Company Man: Thirty Years of Controversy and Crisis in the CIA
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Me testifying at my Senate confirmation hearing in June 2007. At first, I thought it went okay. It turned out to be a disaster.
At an outdoor ceremony at CIA headquarters commemorating its sixtieth anniversary in September 2007, three days before the withdrawal of my nomination for general counsel.
Director Leon Panetta presenting me with the Distinguished Career Intelligence Medal at my retirement ceremony in December 2009. He was my last director, and in my opinion the most successful.
With Jose Rodriguez, former head of the CIA clandestine service, at my retirement ceremony in December 2009. Even though Jose’s decision in November 2005 to destroy videotapes of terrorist interrogations had caused me considerable grief, I invited him to the ceremony to show there were no hard feelings.
With Sharon at the CIA Wall of Honor during my retirement ceremony.
Acknowledgments
I wrote every word of this book myself, and the large majority of it is dependent on my memory. In part, that was a matter of choice—I believe I have a good facility for recalling interesting and meaningful events and conversations I took part in during my long career. In equal part, however, relying on my memory was a matter of necessity. Pursuant to Executive Order 13292, only former presidential appointees are permitted to have access to classified government documents from their period of service in order to conduct historical research. If the Senate in 2007 had confirmed President Bush’s nomination of me to be the CIA’s general counsel, I would have been eligible to request such access to my classified CIA files to aid me in writing this book. Alas, my nomination cratered, so in putting this book together I had to turn to other means to assist me in refreshing or confirming my recollections of specific episodes down through the years.
In this regard, I greatly benefited from the willingness of a number of my former CIA colleagues—some now retired, others still working at the Agency—to answer my questions, swap memories with me, and steer me in the right direction. For various reasons, they all requested to remain anonymous, but they know who they are, and I want them to also know how grateful I am to them.
I also found that my own recollections of certain events, especially ones that happened years ago like Iran-contra and the Ames espionage case, were jogged and frequently buttressed by reading hundreds of contemporaneous media accounts and a dozen or so books written by both CIA insiders and outside journalists describing the events in question. It had been a very long time since I had done this nitty-gritty sort of research, which is why I am deeply indebted to the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, which in early 2010 extended to me an appointment as Visiting Scholar to support the production of this memoir. Hoover’s role was indispensable to me throughout this process, and its help extended from research assistance to administrative and technical support, including generously giving me an office in its Washington, D.C., facility. In the D.C. office, I was given invaluable and ever-patient support over a three-year period by Sharon Ragland, Christie Parell, Amy Palguta, Tyler Hernandez, Michelle Ring, and Kara McKee. I also want to thank Peter Berkowitz, an intelligence scholar from the Hoover Policy Group, for helping make my Hoover appointment happen. Finally, I want to express my deep appreciation to Hoover president John Raisian and vice president David Brady for green-lighting the appointment, as well as my close friend Jack Goldsmith for starting the entire process. My association with the Hoover Institution has been an honor and a pleasure.
I owe a particular debt of gratitude to Bob Asahina, my collaborator on this book. Bob was involved from the very beginning, and I can state authoritatively that a major reason why any publishers were interested in a neophyte, noncelebrity author like me was that Bob’s name was attached to the project. Bob has a sterling reputation and track record in the publishing industry, both as a collaborator and editor. His expertise in shaping and refining the sweeping narrative arc of my thirty-four-year CIA career—what areas to emphasize, which ones would be of less interest to the reader—was unerring. Bob had no prior exposure in his career to the unique and sometimes bizarre world of spies, but his outsider’s perspective, easygoing demeanor, and keen editorial eye were godsends to me. Bob not only was my invaluable collaborator, but has become a trusted and lasting friend.
Bob Asahina was originally brought to my attention by Jay Mandel and Eric Lupfer, my literary agents at William Morris Endeavor in New York City. That is only one of the many reasons why I am so grateful to them. Jay and Eric took me on as a client in early 2010 when my memoir was nothing more than my own inchoate idea (or fantasy). I knew nothing about the world of literary agents, other than having a general sense that it was a very tough one for a first-time, non-household-name aspiring author to break into. Nonetheless, after one short phone conversation and before I had written a word, they took me under WME’s protective, prestigious wing and have been nothing but wise and encouraging in shepherding me through the long and winding manuscript production and marketing process. I still don’t understand exactly what Jay and Eric originally saw in me, but I can’t thank them enough. In addition, I am very grateful to Erin Conroy in WME’s Los Angeles office, who somehow has managed to interest a major television studio in my story based solely on my bare-bones book proposal. Erin, shrewd yet infectiously optimistic and cheerful, thus successfully paved my even more unlikely path to at least the entry gates of Hollywood. Amazing.
