CIA general counsel, cagey on torture

Says he did not object to 8/1/02 torture memo. Jeebus, he might as well have admitted to doing the torture himself.

TPMmuckraker June 19, 2007 04:55 PM:

CIA general counsel designate John A Rizzo wasn't willing to say much during an open session before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence today, but he did make one major admission: he had not objected to the Department of Justice’s controversial August 1, 2002 memorandum defining torture as equivalent to “organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death”... except when he did, albeit two years later.

Not that he thought his 2002 decision was wrong: “I did not, certainly, object,” Rizzo told Senator J. Rockefeller. “My reaction was it was an aggressively expansive reading but I cannot say I had any specific objections to any specific parts of it.” However, Rizzo added that he “did agree” with the Justice Department’s 2004 revision of the definition of torture – which overrode the very 2002 memorandum to which Rizzo didn’t “specifically object.”