Nancy Pelosi Knew About Enhanced Interrogation Before Gina Haspel

I was anxious about Gina Haspel’s confirmation hearing. Here is a woman who has spent her life purposefully in the shadows, brought before a committee whose members bask in the spotlight. Here is a career intelligence officer, a keeper of secrets, an agent of dissimulation whose professional future depends, at least in part, on her ability to speak directly and persuasively in a public forum. And close to the entirety of her life remains classified, making her job all the more difficult.

But my fears were misplaced. Haspel played a tough hand extremely well. The headline will be her promise that the CIA won’t restart enhanced interrogation during her tenure. But her best moments occurred during questioning. She exposed Dianne Feinstein in a misstatement, defended her integrity against Martin Heinrich’s virtue signaling, left Jack Reed speechless, and described the perfidy of Khalid Sheikh Mohamed and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri. KSM was the architect of the 9/11 attack and the murderer of Daniel Pearl, and al-Nashiri was behind the bombing of the U.S.S. Cole, in case you’ve forgotten.