“In her appointment last year as deputy director, Haspel garnered praise from high-level Obama-era and Bush-era appointees, including former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and former CIA Director Michael Hayden.” Meet Gina Haspel. She’s a career intelligence officer who’s been running many of the CIA’s day-to-day operations for the past few months. If confirmed, she’ll become the organization’s first woman director.

+ Haspel’s confirmation hearings will likely focus on one topic: Her thoughts on, and role in, the CIA’s post 9/11 interrogation tactics.

+ “Haspel ran the CIA’s detention site in Thailand, the agency’s first overseas secret prison. It was there in 2002 that she oversaw the interrogation of two terrorism suspects. One was Abu Zubaydah, who, according to the New Yorker, ‘was tortured so brutally that at one point he appeared to be dead.’ CIA operatives reportedly waterboarded Zubaydah 83 times and repeatedly slammed him into walls.” Vox: Haspel’s long history with torture.