CIA delivers classified materials to Congress on Haspel

The CIA has given Congress a tranche of classified documents related to the controversial undercover background of Gina Haspel, President Trump’s choice to lead the spy agency.

The delivery — a single cardboard box marked “hand carry” that was wheeled in on a dolly to a secure facility in the Capitol basement — comes as the agency is under fierce pressure from Democrats to declassify more information about Haspel’s involvement in its now-defunct detention and interrogation program.

Because so much of Haspel’s record is still classified — 32 of her 33 years at the agency were spent undercover — much of the fight in Congress has revolved around what information, if any, the CIA will make public about her past.

As the current acting director, Haspel herself is the declassification authority over her own record. On Friday, she reportedly offered to withdraw her nomination if it would avoid a bruising fight for the agency over its use of so-called enhanced interrogation techniques, which are now widely considered torture, in the years following the Sept. 11 attacks. 

Four Democratic senators — Dianne Feinstein (Calif.), Ron Wyden (Ore.), Kamala Harris (Calif.) and Martin Heinrich (N.M.) — are now demanding that the director of national intelligence, Dan Coats, intervene to declassify the information.

“Given that Ms. Haspel, as the current Acting Director of the CIA, is in the conflicted position of serving as the classification authority over potentially derogatory information related to her own nomination, we can think of no more appropriate situation for you to serve as the relevant authority,” the lawmakers wrote in a Friday letter. 

Democrats have complained that the CIA is selectively declassifying only positive information about Haspel and suggested that continuing to keep her record under wraps violates an Obama-era executive order prohibiting the use of classification to “conceal violations of law, inefficiency, or administrative error” or “prevent embarrassment to a person, organization, or agency.”

As members of the intelligence panel, the four senators have access to classified information that the rest of their colleagues do not, and Wyden has hinted repeatedly that there is much about Haspel’s background that remains unknown.

Former intelligence officials — including critics of the Trump administration — have praised her as a professional, experienced officer.