 
Gail Helt is a former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) analyst who publicly criticized the CIA's Gina Haspel (who was involved in the CIA's torture program) after Donald Trump picked Haspel to head the CIA in 2018. 
A 2019 press report stated that Gina Haspel had been assigned to one of the CIA black sites at Guantanamo and quoted Helt as saying there had been "a lot of shadiness" in the CIA's narrative about Gina Haspel's career, and that she (Helt) would find it "unsurprising" to learn that Haspel had been in charge at Guantanamo. Helt also said she had been told as late as 2013 that some of the controversial recordings of Abu Zubaydah's torture by the CIA had not been destroyed in 2005, as the CIA had maintained following their 2008 acknowledgment of having made the recordings. 
Gail Helt became a CIA analyst in 2003. In 2014, Helt left the CIA and became director of the Security and Intelligence Studies Program at King University in Bristol, Tennessee, and the following year, she publicly opposed the decision of Tennessee Governor Bill Haslam to bar Syrian refugees from trying to settle in the state. Helt argued that vetting the backgrounds of refugees was sufficient to protect against jihadist sleeper agents.
Following outgoing President Donald Trump's 2021 attempts to disrupt the smooth transfer of power to his democratically elected successor Joe Biden in the January 6 U.S. Capitol riot, Gail Helt stated that Trump's handling of the riot and protests reminded intelligence officials of similar attempts by dictators in failed states.
Helt owns a painting made by a former Guantanamo captive and has said the painting reminds her of our common humanity.