Byline: La Tabla/Data Journalism Platform 28 SEP 2025
Marshall Billingslea, a former official of the U.S. Defense and Treasury Departments, faced strong opposition from human rights organizations in 2019 due to his documented promotion of torture, which ultimately obstructed his nomination for a significant diplomatic post in this area. He was later appointed to a senior position that didn’t require Senate confirmation.
Recently, he has gained notoriety for sharing on social media information about Venezuelan officials, sourced from open data, as if it were “confidential information.”
In 2019, President Donald Trump nominated Billingslea as Under Secretary of State for Civil Security, Democracy, and Human Rights, the key official responsible for shaping the country’s human rights policy. His nomination encountered immediate resistance from a global coalition of NGOs, including Amnesty International USA and Human Rights Watch, who cited his role in the development of “enhanced interrogation techniques” after the September 11 attacks.
A bipartisan report from the Senate Armed Services Committee in 2008 detailed Billingslea’s actions as a senior Pentagon official, where he urged then Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld to authorize interrogation methods that later resulted in human rights violations in Afghanistan and Iraq. The report stated he falsely claimed that a Defense Department task force had “endorsed” techniques such as sleep deprivation and isolation, despite objections from top military lawyers.
A focal point of the criticism was Billingslea’s specific recommendation to allow “sleep deprivation” and “sound modulation” for the Mauritanian detainee Mohamedou Ould Slahi at Guantanamo. The treatment was so severe that the Navy officer overseeing Slahi resigned, refusing to be involved in proceedings based on confessions obtained under torture.
Faced with unanimous opposition from Democratic members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and a condemnatory public record, Billingslea’s nomination was not confirmed. In January 2020, the administration appointed him as Special Presidential Envoy for Arms Control, a position that did not require Senate approval.