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The trial of the terrorist who organized the murderous attack on the USS Cole, a Navy destroyer refueling in the port of Aden in Yemen way back in October 2000, should have been—to coin a phrase—a slam dunk. Alas, it’s in its second decade—and yet a new side of Gina Haspel has emerged in it.

Interrogators had plenty of evidence to work with when CIA operatives finally tracked down Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri in Dubai in 2002.  Ace FBI counterterrorism agent Ali Soufan had been on the trail of Al-Nashiri’s mayhem for years.  Instead of taking him to trial in federal court in New York, however—where many a terrorist suspect had been successfully prosecuted—the operatives threw him into the maw of the CIA’s black site interrogation centers. Sitting atop one of those pinnacles of pain in Thailand, where al-Nashiri was repeatedly thrown against a wall, waterboarded, forced naked into a coffin-like box and threatened with a gun and electric d…