Widely Reported Haspel CIA Torture Claim Was Fake News; Retracted By ProPublica
by Tyler Durden
ZeroHedge.com
Fri, 03/16/2018
Virtually the entire media complex megaphoned a 2017 report by Soros-backed news outlet ProPublica, and to a lesser extent a similar report in the New York Times, claiming that Trump’s new pick to lead the CIA, Gina Haspel, oversaw a “clandestine base” in Thailand where she participated in, and mocked the torture of suspected al-Qaida leader Abu Zubaydah.
The claims were retracted by ProPublica in an embarrassing correction.
On Feb. 22, 2017, ProPublica published a story that inaccurately described Gina Haspel’s role in the treatment of Abu Zubaydah, a suspected al-Qaida leader who was imprisoned by the CIA at a secret “black site” in Thailand in 2002.
The story said that Haspel, a career CIA officer who President Trump has nominated to be the next director of central intelligence, oversaw the clandestine base where Zubaydah was subjected to waterboarding and other coercive interrogation methods that are widely seen as torture. The story also said she mocked the prisoner’s suffering in a private conversation. Neither of these assertions is correct and we retract them. It is now clear that Haspel did not take charge of the base until after the interrogation of Zubaydah ended.
Of note, the ProPublica article was published right after the Trump administration promoted Haspel to the CIA’s #2 job in early February, 2017 in what appears to be nothing more than a political hit piece.
The Rest…HERE
