Statecraft

How Gina Haspel's tough approach to terrorism prepared her to become America's top spy

Her responses to questions from senators at her confirmation hearing last week, carefully studied and balanced but quietly defiant and tough, mirror her interactions with President Donald Trump, sources familiar with those interactions tell CNN.

"That's how she deals with the President, I've been in the room," one former colleague told CNN after watching her confirmation hearing. "I can't imagine the President pushing her around," a second former colleague said.

Trump, for his part, has praised Haspel for being "tough on terror ... a woman who has been a leader wherever she has gone."

While Haspel promised to never return to a time when CIA conducts enhanced interrogations, even if Trump ordered it, her entire career has been built on the fight against terrorism.

During a heated debate with a senior colleague at the Central Intelligence Agency's Russian Operations Group, or "Russia House" almost a decade before the September 11 attacks, Gina Haspel stood right up and declared she believed terrorism rather than the Kremlin was the most dangerous, existential threat facing the American homeland.