Lawfare Archive: A Conversation with John Rizzo
The Lawfare Podcast
The Lawfare Institute
4.7 • 6.4K Ratings
🗓️ 14 August 2021
⏱️ 49 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
From April 19, 2014: Benjamin Wittes had meant to have a book review of former CIA lawyer John Rizzo's new book, Company Man: Thirty Years of Controversy and Crisis in the CIA, ready to run along with this episode of the podcast. But he was still working on the review, which will be up shortly, and he didn't want to hold up the podcast while he finished it.
Ben caught up with Rizzo at a recent conference at Pepperdine University Law School. They talked about the book, some of its major themes, the persistence of the interrogation controversies and their latest manifestations. They also talked about the growth of lawyering at the CIA and why all the lawyers in the world can't seem to keep the agency out of trouble. And they talked about a career that, in many ways, tells the story of the modern CIA and the effort to do intelligence and covert action under law—from the Church Committee to the post 9/11 scandals.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The following podcast contains advertising. |
| 0:04.0 | To access an ad-free version of the LawFair podcast, |
| 0:08.0 | become a material supporter of LawFair at patreon.com slash law fair. |
| 0:14.0 | That's patreon.com slash law fair. |
| 0:18.0 | Also, check out LawFair's other podcast offerings, |
| 0:22.0 | rational security, chatter, law fair no bull, and the aftermath. |
| 0:29.0 | This is LawFair intern Ajay Sarma with the podcast from the LawFair Archives for August 14th, 2021. |
| 0:47.0 | On August 6th, John Rizzo, a former CIA lawyer, passed away at his home in Washington, D.C., |
| 0:53.0 | Rizzo once referred to himself as the legal architect of the proposed list of CIA and irrigation techniques, |
| 0:59.0 | and said he played a bleed role in obtaining legal approval for their use. |
| 1:03.0 | He openly discussed how he saw the torture of terrorist suspects as a necessary moral trade-off |
| 1:09.0 | to glean potentially life-saving information from detainees, |
| 1:12.0 | going to great lengths to ensure that the government would view the methods as legal, |
| 1:16.0 | under domestic, and international law. |
| 1:18.0 | For today's episode from the Archives, I went back to April 2014 when LawFair, Adir and Chief Ben Wittis, |
| 1:24.0 | spoke with Rizzo about the controversy over the CIA's interrogation techniques, |
| 1:29.0 | what the career of the CIA lawyer entails, and how the agency's work interacts with the law. |
| 1:34.0 | They also discussed Rizzo's book, Company Man, 30 Years of Controversial Crisis in the CIA, |
| 1:40.0 | which serves as an insider account of how the agency evolved during a significant period in American history. |
| 1:46.0 | Ben's interview with Rizzo serves as a valuable opportunity to hear candid reflection |
| 1:51.0 | on some of the most controversial practices in American legal history. |
| 1:58.0 | I'm Benjamin Wittis, and this is the LawFair podcast April 19, 2014. |
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