Fact check: CIA Director Gina Haspel was not arrested, injured or found dead
Social media users have been sharing content online that claims Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Director Gina Haspel was arrested, injured or found dead. These claims, likely stemming from QAnon conspiracy theorists, are false.
Examples can be seen here and here .
The screenshot of an article dated Nov. 29, 2020 in this post here , claims that Haspel was arrested after she was injured in Frankfurt, Germany during a CIA raid to secure “the servers”.
The article explains that five special forces troops and a CIA official were killed in the raid and Haspel was flown to Guantanamo Bay Detention Camp (GITMO) where she was treated and “received a tribunal for treason”.
The claim adds that Haspel “agreed to help Trump for a lighter sentence of life which can be revoked if she chooses not to cooperate”. The article includes grammar and spelling errors, misspelling Haspel’s name as “Hasple”.
The claim seems to stem from a conspiracy theory about the United States military seizing election servers from electronic voting company Scytl in Germany. Reuters Fact Check previously debunked this claim, here .
Scytl said in a statement that the U.S. army had not seized anything from them, and they do not have offices in Germany ( here , here ).
CIA spokesperson Nicole de Haay told Reuters via email: ““Well…this is the most absurd inquiry I’ve ever addressed, but I’m happy to tell you that Director Haspel is alive and well and at the office.”
The claims that Haspel was arrested and injured in a CIA raid or that she was found dead are false. The posts on social media present no source or evidence for their claims. The raid of the building where these posts claim she was arrested or injured did not take place.
It is unclear where this screenshot or claim originated but its activity online appears to come primarily from groups and boards filled with QAnon content.
One screenshot was posted by Rumor Mill News on Nov. 30, 2020 here . Reuters found a similar screenshot posted on a QAnon website the same day, it is visible in this 8kun file here . 8kun, formerly 8chan, is a fringe messaging board increasingly popular with QAnon conspiracy theorists (here).
Another post visible here , shows a screenshot of a tweet that claims Haspel was found dead from “natural causes” and that this is “going viral in gov circles but there is currently a strict news blackout.”
This post comes from a now-suspended account here and was also posted on the Qanon site viewed by Reuters, and visible in another 8kun file here .
VERDICT
False. There is no evidence to show CIA Director Gina Haspel was arrested or injured in a CIA raid in Germany or found dead. The raid itself has been debunked.
This article was produced by the Reuters Fact Check team. Read more about our fact-checking work here .
*** This article has been archived for your research. The original version from Reuters can be found here ***
