JNN 31 Mar 2013 Washington : The new head of the US spy agency has appointed a woman involved in running the CIA’s detention and torture program and destroying videotapes of the interrogation sessions as the chief of its Secret service .

The woman, the first female to head CIA’s clandestine service in the agency’s history, a veteran spy that “remains undercover and cannot be named,” was put in the top position on an acting basis when the previous chief retired last month. The question of whether to give her the job permanently poses an early quandary for Brennan, who is already struggling to distance the agency from the decade-old controversies.

The report, however, suggests that CIA Director John Brennan wants her to remain on the job, but to avoid further controversy over his deep involvement in the spy agency’s notorious detention and interrogation of foreign-based terror suspects during the previous Bush administration and the targeted killing campaign during the Obama administration, he has appointed a panel of three top CIA officials to help him select a permanent pick to head the clandestine service.

“The director of the clandestine service has never been picked that way,” said a former senior US intelligence official who spoke on condition of anonymity, the report adds.

The move has raised speculation that Brennan might be after a political cover for a decision made harder by the “re-emergence” of the interrogation and torture controversy and the acting chief’s ties to the campaign.

The ex-official further said that Brennan “is obviously hesitating” at making the chief permanent.

The other candidates being considered for the post, according to the report, include a former CIA station chief in Pakistan and the director of the spy agency’s Counterterrorism Center.

However, neither one is identified in the report because they remain undercover.

The daily describes the woman picked by Brennan as the acting chief of the clandestine service as a “veteran officer with broad support inside the agency,” who is in her 50’s, mastered several languages, and has served in several overseas assignments, including in Moscow.

It further states that she “helped run” CIA’s detention and interrogation campaign after the 9/11 incidents in 2001, when she became a senior authority at the agency’s counterterrorism center.

Moreover, she also “signed off on the 2005 decision to destroy videotapes of prisoners being subjected to treatment critics have called torture.”

According to the report, the CIA set up a video camera at “its secret prison in Thailand” shortly after it opened following the 9/11 incidents. The spy agency then recorded over 90 tapes of “often-brutal interrogations, footage that became increasingly worrisome to officials as the legal basis for the program began to crumble.”
In 2004, when the head of the Counterterrorism Center, Jose Rodriguez, was appointed as the chief of the agency’s clandestine service, “he took the female officer along as his chief of staff.” The two then “repeatedly sought permission to have the tapes destroyed but were denied,” until, eventually, instructions to “get rid of the recordings went out anyway.”

The daily cites former officials as noting that the order (to destroy the tapes) “carried just two names: Rodriguez and his chief of staff.”

The Justice Department has twice investigated the tapes’ destruction and brought no charges against anyone at the CIA.

After the Sept. 11 attacks, she took on a senior assignment at the Counterterrorism Center, which put her in the chain of command on the interrogation and detention program, former officials said.

In a fateful decision, the CIA set up a video camera at its secret prison in Thailand shortly after it opened in the months after the attacks. The agency recorded more than 90 tapes of often-brutal interrogations, footage that became increasingly worrisome to officials as the legal basis for the program began to crumble.

The acting chief, who according to public records is in her 50s, is part of a generation that over the past two decades has pushed through many obstacles confronting women. The CIA refused to comment on her background, but former colleagues said she mastered several languages and served multiple tours in London , New York , Moscow and other cities overseas. She also held senior posts at CIA headquarters.

The service is responsible for sending spies foreign lands and conducting covert operations, “including running the agency’s ongoing drone campaign.”

The promotion of the unnamed woman represents the latest case in which a CIA official with knowledge of the agency’s inhumane torture methods is rewarded, despite failure to stand up against the CIA’s wrongdoings