A4 EZ RE THE WASHINGTON POST.WEDNESDAY, JULY 31 , 2019
“I think the biggest fear when
Trump was elected was the agen-
cy would be used in a political
manner,” said one former U.S.
intelligence official who, like Has-
pel, worked on operations and
served overseas. “Gina under-
stands: We don’t run policy. We
advise.”
But Haspel has nonetheless
been drawn into policy decisions,
walking a thin line between ad-
vice and advocacy.
In March of last year, the Unit-
ed States joined nearly two dozen
countries in expelling more than
100 Russian spies and diplomats
in response to the poisoning in
the small English city of Salisbury
of a former Russian intelligence
officer, Sergei Skripal, who be-
came a spy for the British.
British and U.S. officials had
worked together and attributed
the attack to Russian operatives,
who used a military-grade nerve
agent called Novichok.
British intelligence officials
were devastated by the attack on
one of their agents on British soil
and furious that the Russians had
spread the lethal substance indis-
criminately. At least four others
were sickened by the poison; one
person died.
In meetings with Trump and
other top administration offi-
cials, Haspel told the president
that if he expelled a large number
of Russians from the United
States, Moscow would read it as a
“strong” response to the attack on
the United States’ closest ally,
according to officials familiar
with the discussions.
Her prediction was based on
experience. Haspel had worked in
the CIA’s “Russia House,” the cen-
ter of operations against the So-
viet Union. She also speaks Rus-
sian and is an expert in the trade-
craft Moscow uses.
Haspel did not tell the presi-
dent to take a strong action, but
her use of the word appeared to
have influenced Trump, officials
said. Ultimately, the president
threw out 60 Russians, the largest
expulsion in U.S. history, and the
response made clear that the
Americans stood with Britain.
“I don’t think her decision to
join with the British on Skripal
was a function of some Anglophil-
ia,” the former British official
said. “It was a calculation.”
Last fall, Haspel again found
herself at the center of an interna-
tional crisis, when Saudi Arabian
agents killed and dismembered
Washington Post contributing
columnist Jamal Khashoggi in
the Saudi consulate in Istanbul.
Haspel flew to Ankara and lis-
tened to an audio recording of the
murder obtained from a Turkish
listening device, The Post report-
ed. In November, the CIA con-
cluded that Saudi Crown Prince
Mohammed bin Salman had
probably ordered Khashoggi’s
murder.
Trump was quick to dispute the
CIA’s findings publicly, and some
CIA officials were furious about
the president’s defense of the Sau-
di leader, according to people
familiar with the matter.
Haspel briefed lawmakers in a
closed-door session. She never
took issue with the president or
tried to correct his statements,
officials said. But after her re-
marks, Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.),
then the chairman of the Foreign
Relations Committee, described
the briefing as the “clearest” intel-
ligence presentation he had
heard in 12 years in the Senate.
Republican and Democratic law-
makers said there was no doubt
Mohammed was responsible and
called on the administration to
alter its policy toward Saudi Ara-
bia, including by abandoning
support for Saudi Arabia’s war in
Yemen against Iranian-backed
militants.
Since Haspel became director,
the CIA has taken steps to raise its
public profile and drum up re-
cruitment. The agency started an
Instagram account, aimed partic-
ularly at educating younger peo-
ple about its work. Haspel’s origi-
nal CIA badge photo was featured
in the first post, along with a
Turkish evil-eye charm that came
from her office. (Early in her
career, Haspel learned Turkish
and served for three years as a
case officer in Ankara.)
In her speech in Louisville in
September, her first major ad-
dress as director, Haspel said that
the CIA would rededicate itself to
the core mission of gathering in-
telligence on nations that threat-
en U.S. interests — with Russia,
China, North Korea and Iran high
on the list.
But current and former offi-
cials said they do not expect big
changes while Haspel is in charge,
and that suits many of them just
fine. Her most important legacy
may be protecting the agency
from a mercurial president who
continues to use the intelligence
community as a political foil.
“I don’t think you’ll see any
innovation from the agency while
Trump is president,” said a former
CIA analyst who is in touch with
colleagues at headquarters.
“They’ll be holding on to what’s
sacred and doing what they can to
make it through unscathed.”
