Hard Measures

by Jose A. Rodriguez, Jr.

  “Absolutely!” I said. “I’ve been reading the shit these members of Congress have been saying about me. They’ve already convicted me. I’d be crazy to talk to them while DOJ is looking for some discrepancy to hang me on.” Bennett gave me a satisfied smile.

  Word started getting out that I was not planning on volunteering to be a piñata for the committee, and they weren’t happy. Congressman Hoekstra told reporters, “We need to get Jose Rodriguez in here to testify. Jose was responsible for this—or it appears that most press reports and other reports indicate that Jose was responsible for this decision to destroy the tapes.” ABC News quoted Alan Baron, a former U.S. prosecutor, as saying, “If (Rodriguez) takes the Fifth Amendment, if there is a hearing, it’s like putting on Hamlet without the prince.”

  Bob Bennett held his ground and the committee relented, deciding not to call me. They tried to save face by announcing that they reserved the right to call me at a later date. Left unsaid was that I reserved the right to tell them to go pound sand.

  Rizzo showed up as scheduled on January 16. Again, it was a closed session, although members and staffers felt free to characterize it to the press. The Washington Post quoted Hoekstra as saying, “It appears from what we have seen to date that Rodriguez may not have been following instructions” when he ordered the tapes destroyed. An anonymous source told the Post, “It smells like a cover-up, but the question is whether it was illegal or not.” The New York Times quoted Hoekstra as saying, “Matter of fact, it appears that [Rodriguez] got direction to make sure the tapes were not destroyed.” Bob Bennett was obliged to respond to that charge, saying: “Nobody, to our knowledge, ever instructed him not to destroy the tapes.”

  As is typical when CIA officials testify before Congress, Rizzo showed up with a supporting cast of characters from the Office of Congressional Affairs and other agency officials. These “back benchers” are common at almost all hearings. But this time the committee took offense and reportedly asked those people who they were and why they were present. Not satisfied with the answer, the committee ejected them all from the session, leaving only Rizzo. Some of the members went to the media stakeout area after the hearing to declare me guilty, but no one was there to provide an alternative point of view. All Rizzo was able to say to the press after the hearing was: “I told the truth.”

  For over a month, the tale of the tapes had been a big deal. It was the subject of countless news stories, Op-Eds, editorials, and hearings, and of idle speculation. And then things got quiet. Very quiet.

  There were no new leaks and fewer new pronouncements of my guilt from members of Congress, and Washington appeared to move on to other matters. There was a presidential election coming up in the fall, and the focus on this one “scandal” had well exceeded the typical life span of a D.C. crisis.

  It was quiet but I knew that the special prosecutor, John Durham, and his staff were hard at work in the background. But I was disconnected from all of it. I was sitting at home waiting for someone to declare me innocent, yet knowing that at any moment I could hear that I was about to be indicted. During my time at the Agency I had known more than a handful of fine officers who were indicted for things they did not do—or for things they did that should never have been judged illegal. So the knowledge that everything I had done was done for good and honorable reasons was only of partial comfort.

  I continued my job search, but potential employers were staying away from me as if I had a communicable disease. A number of former Agency friends tried to be helpful, giving me advice and sharing contacts in an effort to find some employer, any employer, who might take a chance on someone like me with a cloud hanging over his head. The search was fruitless. Eventually I set up my own consulting firm. Some courageous outfits were willing to take my advice on a piecemeal basis. That seemed safer than having to say they had me on their payroll. Eventually my friend Jeremy King from Benchmark Executive Search helped me land a full-time job with a start-up company.

  While the investigation may have appeared to be quiet from the outside, it was anything but to many of those still at the Agency. Durham and his team had been vacuuming up documents, email, phone records, and other data relating to the tapes issue, which now spanned a period of over seven years. My former colleagues and subordinates were subjected to hour after hour of questioning by FBI agents who were second-guessing the meaning behind comments and notes made years before and continents away. As is so often the case in such matters, something said in an offhanded way years before is suddenly invested with huge import in retrospect. I felt terribly for my friends who were grilled. I knew the pressure they were under and also regretted that they were being pulled away from the effort to stop al-Qa’ida to engage in a microscopic examination of relatively trivial actions long past.

  What was especially surreal for me was that I was not the one being questioned. Bob Bennett made clear to Durham’s team that I was not going to bring the rope to my own lynching, so I was not an active participant in the investigation. We heard rumors that every document I had touched on any conceivably related matter was provided by the Agency to the FBI. I was convinced at the time, and remain convinced today, that if anything smacking of illegality had been found, Durham would have swiftly indicted me. Even if they had found something not directly relating to the tapes, they would have gone after me the way the Feds indicted Al Capone for tax evasion. Anything to make their point.

  After a while I started hearing reports that friends, secretaries, former colleagues, and bosses of mine were being called to testify before a grand jury. Some were ordered to fly back to the United States multiple times from critical postings overseas in order to answer questions before the grand jury. The impression some came away with was that prosecutors were convinced something nefarious had been done; they were just struggling to figure out what and find the evidence.

