A White House aide said the opposition of Senator John McCain, 81 and battling brain cancer, to the nominee for CIA director does not matter because “he’s dying anyway,” US media reported. CNN and other media said the comment came from a communications aide named Kelly Sadler. CNN quoted a White House official as saying Sadler, speaking Thursday at a staff meeting, meant the comment as a joke but that it flopped. President Donald Trump’s nominee to be the new CIA director is Gina Haspel, a career agency officer who once oversaw waterboarding of terror detainees at a ‘black site’ and at her Senate confirmation hearings declined to describe torture as morally reprehensible, although she did vow not to bring it back if confirmed. Published in Daily Times, May 12th 2018.