It is true that there is a gruesome sense in which Haspel is the perfect choice to lead the CIA, as we are naïve if we picture the agency as a heretofore noble outfit that her leadership will newly corrupt. This is not a case of a devil given charge of angels. The CIA has a sordid history of regime change, assassination plots, drone warfare, and mass surveillance.

It also has a horrific record of torture, a portion of which was described in the Senate Intelligence Committee’s 2014 report on CIA torture practices in the war on terror. Detainees were subject to week-long sleep deprivation, “rectal feeding” (every bit as awful as it sounds), extreme temperatures, and near-drowning. They were forced to stand on broken legs and feet. One died of hypothermia, half-clothed and chained to a floor. Another was told by an interrogator that he wouldn’t receive due process in court because “we can never let the world know what I have done to you.” A mentally challenged prisoner was tortured and his cries for help recorded so they could be played to coerce his family member’s cooperation. CIA techniques “induc[ed] convulsions and vomiting” plus “hallucinations, paranoia, insomnia, and attempts at self-harm, and self-mutilation.”