Wiki: John Rizzo

...Rizzo was hired at the CIA in 1976, just after the Church Committee released its report on the assassination of foreign leaders. By 1979, Rizzo became the staff lawyer for the Directorate of Operations, the CIA's clandestine branch.[5] He served as the liaison between the CIA and the congressional investigators studying the Iran-Contra affair in the 1980s.[7] Rizzo became Acting General Counsel of the CIA in November 2001, a position that was traditionally filled by someone from outside the agency.[8]...

...The Joint Personnel Recovery Agency, which ran the U.S. military's SERE program to train U.S. personnel to resist harsh interrogation methods, issued a memo with an attachment written to the General Counsel of the Department of Defense in July 2002.[15] The memo, which was passed on from the Pentagon to Rizzo, referred to the use of extreme duress on detainees as "torture" and warned that it would produce "unreliable information."[16]

Rizzo sent a request to the Department of Justice's Office of Legal Counsel for an opinion as to whether certain interrogation techniques would violate the prohibition against torture. The OLC issued a memo signed by Jay S. Bybeeto Rizzo on August 1, 2002; this was the first of what became known as the Torture Memos, in which Justice authorized specific techniques to be used in interrogations.[17] It approved 10 techniques, including waterboarding.[14] Rizzo concurred on the legality of these techniques and saw to it that they were implemented by the CIA.[18]

Rizzo traveled with David Addington, the Vice President's chief of staff; William Haynes, General Counsel of the Department of Defense; and Michael Chertoff, then the head of the Criminal Division of the Department of Justice, to consult with officers at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp in late September 2002. One week later, a CIA lawyer told personnel with the military intelligence interrogation team at Guantanamo that, "if the detainee dies, you're doing it wrong."[19]...

...In early 2005, White House Counsel Harriet Miers told Rizzo not to destroy the tapes without checking with the White House first.[29] Jose A. Rodriguez Jr., the chief of the Directorate of Operations, sent a cable to the CIA's Bangkok station ordering the destruction of the tapes on November 8, 2005.[29][30] Rodriguez informed Goss and Rizzo of the destruction on November 10.[29]...

...Rizzo signed off on all CIA directed drone strikes from the start of the program soon after September 11, 2001 until his retirement in October 2009.[3] He claims to have seen one "request for approval for targeting for lethal operation" per month and that roughly 30 individuals were targeted at any given time.[6]

In July 2011, the human rights group Reprieve and Pakistani lawyers called for the prosecution of Rizzo in Pakistan for murder for approving drone attacks that killed hundreds of people.[31][32][33][34] In April 2015, the Islamabad High Court ordered police to open a criminal case against Rizzo and former CIA Islamabad Station Chief Jonathan Bank for murder, conspiracy, terrorism and waging war against Pakistan.[35]...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_A._Rizzo

Wiki: Jay Bybee

During Jay Bybee's tenure at the OLC, the CIA acting General Counsel John A. Rizzo requested a legal opinion on detainee interrogation. That request was routed to the OLC by the White House General Counsel Alberto Gonzales, who desired the "ability to quickly obtain information from captured terrorists and their sponsors."[11] The CIA inquired whether, after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, it could aggressively interrogate suspected high-ranking Al-Qaeda members captured outside the United States in ways some regard as torture. In effect, the CIA was asking for an interpretation of the statutory term of "torture" as defined in 18 U.S.C. § 2340. That section implements, in part, the obligations of the United States under the Geneva Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman and Degrading Treatment or Punishment.

Bybee signed that legal memorandum which endorsed "enhanced interrogation techniques" as lawful. These same techniques are viewed as torture by the Justice Department,[12] Amnesty International,[13] Human Rights Watch,[14] medical experts in the treatment of torture victims,[15][16] intelligence officials,[17] and American allies.[18] This memo has been the source of controversy; critics of his action have called for his impeachment or resignation.[19] Bybee was considered a subject of a war crimes investigation in Spain,[20] but the government decided against prosecution in 2011.

A memo declassified in 2012 indicates that some in the Bush State Department believed that the methods were illegal under domestic and international law, and constituted war crimes.[21] Secretary of State Colin Powell strongly opposed the invalidation of the Geneva Conventions,[22] and U.S. Navygeneral counsel Alberto Mora campaigned internally against what he saw as the "catastrophically poor legal reasoning" of the memo.[23] Philip D. Zelikow, former State Department adviser to Condoleezza Rice, in 2009 testified to the Senate Judiciary Committee studying the matter, "It seemed to me that the OLC interpretation of U.S. Constitutional Law in this area was strained and indefensible. I could not imagine any federal court in America agreeing that the entire CIA program could be conducted and it would not violate the American Constitution." Zelikow also alleged that Bush administration officials attempted to destroy his memos alleging fault in Bybee's reasoning.[24]...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jay_Bybee

Inside the Killing Machine

via newsweek.com

“It was very businesslike,” says Rizzo. An aerial drone had killed the man, a high-level terrorism suspect, after he had gotten out of the vehicle, while members of his family were spared. “The agency was very punctilious about this,” Rizzo says. “They tried to minimize collateral damage, especially women and children.”

At least they try.