Her nomination is certain to reignite the wrenching debate over their use and the resulting psychological damage for terrorism suspects. Though lawmakers, human rights activists and others eventually condemned the interrogation methods as torture, the program had defenders. Among them was Mr. Trump, who vowed during his campaign to bring back waterboarding and once said that “torture works,” though he later backed off that declaration.

Ms. Haspel, 61, would become the first woman to run C.I.A. if she is confirmed by the Senate.

“She is an outstanding person who also I have gotten to know very well,” Mr. Trump said on Tuesday in brief comments to reporters on the South Lawn of the White House.

During her Senate confirmation, Ms. Haspel will be forced to answer unsettling questions about waterboarding and her interactions with detainees. She will probably have to answer whether she would agree to reinstate waterboarding as the president has suggested and whether she believes that torture is an effective way to extract information from terrorism suspects.

“I don’t envy her trying to get through confirmation,” said Robert Eatinger, the former top lawyer in the C.I.A.’s Counterterrorism Center. “It’s going to be the first chance for senators to have someone intimately involved in the program in front of them to answer questions. I think they’ll take full advantage of that opportunity.”

Senators who were deeply critical of the interrogation program could stand in Ms. Haspel’s way. Senator Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California and the former chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, oversaw its investigation into the program. The resulting 2014 report found that the program was deeply flawed and those involved portrayed it as more effective than it was, misleading policymakers. The extent of Ms. Haspel’s role in the program is not known; only the report’s executive summary was released, and it obscured the identities of agency operatives.