Gina Hasplel, director of the US "Central Intelligence Agency", in her first public appearance, announced that the CIA will return to traditional espionage against foreign states and focus less on counterterrorism and non-state actors.
Gina Haspel joined the CIA in the 1985. Grown professionally in various roles, he became deputy director of the National Clandestine Service and later was appointed deputy director of the CIA in the 2017.
In May of this year she became the first director of the agency, despite some disagreements due to her role as head of an undercover CIA facility (the so-called "black site") in Thailand and the behavior of the staff of the CIA. Agency that, under his command, practiced interrogation of terrorists in detention using techniques deemed too harsh, including "waterboarding".
Haspel, speaking at the University of Louisville, from where she graduated in Languages and Journalism in 1978, addressing the audience in attendance stated that she intends to return the Agency to traditional intelligence gathering against "current and potential adversaries of the nation-state" and away from the counter-terrorism operations against non-state actors which, after 11 September 2011, monopolized the work of the Agency.
Filling current "intelligence gaps" on countries like Russia and China will be "a strategic priority" for the CIA, Haspel said, adding that the agency will try to "sharpen its focus." focus on the opponents of the nation-state ”.
Haspel also spoke of China in his speech, stating that Beijing was "working to diminish the influence of the United States" and expand its authority "beyond its own region, into countries such as Africa, Latin America, the islands of the Pacific and South Asia ".
The Agency will try to expand its presence abroad - added the CIA director - by increasing the number of its officers "stationed abroad" selected from those who know foreign languages such as Chinese, Arabic, Turkish, French and Spanish.