Warner: If this president asked you to do something that you find morally objectionable, even if there is an OLC opinion, what will you do? Will you carry out that order or not? We’re entrusting you on a very different position if you’re confirmed.

Haspel: Senator, my moral compass is strong. I would not allow CIA to undertake activity that I thought was immoral, even if it was technically legal. I would absolutely not permit it.

Haspel Didn’t Run the Interrogation Department, but Advocated Destroying the Tapes

Haspel: Senator, I did not run the interrogation department. In fact, I was not even read in to the interrogation program until it had been up and running for a year. I never served—

Dianne Feinstein: Were you an advocate for destroying the tapes?

Haspel: Senator, I absolutely was an advocate if we could within and conforming to U.S. law and if we could get policy concurrence to eliminate the security risk posed to our officers by those tapes and—

Feinstein: You’re aware of what those tapes contained?

Haspel: No, I never watched the tapes, but I understood that our officers’ faces were on them and that was very dangerous at a time when there were unauthorized disclosures that were exposing the program.

Feinstein: But it also exposed how the program was conducted because there were tapes of the actual interrogation of certain—of 92 detainees as I understand it.

Haspel: No, the tapes were recordings of only one detainee. It was 92 tapes of one detainee.

Haspel Recounts 9/11

Haspel: I’m very proud of the fact that we captured the perpetrator of 9/11, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. I think we did extraordinary work. To me, the strategy is that the controversy surrounding the interrogation program, which as I’ve already indicated to Senator Warner, I fully understand that, but it has cast a shadow over what has been a major contribution to protecting this country.

… And What She’s Learned Since

Susan Collins: Have your views of the program evolved in the years following the attacks on our country on 9/11?

Haspel: Senator, they have. I think it’s very important, I think for any leader as you go through a career you have to learn the leadership lessons. I’m not going to sit here with the benefit of hindsight and judge the very good people who made hard decisions, who were running the agency in very extraordinary circumstances at the time, but as I mentioned to Senator Warner, this country has had the opportunity to reflect because we have some space, we are not fearing another attack, and we have deliberated about the standard we want to use in interrogations and that is the Army field manual.

Haspel Wouldn’t Restart the Interrogation Program ‘Under Any Circumstances’

Martin Heinrich: What would you do if the president ordered you to get back in that business?

Haspel: Senator, the president has selected me to—