Don’t let a torture apologizing drone lover become the next leader of the CIA!
Mike Morell, who has refused to condemn the U.S. torture program and who has praised the CIA use of killer drones, is a leading contender to become the next director of the CIA. Tell President-elect Biden not to nominate him!
Dear President-elect Biden,
We write to you as people concerned with human rights to ask you not to nominate Mike Morell to become the next director of the CIA.
According to Daniel Jones, the lead author of an exhaustive 6,700-page Senate report on torture, Morell not only defended the U.S. torture program but even “thwarted efforts to hold individuals accountable” for their role in the program. In a 2015 Vice News interview, Morell said that he rejected the description of the CIA program, including waterboarding, as torture, “because to call it torture says my guys were torturers…they were told what they were doing was legal, and I’m going to defend my guys to my last breath.”
Morell’s refusal to call torture by its proper name is damning and helps explain why there has been no accountability for these crimes. Morell’s complicity with this shameful page in recent American history should render him unfit to lead the CIA.
Please instead nominate someone who hasn’t been involved in whitewashing the U.S. ugly record on torture.
Sincerely,