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Article snippet: MORE’s nominee for CIA director, Gina Haspel, “acted appropriately” in carrying out orders to destroy videotapes of harsh interrogations at a black site prison in Thailand, former CIA Deputy Director Michael Morell says in a newly declassified memo. The CIA released the memo on Friday as part of its unusually public campaign to help Haspel win confirmation.Haspel’s record at the agency has sparked a tense stand-off with Senate Democrats, thanks to her role in a particularly nightmarish episode in CIA history: a pair of interrogations that took place at one of the prison known as “Cat’s Eye,” which she briefly ran. The Justice Department investigated the destruction of the tapes, but no charges were ever filed — a decision that is still a source of controversy among interrogation experts, many of whom were baffled by the decision. In 2011, after the conclusion of the Justice Department review, then-Deputy Director Morell undertook an internal disciplinary review of both Haspel and Rodriguez that found no fault with Haspel.“I have concluded that she acted appropriately in her role as Mr. Rodriguez’s chief of staff, including in her efforts to press for and facilitate a resolution of the matter, as well as in her drafting of the cable that authorized the destruction of the tapes,” Morell wrote. “She drafted the cable on the direct orders of Mr. Rodriguez; she did not release that cable. It was not her decision to destroy the tapes; it was Mr. Rodriguez’s.” Further... Link to the full article to read more