US Senate approves Gina Haspel as CIA chief

International Desk: The US Senate has confirmed President Donald Trump's nominee Gina Haspel as director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), making her the first woman to head the organisation in it's 70-year history.

The vote on Thursday, in which Haspel won the backing of 54 senators, ends a tumultuous confirmation process during which her ties to the CIA's historic use of waterboarding and other brutal interrogation techniques were widely discussed.

The 100-member Senate is controlled by Republicans, who hold 51 of its seats.

Thursday's confirmation comes a day after the Senate Intelligence Committee voted 10-5 behind closed doors to approve Haspel's nomination.

Despite criticism of her ties to the CIA's former "enhanced interrogation" programme for "terror" suspects in the years after the September 11 attacks, Haspel will now become the agency's first female director.

Senator Richard Burr, the committee's Republican chairman, said in a statement on Wednesday that Haspel is the best person to lead the CIA, saying she "has acted morally, ethically, and legally" during her career.

Haspel, a 33-year CIA veteran, was the CIA chief of station in Thailand in 2002, where the agency ran one of its secret "black" prisons where suspected al-Qaeda detainees were interrogated using methods that included waterboarding, a form of simulated drowning widely considered torture.

Agencies


risingbd/Dhaka/May 18, 2018/Nasim