[email protected]Pompeo that suited both their
priorities and mostly shielded the
CIA, current and former officials
said. While Pompeo managed his
relationship with the president —
often spending chunks of his day
at the White House and deliver-
ing the daily briefing — Haspel
effectively ran the CIA. She was a
constant presence in the hallways
at Langley and offered a kind of
reassurance to employees, many
of whom were stunned when
Trump, in his first speech as presi-
dent, stood in front of a hallowed
wall honoring CIA officers killed
in the line of duty and boasted
about the size of the crowds at his
inauguration.
Pompeo also earned the appre-
ciation of some of Haspel’s long-
time colleagues in the operations
directorate, the former senior
U.S. intelligence official said. “He
didn’t require a lot of ‘Mother,
may I?’ for operations.” Pompeo
told career officers that he trusted
them to do their jobs and prom-
ised to support their efforts.
But others faulted Pompeo for
acting more as a political ally to
the president, the former senior
official said, particularly when he
implied that Iran was not abiding
by an international agreement to
halt development of nuclear
weapons.
“When Pompeo went out and
spoke publicly, he was doing ev-
erything he could to put no space
between himself and the presi-
dent, even to the point of saying
things that were inconsistent
with what the CIA believed,” the
former senior official said.
When Haspel testified in Janu-
ary that Iran was in compliance, it
signaled to the agency that she
would speak truth to power, cur-
rent and former officials said.
In early July, Iran announced
that it had exceeded the limit on
how much nuclear fuel it is al-
lowed to possess, as it had threat-
ened to do after the United States
withdrew from the agreement
last year.
When Trump tapped Pompeo
to be secretary of state, he con-
sulted his ally on the best person
to replace him. For Pompeo, Has-
pel was the obvious choice, peo-
ple with knowledge of his recom-
mendation said.
For many career intelligence
officers, Haspel promised a re-
turn to fundamentals.was further strained when Kim
Darroch, the British ambassador
to the United States, resigned
after the leak of diplomatic cables
in which he assessed Trump as
“insecure” and called his admin-
istration “inept” and “dysfunc-
tional.” Trump called Darroch, a
career diplomat who is admired
by senior administration and
White House officials, a “pom-
pous fool.”
Haspel, though, has earned the
trust of the British.
“We’re hard-assed operators
just like the Americans,” said the
former British official. “The peo-
ple who score the most marks
with us are straight and honest
and can get access for us in Wash-
ington.”
While Haspel served in Lon-
don, “the Americans gave us intel-
ligence that let us stop terrorist
plots that would have killed Brit-
ish people,” he continued. “You
knew from talking to her, the
thing that she cared most about
was protecting the U.S. And the
second thing she cared most
about was protecting the British.”
Haspel had been on her second
tour in London when she was
tapped to be Pompeo’s deputy.
She had five days to pack her
belongings and get back to Wash-
ington, a British official who
knows her said.A friend at Langley
At word that Haspel would be
deputy director, sighs of relief
were issued in Washington and
London. Many saw her as a wel-
come buffer, against not only
Trump but also, potentially,
Pompeo. The Kansas congress-
man had no background in intel-
ligence and was best known for
his hard-line opposition to the
Iran nuclear deal and his tenure
on the House Select Committee
on Benghazi, with even some fel-
low Republicans feeling he went
too far in blaming Secretary of
State Hillary Clinton personally
for the 2012 attacks on a U.S.
diplomatic compound in Libya.
American and British officials
worried that Trump may have
sent Pompeo, a political loyalist,
to punish the agency for what he
perceived as a “deep state” effort
to undermine him during the
campaign.
But Haspel quickly formed a
working relationship withco-workers, he said. “Gina was
not a beer drinker.”
But what she lacked in after-
hours sociability she made up for
with deep professional ties to the
upper echelon of the British secu-
rity establishment. “She had ac-
cess to anyone in our service,” the
former British intelligence offi-
cial said.
It is rare for an officer to serve
twice as station chief in the same
place, particularly in as coveted a
post as London. Haspel has be-
come the CIA’s linchpin to the
Secret Intelligence Service, or
MI6, its most important foreign
partner. Her British colleagues
say that she knows them so well —
warts and all — that they call her
the “honorary U.K. desk officer.”