  My initial thought, back in late 2007, was that all this would blow over in a few months. But 2007 quickly became 2008. The cloud hung over me in 2009 and through much of 2010. On November 9, 2010, I was preparing to go to a business meeting when my cell phone rang. It was Bob Bennett. He had just received some news the traditional Washington way, via a leak. A reporter had called him with a tip that Special Prosecutor Durham was going to announce that day that there would be no charges against me. I know enough to not believe every rumor floating around town, especially those that deliver news I want to believe. I thanked Bob and went ahead with my day. While I was at my meeting, however, Bennett called again. I stepped outside to hear what he had learned. Bennett told me he had just received a call from Durham confirming that I was not going to be charged. The word spread like wildfire among the CIA family. General Hayden, by this point a former CIA director, was still very well wired. He was traveling out West somewhere but was the first to get the news. He called me while running on a treadmill at a gym to congratulate me for having the cloud lifted from over my head.

  Later that day, the Department of Justice issued a statement saying: “Mr. Durham has concluded that he will not pursue criminal charges for the destruction of the interrogation videotapes.”

  The timing was not a coincidence. November 9 was the fifth anniversary of the destruction of the tapes. It turned out that there was a statute-of-limitations issue. If the prosecutors could not build a viable case against me by that date, I was likely home free, at least regarding the initial act of ordering the destruction of the tapes.

  While the nightmare was over for me, it was not for others. In August 2009 Eric Holder, attorney general in the new Obama administration, had expanded Durham’s charter to include looking at the actions of CIA interrogators and contractors in matters beyond the tapes issue. Despite the fact that career prosecutors had looked at that in the previous administration and decided there were no prosecutable offenses, Holder placed those officers back under a cloud again.

  After being under the gun for three years, you might think learning that you will not be prosecuted woul
d be a moment for celebration. But more than a sense of relief, I felt it was an anticlimax. So much time and effort and angst had gone into dealing with the problem that a large part of me wanted simply to forget. I thanked Bennett profusely for his help and then called Patti to share the news. I don’t think I was fully aware of how much pressure we both had felt until that moment. As I told her that the cloud had been lifted, we both began to cry tears of relief.

  Chapter 9

  WHAT WE DO

  After all the talk about investigations and political double dealing, I wouldn’t want a reader to walk away with the notion that life as a CIA officer is unpleasant. On the contrary, I enjoyed my thirty-one years as an Agency officer and would eagerly sign up to do it all over again if given the chance.

  The lifestyle imposes its own burdens but is blessed with its unique rewards. I would not trade the experience for any other. In no other part of government am I aware of people being given the feeling of being part of a large team but also afforded so much individual responsibility. Agency officers share a great sense of camaraderie and often lighten the mood of tense responsibilities by pulling pranks on each other.

  More than twenty years ago, I was chief of station in a Latin American country. The CIA had just gotten a new director (which seemed to be a regular occurrence at the time), and I got word that the boss wanted to pay a visit to my country. In calls and cable traffic from headquarters, I was told that the director felt it was crucial to the success of his trip to pay a call on the country’s president. But when I contacted my local counterparts, I was told that unfortunately El Presidente was planning on being out of the country on the dates in question. The guys at headquarters were very unhappy with that news and told me that the director would be most disappointed. So I contacted the folks at the presidential palace again and, with all the political clout I could muster, convinced them to coax their boss into changing his schedule to accommodate me and my new leader.

  A few weeks later the new DCI, whom I had never met, arrived in country. I went to the airport to meet him and waited at the bottom of the steps of his official aircraft. After shaking hands, the director said to me: “Thanks so much for arranging my visit. Unfortunately, my schedule is compressed and you’ll need to cancel that visit with the president.” My jaw hit the tarmac as I tried to maintain my composure. It was clear to me my influence in this country was also about to take a sudden dive. I was about to stammer something to the director when I heard raucous laughter from the top of the aircraft steps. The director’s staff, knowing that I had used up every ounce of influence I had to get the country’s president to stick around, had convinced the DCI to yank my chain with a bogus story about canceling the meeting. They had a good laugh at my expense.

  I got them back. The director and his traveling party had been very interested in some intelligence that had come in suggesting that the country’s president’s much younger wife had recently been in close contact with her husband’s political opposition. And when I say “close contact” I do not mean politically. During the course of his meeting with the president, the director got a chance to meet the first lady as well. He took quite a shine to her.

  As the director and his team were getting ready to depart for Washington, I arranged for a car to arrive carrying a sealed envelope purportedly from the presidential palace for the departing CIA chief. I handed the envelope to him and wished him a safe trip. On the flight back to Washington he opened the envelope to find an autographed photo of the president along with a second autographed photo of the first lady with an inscription making clear that she looked forward to “close contact” with the DCI soon. After a suitable interval, I made sure the traveling party was made aware that neither inscription was genuine.

