He told the PBS program “Frontline” in 2011: “To me, the more intriguing question — and, I think, unknowable question — is, Could the same information have been elicited without the use of these extraordinarily controversial techniques? And, as I say, I think that is ultimately unknowable.” (He did at one point acknowledge a former F.B.I. interrogator’s conclusion that the techniques had no effect on their subjects.)
Mr. Rizzo never ducked responsibility; he once said he was “the legal architect of the proposed list of techniques and played the lead role in obtaining legal approval for their use.”
But the backlash cost him a promotion. For seven years he had held the titles of deputy counsel and then acting general counsel. But when President George W. Bush sought to elevate him to general counsel, congressional opposition forced him to withdraw the nomination. Mr. Rizzo continued to serve as acting counsel until he retired in 2019.
To protect agency employees, Mr. Rizzo sought annual reassurance from the attorney general that the interrogation techniques “did not ‘shock the conscience’ or violate international treaty obligations or violate U.S. domestic law,” Bill Harlow, a former spokesman for the agency, said by email.
“When the attorney general declined to do so in the spring of 2004,” he added, “the agency promptly suspended the program.”
Hina Shamsi, director of the National Security Project of the American Civil Liberties Union, which opposed Mr. Rizzo’s nomination and also sued psychologists who had shaped the interrogation program, said in an email, “Instead of adhering to law and ethics, his actions shamefully subverted them in an effort to provide legal cover for the Agency’s illegal and immoral actions.”
General Michael V. Hayden, a former C.I.A. director, wrote on The Cipher Brief this week that “many an operations officer would tell you that John walked them back from some of their more creative approaches to intelligence challenges, but there were many more who proceeded with the confidence that John, and more importantly the law, had their back.”