I also had the supremely good fortune of having Scribner as my publisher. When I was first mulling the idea of writing a memoir, I talked to several journalist friends who were published authors to get their take on the pros and cons of embarking on such an endeavor. They all separately offered the same rueful piece of advice: even if a major publisher agrees to back your book (a decidedly iffy proposition at the time), don’t expect to get much hands-on attention from whoever is assigned as your editor. Today’s publishing industry is shrunken and strapped, they told me, and an individual editor in any given publishing house typically has to juggle dozens of manuscripts simultaneously. None of these editors, I was warned, would have the time or inclination to guide some rookie author like me through the editing process. It was the sort of unvarnished, candid advice I was looking for, but in my case, at least, it proved to be wildly off the mark. My editor at Scribner, Paul Whitlatch, could not have been more caring, patient, and attentive at every step along the way. He carefully and skillfully pored over every word of the manuscript, steadfastly championed my cause with his Scribner colleagues, and always made time for me either in person or by phone. A younger man than my own son, Paul’s savvy and sophisticated eye belies his years. I have been so lucky to have him on my side.
Like every former CIA officer turned author, I was required to submit my manuscript in advance to the Agency’s Publications Review Board (PRB) to ensure that it did not reveal any currently classified information. Based on my many years at CIA observing the process from the other side, I can attest to the difficult and at times thankless task the PRB has to perform. The PRB required me to make a number of deletions to my original manuscript. I disagreed with a few, but I understood the rationale for most of them and, of course, ultimately accepted them all. Overall, the PRB was eminently fair with me and did its work in a conscientious and timely manner. For that, I thank PRB chairman Richard Puhl and his dedicated, and doubtless overworked, staff.
No list of acknowledgments would be complete without a salute to all of the people at CIA I met and worked with down through the years. It is not an exaggeration to say that there were thousands of them, spanning three generations. It was my privilege and joy to know them; a more consistently excellent, courageous, and selfless workforce does not exist anywhere. In particular, I was proud to be associated for so long with my colleagues in the CIA Office of General Counsel. The ones I worked with during my early years have largely departed now, but most of those who are there today are people I hired and was honored to lead during the turbulent post-9/11 decade. I have cited a few in this book, and I w
ish I had the space to acknowledge by name all of the other exemplary attorneys, paralegals, and support staff who were so extraordinarily dedicated to me and, far more important, to our country. I do, however, want to give a special, heartfelt thanks to James Archibald, Fred Manget, Valerie Patterson, Nancy Fortenberry, Melody Rosenberry, Donna Fischel, Petra Lewis, and Bruce Hunt. These folks spent time at my side, watching my back, during the last decade of my career spent in the OGC front office when the CIA—not to mention yours truly—was facing unprecedented crisis and controversy. I am indebted to them so much from both a professional and personal standpoint, and I will never forget them.
I have reserved my deepest expression of thanks for last. Some may note that I have not devoted a lot of space in this book to talking about my family. There are a couple of reasons for that. This memoir is first and foremost a chronicle of my CIA career, and I presume that’s what any reader is going to be interested in, rather than be burdened with having to slog through pages of details about my personal life before and while I was at the Agency. Second, I reckon that my personal life is, well, personal; I can’t imagine why anyone other than me and those closest to me would have the slightest interest in knowing more about it.
That said, my family means everything to me, and I love and owe them much more than anything else in my life. I have been blessed since the day I was born. My late parents, Arthur and Frances, were utterly devoted to me and my sisters, Nancy and Maria. They gave us everything we needed to succeed in life as we were growing up, but their greatest gift was their unstinting love and loyalty. My sisters and I all achieved considerable success in our respective professional fields, though my career was marked by public controversy and some harsh outside criticism near its end. By the time I suddenly popped up in the public firing line post-9/11, my parents had been deceased for years. They had been avid news junkies their entire lives. I asked Maria a few years back how she thought they would have reacted to seeing and reading about their baby boy becoming such a divisive public figure. “They’d be thrilled and proud,” she replied without hesitation. I hope so.
My son, James, is my only offspring. He’s in his midthirties. He was born the year after I joined the CIA (I vividly remember changing his Pampers one night on a bench outside the headquarters front doors), so the arc of his life has virtually paralleled the arc of my Agency career. Much as I love the Agency, it is nothing—absolutely nothing—compared to the love I have for him. If this book does nothing else than to serve to give James a better sense of what his old man was up to at work all those years as he was growing up, then I will be a very satisfied guy.
Last, there is my beloved Sharon, my wife for the past two decades and the mother of my terrific stepdaughter Stephanie Breed. I have noted elsewhere in this book that applying to Brown University and later to the CIA were two of the best decisions I ever made in my life. But my best decision of all, hands down, was marrying Sharon. She has been my loyal and loving life partner ever since. Sharon is beautiful, smart, funny, and simply a joy to be with. I am an enormously lucky man to have her.
© JAY MALLIN PHOTOGRAPHY
JOHN RIZZO had a thirty-four-year career as a lawyer at the CIA, culminating with seven years as the Agency’s chief legal officer. Since retiring from the CIA, he has served as senior counsel at a Washington, D.C., law firm and is a visiting scholar at the Hoover Institution. He is a graduate of Brown University and George Washington University Law School.
