Trump's nominee to head CIA faces tough confirmation

washington dc -- After a career spent in the deep shadows, President Donald Trump’s nominee to head the CIA steps into the harshest of spotlights this week: a Senate confirmation hearing likely to focus on her record on torture.

Haspel, who would become the first woman ever to head the CIA, made customary courtesy calls on Capitol Hill Monday in advance of Wednesday's hearing, but she is expected to face hard questions about her reported role in the CIA's "black sites" -- overseas prisons the agency used to hold top al Qaeda terrorists.

She walked in for her first meeting smiling for the cameras and told reporters she's "looking forward to Wednesday" when senators plan to interrogate her.

The CIA provided the Senate on Monday with a set of classified documents relating to Haspel's nomination.

"As Acting Director Haspel promised, CIA delivered a set of classified documents to the Senate today so that every Senator can review Acting Director Haspel's actual, and outstanding record," a CIA spokesperson said. "These documents cover the entirety of her career, including her time in CIA's Counter Terrorism Center in the years after 9/11. We encourage every Senator to take the time to read the entire set of documents."

Haspel considered withdrawing her nomination last Friday over concerns that a contentious confirmation hearing could be damaging to the agency, two U.S. officials familiar with the matter confirmed to ABC News.

Haspel expressed her concerns in a Friday meeting at the White House about questions she would be asked regarding her role in the CIA's enhanced interrogation program, these officials confirmed. Director of Legislative Affairs Marc Short and press secretary Sarah Sanders soon visited her at CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, to encourage her not to withdraw.

Despite her cold feet, these officials familiar with Haspel's thinking said the nomination process is now full steam ahead and they're confident she will see the process through. She's been doing mock hearings for weeks, according to one official.

The Washington Post first reported she was considering withdrawing.

On Monday, Sanders seemed to imply Haspel may have had second thoughts.

"Her commitment to the agency is one of the reasons she is the right person to lead it," Sanders said. "If she felt that her nomination would have been a problem for that and for the agency, then she wanted to do everything she could to protect the agency."

The president tweeted his support Monday morning.

"My highly respected nominee for CIA Director, Gina Haspel, has come under fire because she was too tough on Terrorists," the president tweeted. "Think of that, in these very dangerous times, we have the most qualified person, a woman, who Democrats want OUT because she is too tough on terror. Win Gina!"

Currently serving as the agency's deputy director, Haspel is well-regarded within the agency. She joined the CIA in 1985 and has held a series of high-ranking positions at the intelligence agency throughout her lengthy career, including senior leadership positions within the agency's National Clandestine Service, which oversees the agency's spy operations overseas and its most covert operations programs.

At the request of Congress, the CIA has declassified documents shedding light on Haspel's career in covert operations, particularly in her reported role at the agency's "black site" in Thailand.

That location was cited by the Senate Intelligence Committee's report on the CIA's rendition program as holding senior al Qaeda operatives Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Raham al-Nashiri.

The report determined that in 2002 while at the black site in Thailand Zubaydah was subjected to the controversial practice of waterboarding 83 times and to other "stress" techniques such as being slammed against walls, deprived of sleep, and placed in a coffin-sized box for up to 226 hours.

Much of the criticism of Haspel's nomination has centered around her activities in Thailand where she was reportedly detailed in late 2002. She reportedly arrived after Abu Zubaydah’s waterboarding, but before al Nashiri's arrival at the black site where he also later underwent waterboarding.

Haspel's career timeline that was declassified by the CIA does not specifically list her being assigned to Thailand in 2002 when she was deputy group chief at the agency’s Counter Terrorism Center. But the timeline does not detail the 30 short-term duty assignments throughout her career that presumably could have been used to describe a stint in Thailand.

There have also been reports that she advocated for the destruction of video recordings of Zubaydah's interrogations conducted at the black site she ran in Thailand. Those videos were destroyed by the CIA in 2005, triggering an investigation that ultimately resulted in no charges.

The CIA has also declassified a 2011 memo by the CIA's then deputy director Michael Morrell that cleared her of wrongdoing in her role in the 2005 destruction of videotapes that showed the waterboarding at the Thailand location.

Morrell's memo found that, as a senior official in the National Clandestine Service at the time, Haspel had been tasked by her superior with preparing a cable ordering the destruction of the videotapes.

An investigation into the destruction of those videotapes ultimately resulted in no charges.

Among her critics, influential Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona, who is home undergoing treatment for an aggressive form of brain cancer. In March, McCain noted that Haspel's CIA career "has intersected with the program of so-called 'enhanced interrogation techniques' on a number of occasions."

"The torture of detainees in U.S. custody during the last decade was one of the darkest chapters in American history," McCain said in a statement. "Ms. Haspel needs to explain the nature and extent of her involvement in the CIA's interrogation program during the confirmation process."

Haspel's support on the committee appears to have eroded.

In March, California Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein had kind words for Haspel, telling reporters the two have "spent time together. We've had dinner together. We have talked. Everything that I know is that she has been a good deputy director of the CIA."

But last month she took a tougher line, saying in a statement that "to promote someone so heavily involved in the torture program to the top position at the CIA, the agency responsible for one of the darkest chapters in our history, is a move that I'm very wary of."

On Monday, Sanders expressed confidence that Haspel would be able to talk about her role in the controversial interrogation program in an unclassified way during Wednesday's confirmation hearing.

"I'll let her address those questions as they come," Sanders said. "But, as we've said, we think all of the issues surrounding her record, her experience, will be brought up. And we're fully confident in her ability to answer those questions."

Her nomination now appears to depend on the votes of democratic Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Mark Warner of Virginia along with Republicans Susan Collins of Maine and Rand Paul of Kentucky.

But while she faces a tough path, Haspel's nomination has strong backing among former colleagues in the intelligence community.

"She's a great choice. She's a really, really solid leader," said Richard Ledgett, the former deputy director at the NSA and an ABC News contributor. "I think that she will do a great job leading the agency."

Ledgett does not think that Haspel’s links to the CIA detention program will slow down her confirmation.

"The fact that people disagree with the policy of that is their right," Ledgett said, "but I think that she executed correctly within the confines of the law and the guidance that she was given."

ABC News' Alexander Mallin, Katherine Faulders and Mariam Khan contributed to this report.