Our dismay about the confirmation of Gina Haspel as CIA Director

In response to the news that Gina Haspel has been confirmed as CIA Director, “Close Guantánamo” is issuing the following statement: 

After 9/11, the United States set off down a brutal, unpleasant, and, ultimately, counter-productive road, involving torture, extraordinary rendition, and indefinite detention without charge or trial.

We continue to resist the ongoing defense of indefinite detention at Guantánamo by the U.S. military and the government, but we are also acutely aware that torture cannot be tolerated, and that those who were responsible for it at Guantánamo must be held accountable, just as those who were responsible for it elsewhere — in the CIA’s “black sites”, for example — should also be held accountable.

Gina Haspel is one of those who should be held accountable for her actions. She was in charge of the CIA’s first post-9/11 “black site” in Thailand, where torture took place, and she was also involved in the destruction of videotapes chronicling that torture in 2005, despite a court order preventing their destruction.

In addition, when she faced her Senate confirmation hearing last week, she refused to say that “the torture she oversaw was immoral, or that it should not have been done, or that she regretted her own role in it — which, according to senators, included advocating for the program internally,” as the Washington Post described it in an editorial, and as we wrote about at the time. 

To be frank, it is not possible to imagine a worse message being sent out to U.S. citizens and to the rest of the world than this appointment, which only serves to confirm 16 years of shameful impunity in the U.S. when it comes to the use of torture.

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We continue, of course, to work to close Guantánamo, and to keep awareness of it in the public eye, and to that end we urge you to join our poster campaign, telling Donald Trump how long Guantánamo has been open, and urging him to close it. We have posters for every 25 days throughout the year, and the next examples are on May 21 (5,975 days), and an important milestone on June 15, when the prison will have been open for 6,000 days. Please do join us if you can. Print off a poster, take a photo with it, and send it to us at info@closeguantanamo.org. Check out all the photos here.

Please also visit, like and share the Gitmo Clock, which counts in real time exactly how long Guantánamo has been open.

In conclusion, we’d like to ask you, if you can, to make a donation to support our work in 2018. If you can do so, it will be very greatly appreciated. To do so, visit the homepage of our website, and click on the ‘Donate’ button to make a payment via PayPal. 

If you can make a regular monthly donation, please tick the box marked, "Make this a monthly donation," and fill in the amount you wish to donate every month.

With thanks, as ever, for your ongoing support.

The "Close Guantánamo" team

P.S. Please, if you will, also ask your friends and family to join us — just an email address is required to be counted amongst those opposed to the ongoing existence of Guantánamo, and to receive updates of our activities by email. Please also join us on Facebook and Twitter.