That bond has helped Haspel
stabilize the transatlantic alli-
ance, which Trump has assailed
in speeches and tweets. In addi-
tion to threatening that he might
pull out of NATO, Trump has
accused the United Kingdom of
conspiring with American intelli-
gence to spy on his presidential
campaign.
Those accusations have rattled
the British government at the
highest levels. The United States
and the United Kingdom share
more intelligence with each other
than with any other nation. And
they are party to what officials
describe as an inviolable agree-
ment not to spy on each other or
three other key, English-speaking
allies — Canada, New Zealand
and Australia.
In 2017, then-White House
press secretary Sean Spicer cited
Fox News pundit Andrew Napoli-
tano’s claim that three intelli-
gence sources had told him the
Obama administration used Brit-
ain’s electronic eavesdropping
agency, the Government Commu-
nications Headquarters, to spy on
Trump and avoid “American fin-
gerprints.” GCHQ took the ex-
traordinary step of issuing a pub-
lic statement, saying the claims
were “utterly ridiculous and
should be ignored.”
The British intended to put the
White House on notice that they
would not countenance such ac-
cusations, but Trump has repeat-
ed them, most recently in April, a
few days after the president’s
state visit to Britain was an-
nounced.
This month, the relationshiponce overseen. Her decision later
threatened to derail her confir-
mation to head the CIA.
After becoming director in May
2018, Haspel, who majored in
journalism, confided to a col-
league that there were only two
outcomes from giving an inter-
view to a reporter: “Bad and terri-
ble.”
But it is also not in Haspel’s
nature or training to seek the
spotlight, said people who have
known and worked with her. As a
clandestine officer, her profes-
sional success depended upon se-
crecy. She spent her early years
recruiting spies in foreign capi-
tals. She served overseas four
times as a chief of station. As her
career progressed, she helped run
the CIA’s global fight against al-
Qaeda.
Of the 18 jobs the CIA has
publicly confirmed that Haspel
held, only two were overt: direc-
tor and deputy director, the No. 2
slot, which she held for one year
before Trump nominated her to
run the agency.
“She possesses two key quali-
ties you need in that job — judg-
ment and discretion,” said John
McLaughlin, a former CIA deputy
director.
And Haspel’s peers said she is
smart to keep her head down.
“Your first responsibility as di-
rector is to protect your organiza-
tion,” a former senior intelligence
official said. “With a normal pres-
ident, there is tremendous upside
for the director to be out publicly,
talking about what the agency is
doing and being transparent with
the American people. But this is
not a normal president.”‘Honorary U.K. desk officer’
Haspel’s instinct to subsume
herself into her work is in keeping
with her three decades at the
agency, current and former offi-
cials said.
“She’s unburdened by ego and
self-promotion,” said Michael Su-
lick, who ran the CIA’s National
Clandestine Service, now the Di-
rectorate of Operations, where
Haspel spent most of her career.
Several of Haspel’s colleagues
remarked, unprompted, about
her lack of ego, which they cau-
tioned not to mistake for a lack of
ambition and confidence.
“I’d go into her office and there
was a big poster of Johnny Cash”
— Haspel is a lifelong fan — “but I
didn’t see any photos of herself,”
said Henry “Hank” Crumpton,
who hired Haspel as his deputy
when he ran the CIA’s national
resources division, which gathers
intelligence in the United States
by talking to people who have
traveled overseas.
“She understands who she is,
and she takes her ego out of her
decision-making,” he said. “In the
CIA, that’s pretty unusual.”
It is also unusual for someone
with Haspel’s credentials to be-
come the CIA director. The job
rarely goes to career officers, and
presidents frequently tap mem-
bers of Congress or longtime po-
litical operators, particularly
ones they consider allies. Haspel’s
appointment was unprecedented
in two respects: She is the first
career clandestine officer to as-
cend to the top job, and the first
woman.
“She was very focused. Disci-
plined. People told me, ‘You won’t
become friends with her,’ ” said a
former British intelligence offi-
cial who worked closely with Has-
pel when she served in London.
“She wasn’t all business. But
she was mostly business,” said
another former British intelli-
gence official. Haspel was not the
type to head to the pub withdered his resignation, capping a
tumultuous tenure that often put
him at odds with the president
publicly and privately. To replace
Coats, the president said he
would nominate Rep. John Ratc-
liffe (R-Tex.), a three-term con-
gressman and prominent Trump
supporter who lacks significant
national security experience.
