User:Geo Swan/Gail Helt

Gail Helt, who became director of the Security and Intelligence Studies Program, at King University, in Tennessee, in 2014, was previously an analyst at the Central Intelligence Agency.

In 2018 Helt triggered press commentary through her criticism of her former colleague, Gina Haspel, a central figure in the CIA torture program, after President Donald Trump picked her as his choice to head the CIA. Spencer Ackerman, writing in the Daily Beast, quoted Helt stating she had been told, as late as 2013, that some of the controversial recordings of Abu Zubaydah's torture had not been destroyed in 2005, as the CIA had maintained following their acknowledgement of making the recordings in 2008.

In 2015 Helt publicly opposed the decision of Bill Haslam, Governor of Tennessee, to bar Syrian refugees from trying to settle in Tennessee. Helt argued that vetting the backgrounds of refugees was sufficient to protect Tennesse from jihadist sleeper agents.

On December 21, 2018 Helt confirmed that she owned a painting made by former Guantanamo captive Abdul Malik Wahab al Rahabi. She said the painting remind her of our common humanity.

On January 8, 2019, Carol Rosenberg wrote about a report that Haspel had been assigned to one of the CIA black sites at Guantanamo. She quoted Helt who said there had been “a lot of shadiness” in the CIA's narrative about Haspel's career, and that she would find it "unsurprising" to learn Haspel had been in charge at Guantanamo.