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Joe Palazzolo

Legal Times

12-10-2007

It's easy to get lost in all this guesswork about why, exactly, the CIA decided to destroy taped interrogations of terrorism suspects in 2005. One person who will likely be dragged into the fray is the CIA acting General Counsel John Rizzo, through whom all things legal pass on their way up the spook chain.

Rizzo, according to his bio on the CIA's Web site, has been a lawyer for the agency since 1976. His career spans the agency's Office of Congressional Affairs, Directorate of Operations and now the general counsel's office. He was waist deep in the Iran-Contra affair in the 1980s, and he was the legal filter for the new interrogation and detainement powers that President Bush heaped on the CIA after Sept. 11, 2001.

Rizzo, who has a bachelor's degree from Brown University and his J.D. from George Washington University, had hoped to be the CIA's first homegrown general counsel in 35 years. Bush nominated him to the post in March 2006, but Rizzo's reputation among Democrats on the Senate Intelligence Committee -- as that guy who signed off on the legality of the harsh interrogation techniques proposed after 9/11 -- doomed him in the end. Bush withdrew Rizzo's nomination in June, but he's hung on as acting GC since 2004.

Rizzo, in his confirmation hearings, told the committee that he struggled to keep up with the new legal authority the president had given the CIA: "In the operational arena, CIA in my experience had never before been authorized to detain and interrogate an individual believed to be holding vital national security information. In the foreign intelligence collection arena, CIA had never before been authorized to collect more volumes of information from exponentially more sources, and to analyze, and share that information faster with our counterparts in the law enforcement community, state and local governments, and our foreign partners."

"These were unchartered territories for me, for the Office of General Counsel, and indeed for the U.S. government as a whole, and we have had to navigate on one of the most difficult legal and policy terrains imaginable in close consultation with legal experts throughout the U.S. government," Rizzo said.

According to press reports, then-Director of Clandestine Operations Jose Rodriguez Jr. ordered the destruction of the interrogation tapes in November 2005. The American Civil Liberties Union had been tangled in a FOIA suit with the CIA for almost a year at that point. In February 2005, a federal judge in New York ordered the CIA to comply with the ACLU's request for documents related to the CIA's detainment and interrogation of suspected terrorists. The agency was told to delve into its operations files for any responsive documents to produce for in camera review. If the timing is right, that would put Rizzo, who oversees the litigation division that handles FOIA requests, right in the thick of things.