It may still be - apparently complete unpredictability regarding intelligence issues is a merit, even though we want our President-Elect to send a strong message to the rest of the world that we do not torture.  I would love to hear some reassurances from him right now that we are going to have someone at the wheel who agrees that torture is morally wrong and ineffective, no matter what country we do it in.  I would love to hear him say I will veto any bill or appointment that says otherwise.

Instead, I read this, from Hosenball:

Several people close to the Obama transition, who asked for anonymity when discussing sensitive deliberations, say the leading candidate to replace Hayden is his deputy, Stephen Kappes, who was No. 2 in the CIA's covert-ops division from 2002 to 2004, which means he was almost surely involved in interrogation policy. But Kappes's backers say he was working on counterintel issues--uncovering moles--when the CIA set up its "secret prison" network. If Kappes's star falls, other CIA candidates are said to include another former senior spy, Mary Margaret Graham, and former congressman Tim Roemer, an intel-reform advocate.

OK...this is completely childish.  Apparently the Brennan people learned something from their vetting - if someone says torture happened, and you were the top brass, give an at least plausible explanation for where you were.  "I wasn't at the torture conference!  I was..."  Kappes' "backers" provide him a vague excuse here that apparently kept his eyes shut for more than 40 hours a week for...YEARS.  Gosh, even though he was Pavitt's no.2!  

Let's take a peek into Kappes' resume -

"currently Deputy Director of the Central Intelligence Agency (DDCIA), having assumed this position on July 24, 2006.

...He has held a variety of operational and managerial assignments at CIA Headquarters and overseas, serving as assistant deputy director to former Deputy Director for Operations (DDO) James Pavitt, and later as DDO after Pavitt stepped down in August 2004. At the time of the September 11 attacks, Kappes was the associate deputy director for operations for counterintelligence.

Kappes was named Deputy Director for Operations (DDO) for the CIA in June 2004 and took office in August 2004 while the appointment of Porter Goss as the next Director of Central Intelligence was

still pending in the Senate. Kappes succeeded James Pavitt, who resigned in June 2004..."

Democratic Underground gives us more specific dates:

"March 2002-Abu Zubaydah is captured in Pakistan. George Bush is briefed regularly by George Tenet on the details of Zubaydah's interrogation (see p. 22, State of War by James Risen). Cofer Black is in charge of the CIA's Counterterrorism Center and oversees the CIA's hunt for the terrorists. Zubaydah is interrogated in Thailand, where the sessions were filmed. He was waterboarded sometime in the May-June 2002 time frame. Enhanced interrogation methods were used and approval for them came from Jim Pavitt (see p. 21 of ABC News interview of former CIA case officer, John Kiriakou). Pavitt was the DDO (i.e., Deputy Director of Operations). Stephen Kappes, who currently serves as the Deputy Director of the CIA, was named Assistant Deputy Director of Operations in June 2002. Ron Suskind confirms Risen's report that the President and his National Security team were regularly briefed on the results of Zubaydah's torture sessions (see The One Percent Doctrine, pp. 111-115)."

Considering KSM was captured in 2003, and waterboarded, Kappes was obviously intimately involved with that.

Ron Suskind in the "One Percent Doctrine" introduces us to Kappes thusly:

"He was, at that point, associate deputy director for operations - number two in the DO - and being groomed to take Jim Pavitt's job." [p.223]

(You will note the discrepancy in the exact description of Kappes' job - "associate" versus "assistant" deputy. Based on other [1] sources [2] compared to Suskind, I can say they are describing the same position over the same period - Kappes was no.2 to Pavitt from June 2002 onward.)

Now Pavitt is pretty much bottom of the barrel as far as the CIA goes. This is a guy whose job duties literally included approving every single coercive technique used against detainees, as they happened -

"Kirakou made the interrogations sound almost like a game of 'Mother, May I?' He said, 'It was not up to the individual interrogator to decide 'I'm going to slap him' or 'I'm going to shake him.' Each one of these, though they're minor, had to have the approval of the Deputy Director for Operations, who during most of this period was James Pavitt. 'Before you could lay a hand on him, you had to send a cable saying, 'He's uncooperative.