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Index
Abbottabad, Pakistan, 298
Abu Ghraib, 13, 211, 213, 214, 241, 294
Abu Zubaydah, see Zubaydah, Abu
Addington, David, 276
at covert-action operations meetings, 225
EITs and, 189, 196, 212, 213
at Iran-contra hearings, 127
Rizzo’s nomination to general counsel supported by, 249, 271
torture tapes and, 13, 16
Afghanistan, 81, 84, 87, 99, 161, 165, 178, 263, 293, 294, 300
Soviet Union’s invasion of, 70, 73, 74, 134, 160, 163
Afghan Task Force, 73
Africa, 97–98
Al Qaeda, 3, 7, 10, 11, 146, 160, 163, 169, 201–2, 210, 220, 237, 261, 277
biological and chemical weapons sought by, 176
CIA activities against, 165–66
CTC Updates on, 175–78
drone attacks on, 297
in Guantánamo Bay, 179
Hamburg cell of, 193
intelligence on, 176, 181
money flow of, 177, 233–34, 235–38
MONs on, 172–74, 178, 186
operational plans of, 244
U.S. embassies bombed by, 161, 175
see also September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks
American Bar Association, 202, 203
American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), 15, 283–84, 298, 300
Ames, Rick, 139–43, 156–57, 301
Amnesty International, 298
Angleton, James, 57, 59
“anthrax letter” incidents, 174
Archibald, James, 288
Arendt, Hannah, 182
Ashcroft, John, 196, 212, 215
resignation of, 223
Atta, Mohamed, 193
attention grasp, 184
At the Center of the Storm (Tenet), 155, 158
Attorney General, 164–65
Bámaca, Efrain, 146
Barbadoro, Paul, 116–17
Barcella, Larry, 28
Bash, Jeremy, 282
Bay of Pigs, 39, 49, 169
Beirut International Airport, 101
Bell, Griffin, 68
Bellinger, John, 13, 16, 173–74, 189, 190, 269, 270, 277
Bennett, Bob, 23
Bill of Rights, 232
bin al-Shibh, Ramzi, 193, 196
bin Laden, Osama, 158, 160, 176, 244, 245, 299
fatwa issued by, 161
killing of, 298
on “most wanted” list, 178, 182
snatch contemplated against, 161–65, 168, 172–73, 298
biological weapons, 176
Black, Cofer, 176
Black Banners, The (Zubaydah), 209
black sites, see secret prisons
Blair, Denny, 287
Bok, Derek, 61
Boland, Edward, 83
Bond, Kit, 253, 257, 258, 271–72
Boren, David, 113, 155, 156, 280
Bradbury, Steve, 289
Bradley, Bill, 104
Brady v. Maryland, 69
Breed, Stephanie, 152–53
Brennan, John, 203, 280, 299
Brown University, 34, 35–36, 96
Bruemmer, Russ, 131–33
Brugger, Fred, 147
“Bubble,” 40
Buckley, William, 101–2
“bug in the box” EIT, 185, 190, 194
Bush, George H. W., 135, 166, 168
CIA changes made by, 48
elected president, 133
made director of CIA, 47
Bush, George W., 21, 166, 167, 277
Al Qaeda MON signed by, 174
CIA prison system defended by, 247, 248
on EITs, 197–98, 199, 247, 248
elected president, 167
intelligence matters as interest of, 167–68
on renditions, 259
Bybee, Jay, 193, 211, 214, 264, 289
Bybee I, 264, 265, 266
Bybee II, 264–66, 289
Calero, Adolfo, 156
Cambone, Steve, 196
Card, Andy, 196
Carlos the Jackal, 176, 260
Carter, Jimmy, 52, 55, 69, 71, 73, 74, 77, 86, 137, 160, 166, 167, 301
Casey, William, 77–86, 99, 101, 102, 112, 131, 139, 301
background of, 77–78
Congressional desire to interrogate, 117, 118
Congress’s relationship with, 102–4, 108, 109
death of, 118, 127, 133
Iran-contra hearings and, 125, 126
made CIA director, 77
personality of, 77, 78
resignation of, 110
Sandinistas opposed by, 146
tough Findings desired by, 78–79, 85–86, 87–88
Woodward’s alleged interview with, 118–20
Castro, Fidel, 31, 49
CBS, 113
Central America, 74–75, 83, 84, 87, 92, 99–100, 101, 125, 160, 301
Central Intelligence Agency (CIA):
Al Qaeda money tracked by, 233–34, 235
Ames spy case and, 139–43, 156–57, 301
attributes of directors of, 288–89
author’s application to, 34, 36, 38–43
bin Laden snatch contemplated by, 161–65, 168
Counterintelligence Center of, 139–43
Counterproliferation Division of, 206
counterterrorism budget of, 158
cuts in funding and personnel of, 134
enhanced interrogation techniques of, see enhanced interrogation techniques
Europe Division of, 93
history of, 32
Intelligence Directorate (DI) of, 88, 89
in interagency group on Iran-contra report, 129
Latin America Division of, 93, 105
Litigation Division of, 7
Near East division of, 80, 86, 176
Office of General Counsel of, see Office of General Counsel (OGC), CIA
Office of Logistics of, 50