I’ve been pretty angry with the actions of Senate Democrats recently, but I have to give them props when they do do the right thing. In this case, they forced Bush to withdraw his nominee for CIA general counsel, John Rizzo, because of his connections to the CIA’s use of torture enhanced interrogation techniques at secret foreign prisons. Here’s the press release from the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence [Ed. note: I’m sorry there’s no link, as I received this in an email. The Committee’s own website doesn’t yet have it up.]:
Washington, D.C. – President Bush today withdrew the nomination of John Rizzo to serve as the General Counsel of the Central Intelligence Agency. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Chairman John D. Rockefeller IV and Vice Chairman Christopher S. Bond issued the following statement reacting to the President’s decision.
Chairman Rockefeller stated: “The President and Mr. Rizzo made the correct decision in withdrawing this nomination. The confirmation process highlighted Mr. Rizzo’s 31 years of dedicated service, but it also raised serious questions about whether he was the right person for this job. It was clear that he did not have the support of a majority of the Committee and would not have been confirmed.
The position of CIA General Counsel is extraordinarily important and deals with the most sensitive and often controversial programs in our government. I encourage the President to nominate someone with the necessary legal expertise and sound judgment required for this job as soon as possible.”
Vice Chairman Bond stated: “Mr. Rizzo has a long and distinguished record of government service. There is, however, opposition in the Senate to his nomination, and it seems unlikely that he would have been confirmed. The CIA General Counsel is an important job that needs to be filled as soon as possible and pulling his nomination was probably for the best.”
Nice when Chris “Kit” Bond, Republican wingnut extraordinaire from Missouri, and one of Bush’s biggest lap dogs in the Senate, is forced to meekly acquiesce in the rejection of one of Bush’s “FU” nominations to the Senate. For some details of Mr. Rizzo’s “distinguished service” during the Bush years (and why his nomination was opposed so strongly by so many) go read this report from the archives of TPMMuckraker:
CIA General Counsel-Designate John A. Rizzo didn’t just equivocate on whether he agreed with the Office of Legal Counsel’s narrow definition of torture from August 2002. In his confirmation hearing today, Rizzo was all over the map about what the CIA actually did with detainees in its custody.
When Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI) asked Rizzo whether he thought in 2002 that the CIA’s interrogation regime was “humane,” Rizzo — who was acting general counsel for much of the time, and took part in deliberations about the legality of that regime — replied that “We believed then, and we believe throughout the process, that the CIA (interrogation) program as it was conceived — that the procedures, and the criteria, when taken in toto, leads to the conclusion, justifies the conclusion, that it was from the outset, and (in its subsequent implementation) was conducted in a humane manner.” Yet the CIA, based in part on legal guidance delivered by the general counsel’s office, authorized its interrogators to force detainees to stand for up to 40 hours; chill their cells to 50 degrees while dousing their naked bodies with cold water; and to simulate drowning them. Whether Rizzo actually believes such practices are humane, he conceded that “there had been some concerns that were expressed” by CIA interrogators who feared prosecution for carrying out the authorized interrogations.
But who was the subject of the “humane” interrogation regime? Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) asked Rizzo if it was his opinion that the Geneva Convention’s Common Article 3 — which protect combatants from “outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment” — applied to the fourteen high-value detainees transfered from CIA custody to Guantanamo Bay last year. Those detainees are the U.S.’s highest-level al-Qaeda captives, and they include 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. Rizzo first said that “Common Article 3 were certainly applied to the fourteen” — but then added that it wasn’t until the Supreme Court ruled in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld that Common Article 3 applies to al-Qaeda. That ruling was handed down in July 2006. “I can’t tell you, before the Hamdan decision, that those standards were applied to enemy combatants before then,” he said.
It isn’t much, but at least some of the Democratic Senators recognize that rewarding people who agreed to “go along” with Bush’s torture policy in order to enhance their own careers is just dead wrong.
A coalition of human rights groups worked very hard to kill this nomination. It would be remiss of me not to recognize the critical role they played in forcing the Senate to stand up to Bush. They deserve a great deal of the credit for killing the Rizzo nomination. It’s also fair to say that Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon played a key role, as well, when he placed a hold on Rizzo’s nomination back in August in order to rally opposition to the nomination among his Senate colleagues.
U.S. Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR), a senior member of the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence today welcomed the administration’s decision to withdraw the nomination of John Rizzo to be General Counsel of the CIA.
“I opposed the nomination of John Rizzo to be the top lawyer at the CIA because he is the wrong man for the job,” Wyden said. “I hope that the Administration’s next nominee for the position demonstrates greater respect for the rule of law and a firmer commitment to making sure that our nation’s counterterrorism programs have the strong legal foundation that they deserve.”
In August, Wyden announced that he was putting a public hold on the nomination, citing his concerns about Rizzo’s track record as the long-time Acting General Counsel of the CIA. The General Counsel of the CIA is responsible for ensuring that all CIA activities are legal and that CIA employees do not misinterpret the law. Wyden’s primary concerns about Rizzo included his willingness to rely on questionable legal analysis and his failure to ensure adequate oversight of the nation’s counterterrorism programs.
Following his August announcement, Wyden reached out to his colleagues on the Senate Intelligence Committee in order to rally opposition to Rizzo’s nomination. The nomination was withdrawn prior to a Committee vote.
Now Senator Wyden, maybe you could go to work on getting your brethren to restore this little thing known as habeas corpus. What do you say?
PS: Majikthise had this item about Rizzo’s lazzez faire attitude toward protecting our constitutional rights back in June:
Rizzo says CIA might have authority to detain Americans abroad
John Rizzo, the longtime CIA attorney in line to become the Agency’s top lawyer, said that the CIA might have the authority to detain Americans overseas on the orders of the POTUS:
Rizzo’s statement came at the end of his two-hour Senate confirmation hearing yesterday, in which he equivocated on what he thought of the Justice Department’s shifting definitions of torture and whether any top al-Qaeda detainees in CIA custody were in fact abused. Responding to a question from Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) about presidential authority to order CIA to take an American citizen overseas into custody, Rizzo replied, “it would be extremely problematic in terms of the rights of an American citizen for CIA to capture him overseas.”
The answer Wyden was hoping for was “no,” and he didn’t hear it. “But you say it could be done.”
“I don’t want to say it could be done,” Rizzo parried.
“You just said ‘extraordinary circumstances,'” Wyden replied.
“I meant it would be extraordinarily difficult in terms of the rights of a citizen for due process for the president to direct CIA to capture an American citizen overseas,” Rizzo said.