  There was another memorable trip during the mid-1990s. Yet another new DCI decided he wanted to take a trip to Latin America to focus on U.S. efforts to work with host nations to slow drug trafficking. He brought a large entourage (including me) with him on a visit to Panama, Bolivia, and Colombia. When we got to Bogotá, Colombia, we were met by a motorcade of large white vans, which were intended to haul the official party to the hotel. The trip occurred shortly after a movie based on Tom Clancy’s Clear and Present Danger hit the theaters. That film starts with a delegation of CIA officials arriving in Colombia and being taken in a motorcade of white SUVs straight into an ambush where most of them (other than Harrison Ford) are killed. The parallels to our circumstances were apparent to most of our party. Someone in the back of our van said, “Hey, I’ve seen this movie. It doesn’t come out well.” We debated which one of us was Harrison Ford.

  Fortunately, we made it to our hotel safely and routine meetings ensued. A day later we were scheduled to visit Cali, where the infamous drug cartel had recently been taken down. Several members of our party were openly nervous about the risk of going there and called a late-night meeting to talk about the wisdom of taking the DCI into such a location. One of the senior analysts, who did not have a lot of operational experience, was particularly shaken. I was pretty sure that the Colombian government had the situation under control and had kept our visit quiet. But I couldn’t resist playing on this guy’s fears. “Yeah, those are some mean hombres there,” I told him. “If they catch you they wrap you in explosives and throw you out of a helicopter. You explode on the way down and no one can find all the little pieces.” He turned white and voted for immediately canceling that portion of the trip. Some of my more experienced colleagues were kicking me under the table for toying with the guy.

  In the end, the trip went ahead as scheduled. We flew to Cali in very old Colombian helicopters. My nervous colleagues’ eyes were as big as saucers and some of them claimed they saw old bullet holes in the helicopters. Nothing untoward happened. The trip was a success, although later that night Colombian TV had full coverage of our visit, including pictures of us at every stop, showing that it was not such a secret after all.

  When I was chief of CTC, and later as head of the clandestine service, I did a lot of official travel. About once a year I had to travel to Moscow for counterterrorism exchanges with our Russian counterparts. It was my practice on such occasions to hit the gym in the Marriott Hotel we stayed at early on the morning after arrival in order to fight off jetlag with a full workout. On one of my last trips there I went to the gym as usual. It was a decent-size facility but empty except for me. Minutes after I started working out, however, one of the most beautiful women I have ever seen walked in. She was wearing skin-tight shorts and a sports bra, was exquisitely made up, and looked as if she had stepped out of a fashion magazine. Although the gym was expansive, she picked a piece of exercise equipment right next to mine and proceeded to work up quite a sweat while constantly looking directly at me and offering what I think they call in novels a “come hither” smile. There is no doubt in my mind that she was what the KGB used to call a “swallow,” a beautiful woman dangled in front of an intelligence target with the hope of compromising him and recruiting him as their agent. When I started to feel weak, able to lift hardly any weights, I cut my workout short and headed back to my room—alone.

  The Russians have never been subtle. They would frequently host counterterrorism meetings and invite senior intelligence officers from around the world, only to ignore and mistreat many of those in attendance who were from anywhere other than the largest and most powerful nations. I used to make it a point to seek out the officials they were clearly dissing and offer a hand of friendship to them. I did so out of a sense of human decency but admit that some of those officials whom I befriended after they were snubbed by the Russians later became quite helpful to the Agency.

  There was another occasion when a delegation of Russian officers was visiting the United States for meetings with the CIA. As often happens in such cases, we were obliged to take our guests out to dinner when the day’s meetings ended. Often you will accomplish more at a social event than you will during a day sitting across from each other in some
conference room. This particular night we had taken the Russian delegation to a steak restaurant in Tysons Corner, Virginia, a few miles down the road from CIA headquarters. At one point one of the senior officers wanted to smoke. He was quite annoyed that American laws prevented lighting up at your table in the restaurant and that he was obliged to step outside. I decided to keep him company. As he took drags on his Ziganov high-nicotine cigarette, we made small talk. As he was finishing his smoke he asked about my ethnic background. I told him I was born in Puerto Rico. He seemed confused and surprised that someone who was not a WASP could be selected for such an important position. In thickly accented English he asked, “How do they trust you?” In his clumsy question, the Russian was wondering how an American of Latino descent could rise to the position of chief of the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center. Looking him straight in the eye, I told him my assignment was as a result of my success in recruiting Russian intelligence officers to change sides. He was not amused.

  Dealing with the Russians was quite a chore. They were always in the “receive mode,” happy to take whatever information we were willing to share with them on terrorist threats but generally reluctant to offer much in return.

  My first experience with them came only days after I joined CTC. It was shortly after 9/11 and a Russian delegation was in Washington for meetings. I was so new at the time that I could barely find my office in CTC. But I must have faked expertise well enough. Cofer Black, my boss in CTC, had little patience for Russian foot-dragging. Cofer attended one meeting and made quite a statement. He addressed the group with a stack of paper a couple of feet high in front of him. “This,” he said, pointing to the pile of paper, “is the intelligence information the United States has shared with you.” He picked up the stack and dropped it, creating an enormous boom. “And this,” Cofer said, “is what we have gotten from you.” He grabbed a small handful of papers and threw them in the air. The Russians watched a pitifully small number of documents float like feathers before silently hitting the table. While it was an impressive demonstration, it had little effect on subsequent performance.