode establishes how careful we need to be in evaluating what is known about Ms. Haspel's distinguished record of service. There are a lot of things being said that simply are not true.

As many have mentioned this week, when it comes to interrogation programs following the devastating attack of 9/11, where 3,000 Americans lost their lives, she in fact was exonerated by both internal reviews at the CIA, as well as two Justice Departments, which determined that she had complied with appropriate legal guidance in place at the time she acted.

Toward the end of the open session, Ms. Haspel spoke about the sacrifices made by the men and women with whom she had served. I think we need to keep in mind how difficult intelligence work can be, especially when it requires one to leave family and friends and take up hardship assignments in far-off corners of the globe. They are not like our men and women in the military, who perform such dedicated and patriotic service; intelligence officers have the additional burden of not even being able to tell their own family and friends where they are and exactly what they are doing because of the sensitivity of their work.

Ms. Haspel told us about a CIA al-Qaida expert who gave birth to her third child in the days leading up to September 11. This analyst, because of her expertise, was deployed to Afghanistan shortly after the terrible events of 9/11, leaving her family and three children behind. Later, she and six of her colleagues were murdered while serving in that combat zone in the service of the Central Intelligence Agency and the U.S. Government. This is exactly the kind of dangerous and selfless work that intelligence professionals embark upon day after day.

They do it because they feel a deep, abiding sense of duty and loyalty to a country that has given us freedoms many parts of the world do not enjoy, and it is that loyalty, it is that sense of duty that propels them to put it all on the line. They pour their blood, sweat, and tears into detecting and helping to stop threats posed against this country by nations and actors intent on doing us enormous harm.

As we heard yesterday from Ms. Haspel, there are more than 100 stars on the CIA Memorial Wall, and 7 more were added just last year. Those are a reminder of the U.S. men and women who have lost their lives while engaged in the service of the intelligence community and our country.

Having served for 33 years with distinction, Ms. Haspel is acutely aware of the sacrifices that have been made by so many with whom she will be working in her new capacity as Director of the CIA, and I know she is mindful of the colleagues and friends she has lost. Yet she believes so firmly in the Agency's mission that she is willing to take on one more challenge, one that may be her greatest challenge yet; that is, leading the entire CIA into an uncertain future.

I want to close by saying that I appreciate her willingness and desire to serve in this new and never easy capacity. I hope we can confirm her in short order so that she can get back to work and continue to do what she loves and help keep our Nation safe.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source