Thread by @shaneharris

New: My profile of CIA Director Gina Haspel. More than two dozen interviews in two countries. washingtonpost.com/world/national… Some highlights:

Haspel has often joined DNI Dan Coats and a career senior intel official for Trump's intelligence briefing. They boil down a few key points that they think Trump absolutely needs to know. Haspel is careful not to contradict the president or argue with him about his opinions.

That's illustrative of how Haspel has managed her relationship with the president; which is to say, she has focused more on representing her agency and doing her job than cultivating a close relationship w/ Trump, as Mike Pompeo did when he ran the CIA.

Haspel has kept an unusually low profile. She has given no on-the-record interviews to journalists, and she did not talk to me for this profile. She has given very few public speeches. After two of them, at universities, she took no questions from the press.

After becoming director in May 2018, Haspel, who majored in journalism, confided to a colleague that there were only two outcomes from giving an interview to a reporter: “Bad and terrible.”

In addition to being very protective of the CIA, she cherishes the exceptionally close bond between the Americans and the British. Haspel did two tours as chief of station London. Her (many) fans at MI6 call her "the honorary U.K. desk officer."

Many who know Haspel volunteered that she has no ego. “I’d go into her office and there was a big poster of Johnny Cash” — Haspel is a lifelong fan — “but I didn’t see any photos of herself,” said Hank Crumpton, a former senior CIA officer who hired Haspel as his deputy.

“She wasn’t all business. But she was mostly business,” said a former British intelligence official. Haspel was not the type to head to the pub with co-workers, he said. “Gina was not a beer drinker.”

In 2016, Haspel was tapped to become deputy director to Mike Pompeo. She had five days to pack up her things in London and come home, a friend said. People in London and Langley were relieved. They saw her as a welcome buffer against Trump but also, potentially, Pompeo.

Pompeo, a GOP congressman, had no background in intelligence and was best known as one of the hardest chargers on the Benghazi committee. But Haspel quickly formed a working relationship with Pompeo that suited both their priorities and mostly shielded the CIA.

Some at CIA faulted Pompeo for acting more as a political ally to the president, particularly when he implied that Iran was not abiding by an international agreement to halt development of nuclear weapons.

“When Pompeo went out and spoke publicly, he was doing everything he could to put no space between himself and the president, even to the point of saying things that were inconsistent with what the CIA believed,” a former senior official said.

Haspel has steered clear of any policy positions. “I think the biggest fear when Trump was elected was the agency would be used in a political manner,” said one former U.S. intelligence official. “Gina understands: We don’t run policy. We advise.”

People who know Haspel said she's committed to her mission and keeping a low profile.“I don’t think you’ll see any innovation while Trump is president,” said a former CIA analyst. “They’ll be holding on to what’s sacred and doing what they can to make it through unscathed.”