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Profile: Gina Haspel

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12/05/2018

Gina Haspel

BBC Radio 4 - Profile, Gina Haspel

Mark Coles profiles Gina Haspel, Donald Trump's controversial choice for CIA director.

Mark Coles profiles Donald Trump's controversial choice for CIA director, Gina Haspel, whose nomination has forced her out of the shadows to face difficult questions.

Donald Trump's choice for CIA director, Gina Haspel. Mark Coles profiles the controversial figure whose nomination has forced her out of the shadows to face difficult questions.

Gina Haspel describes herself as a typical middle-class American but the testimony of former colleagues reveals a skilled intelligence operative with an empirical mind, a taste for adventure and a talent for infiltrating terrorist cells.

At her confirmation hearing this week she was commended as an intelligence professional with unwavering honesty but was also grilled about the use of "enhanced interrogation" techniques, the waterboarding of terrorist suspects at a CIA base she ran and the subsequent destruction of evidence. The interrogation issue could block her confirmation by the Senate.

Mark Coles talks to former colleagues and security experts about the agent who's spent 30 years trying not to be noticed but who now needs to convince US Senators that she's right for the top job.

Presenter: Mark Coles
Producers: Estelle Doyle and Diane Richardson
Editor: Helen Grady.

Intelligent speech, the most insightful journalism, the wittiest comedy, the most fascinating features and the most compelling drama and readings anywhere in UK radio.

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