When it comes to torture, no American officials have been more practiced in those heinous dark arts than the officers and employees of the Central Intelligence Agency who applied it to terrorism suspects after 9/11. Few American officials were so directly involved in that frenzy of abuse ... as Gina Haspel. On Tuesday, in announcing that he had dismissed Rex Tillerson as secretary of state and was replacing him with Mike Pompeo, the C.I.A. director, Mr. Trump said that Mr. Pompeo's successor would be his deputy, Ms. Haspel. As an undercover C.I.A. officer, Ms. Haspel played a direct role in the agency's extraordinary rendition program," under which suspected militants were ... were tortured by agency personnel. Ms. Haspel ran the first detention site in Thailand and oversaw the brutal interrogation of the Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri. The sessions were videotaped and the recordings stored in a safe at the C.I.A. station in Thailand until they were ordered destroyed in 2005. Ms. Haspel's name was on the cable with the destruction orders. In 2013, these activities were of such concern that Senator Dianne Feinstein of California ... blocked Ms. Haspel's promotion to be head of the agency's clandestine service. Senator John McCain ... a former prisoner of war, insisted that during the confirmation process, Ms. Haspel must "explain the nature and extent of her involvement" in the interrogation program.