Trump’s relationship with the
CIA and its peers is uniquely
volatile: He has questioned the
accuracy of intelligence on Rus-
sia, implied he would put an end
to clandestine operations against
North Korea and even accused his
own spies of spying on him.
On Tuesday, Trump told report-
ers that he wants his next intelli-
gence director to corral what he
sees as an unruly, hostile bureau-
cracy. “We need somebody strong
that can really rein it in,” he said.
“Because as I think you’ve all
learned, the intelligence agencies
have run amok. They’ve run
amok.”
The director of national intelli-
gence has legal authorities over
budgets and personnel. But in
practice, CIA director has always
been a more influential post with
greater clout. Trump envisions a
more aggressive national intelli-
gence director, and one who is
loyal to him politically.
Absorbing the fulminations of
a president who derided U.S. in-
telligence agencies even before he
took office is not the position
Haspel envisioned for herself,
said people who have known her
for years. But so far, she is suc-
ceeding.
The key to her success? Keep-
ing a low profile.
Haspel has often joined Coats
and a career senior intelligence
official in the Oval Office for the
president’s intelligence briefings,
semi-regular sessions that bear
little resemblance to the deep
dives on pressing issues that earli-
er presidents have taken. Accord-
ing to officials familiar with the
briefings, Haspel and company
boil them down to a few key
points that they think Trump ab-
solutely needs to know. Trump
favors pictures and graphics over
text. And Haspel is careful not to
contradict the president or argue
with him about his opinions.
Unlike her predecessor, now-
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo,
Haspel spends much of her time
at CIA headquarters in Langley,
Va., running the agency day to day
and representing it at the White
House rather than cultivating a
personal relationship with
Trump. That has won her points
with career staffers who were
relieved that Trump picked one of
their own, and not another politi-
cian, when Pompeo departed for a
more prominent perch at the
State Department.
This report is based on inter-
views with 26 current and former
officials who have worked with
Haspel in the United States, par-
ticularly when she served in sen-
ior management roles at head-
quarters, and in London, where
Haspel served two tours as the
CIA’s top representative — chief of
station — a plum post that is
usually the steppingstone to the
agency’s highest ranks. Some
spoke on the condition of ano-
nymity to be frank or discuss
sensitive operations, and to avoid
causing friction between Haspel
and the president.
Haspel, who declined to be
interviewed for this profile, has
never given an on-the-record in-
terview to a reporter, unlike most
former CIA directors, who were
also known to meet informally
with journalists to discuss world
events with the understanding
that they would not be directly
quoted.
She has given few public
speeches as director. One, when
she accepted a lifetime achieve-
ment award at a gala dinner in
Washington before a ballroom of
several hundred guests, was
deemed off-the-record by the
event’s host, the OSS Society,
which preserves the historical
legacy of the agency’s World War
II-era predecessor, the Office of
Strategic Services.
Haspel has also made public
remarks at two universities, in-
cluding the University of Louis-
ville, her alma mater, but they
were brief, anodyne speeches
about her broad priorities at the
CIA, and she took no questions
from journalists who attended.
(She did respond to written ques-
tions from students at the second
event, at Auburn University.)
Haspel can come across as
wooden. She speaks in a mono-
tone, but offstage, she is demon-
strably at ease and evinces a dry
wit.
Haspel has concluded that
there is no benefit to answering
questions that would probably
put her at odds with Trump — on
Iran, North Korea, Russia and
more — and is loath to revisit her
fateful role in the CIA’s notorious
detention and interrogation pro-
gram. Haspel was instrumental in
the destruction of nearly 100 vid-
eotapes of interrogations, includ-
ing waterboarding, at a secret
facility in Thailand that she had
HASPEL FROM A
CIA chief’s strategy: Avoid spotlight
MELINA MARA/THE WASHINGTON POST
Gina Haspel, above, in May 2018 at her Senate confirmation hearing and below at a Cabinet meeting last August at the White
House. Haspel told a colleague that there are only two outcomes from giving an interview to a reporter: “Bad and terrible.”“She possesses two key qualities you need in
that job — judgment and discretion.”
John McLaughlin, a former CIA deputy directorJABIN BOTSFORD/THE WASHINGTON POST