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To: Metacomet who wrote (66269)	6/19/2007 7:12:01 PM
From: Broken_Clock	Respond to of 116555

Dems Wary of Bush Choice for CIA Counsel Jun 19 06:45 PM US/Eastern By KATHERINE SHRADER Associated Press Writer WASHINGTON (AP) - The CIA's top lawyer said Tuesday he did not object to a 2002 memo authorizing interrogation techniques that stop just short of causing a sensation of impending organ failure or even death. Yet John Rizzo, who is serving as the agency's temporary general counsel, said he later found the document to be an "aggressive, expansive" reading of U.S. law. Rizzo's Senate testimony provides the first public window into his perspective on legal questions he wrestled with in the months and years after Sept. 11, 2001. Rizzo spoke before the Senate Intelligence Committee as he made the case that he should become the CIA's top lawyer permanently. Democrats, including Senate Intelligence Chairman Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia, have been concerned that the Bush administration stretched its wartime powers. Some remained highly skeptical Tuesday as Rizzo stood by his legal decisions. The August 2002 memo, written by a senior Justice Department lawyer, said that for an interrogation technique to be torture, it must inflict physical pain that is difficult to endure. Written for then-White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales and shared with the CIA, the memo did not lay out specific techniques that could be used. Yet it drew a blurry line that could not be crossed by defining torture as any technique that produces pain equal to a serious physical injury, such as "organ failure, impairment of bodily function or even death." "As with most legal memos, my reaction was it was an aggressive, expansive reading," Rizzo said. "But I can't say I had any specific objections to any specific parts of it." After nearly two years, the Justice Department disavowed the document in 2004. Rizzo said he agreed with the conclusion reached then, that the language appeared "overbroad." But asked if he wished he had spoken up about its contents, Rizzo said no. "I can't honestly sit here today and say I should have objected," he said. Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., called Rizzo's response unfortunate. "It seems to me that language on a very straightforward reading is over the line," Wyden said. "That is what I think all of us wanted to hear—that you wish you had objected." Rizzo oversees well over 100 lawyers who provide legal advice on whether the agency should carry out its most secretive programs, including operations to capture or kill terror suspects or use certain interrogation techniques. At least 96 terror suspects have passed through the CIA's detention and interrogation program since it was created in 2002. The CIA says the program followed U.S. and international law and produced valuable intelligence that has saved lives. But human rights groups have said the CIA's practices amounted to torture. In one of its most extreme interrogation practices, the CIA is known to have waterboarded the most dangerous detainees—a technique that induces the sensation of drowning. Rizzo has been with CIA more than three decades and has served as acting general counsel from November 2001 until October 2002 and from August 2004 until today. Despite that extensive background, at times he struggled to answer senators' questions, often citing the need for secrecy. That included the question of whether the CIA has ever transferred a terror suspect to a country known to use torture. He wouldn't respond publicly. Frustrated, Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., asked that the record show in December 2005 President Bush said: "We do not render to countries that torture." Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., said she will have a difficult time approving Rizzo's nomination, if he was part of the legal foundation for the government's detention program. "I believe one of the reasons we are so hated abroad is because we appear to be hypocrites," she said. "We say one thing and practice another."