Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) said Thursday that she will vote against CIA Deputy Director Gina Haspel as leader of the spy agency.
“This nomination is bigger than one person. The torture program was illegal at the time based on international treaties. … I believe those who were intimately involved should not lead the agency,” Feinstein said in a statement.
She added that the “CIA’s Rendition, Detention and Interrogation Program is one of the darkest chapters in our nation’s history and it must not be repeated.”
{mosads}”For the Senate to confirm someone so involved with the program to highest position at the CIA would in effect tell the world that we approve of what happened, and I absolutely do not,” she said.
Feinstein is a former chairwoman and current member of the Senate Intelligence Committee. In 2014, she gave a highly watched speech from the Senate floor accusing the CIA of spying on Senate staffers compiling a report on the CIA’s “enhanced interrogation” techniques.
She also went head-to-head with the Obama administration for years urging them to release the so-called torture report.
Feinstein is up for reelection in 2018 and facing a primary challenger from the left. She faced a torrent of criticism from the left earlier this year after she said Haspel had been a “good” deputy director.
Haspel faces a narrow path to confirmation with at least two Republican senators, Rand Paul of Kentucky and Arizona’s John McCain, opposed to her nomination.
If Sen. Joe Manchin (W.Va.) is the only Democrat to support Haspel, she will need every other Republican in her corner.