Company Man: Thirty Years of Controversy and Crisis in the CIA

John Rizzo's book, "Company Man", is much like the author himself: smart, insightful, wry, self-deprecating, funny, and charming. I spent a quarter-century working for, with, and around John Rizzo at CIA, and I recommend the book to anyone who would like an insider's view of some of the most remarkable and now public national security episodes at the highest levels of the U.S. government during the last thirty years. Rizzo arrived at CIA in 1976 as a dark-haired naif with a vague notion that intelligence law might be more interesting than the drudgery at the U.S. Customs Service in the Treasury Department that he had been doing fresh out of law school. He was right about that. He left thirty-plus years later with his hair white and his personal file full of some of the most fascinating things a lawyer could ever do. He almost immediately began a long and mutual love affair with the directorate at CIA whose mission includes acquiring secrets, catching spies, and stopping terrorists. It has been known by various names, most of the time being called the Directorate of Operations (the "DO") and now clumsily relabeled the National Clandestine Service. He rose up through the ranks of the career attorneys at CIA by dint of three characteristics lacking in most lawyers: a sense of humor, good nature, and an uncanny sense of how to successfully maneuver among a cacophony of competing equity holders both inside and outside of the Agency. He was a true adept. His career was bracketed from beginning to end by deep involvement in the law, lore, and politics of covert action, much beloved by the seven presidents he served. The list of CIA activities he describes in his book reads like a Tolstoy novel: the Church Committee, William Casey, the Iran-Contra Affair, the Ames spy case, the rise of Al Qaeda, the 911 attacks, Valerie Plame, and the world-wide counterterrorist activities of the Agency. And he was there, unlike a lot of others who never set foot at CIA or had any access to classified information. For example, how could Tim Weiner write a credible book purporting to be a history of the Agency without authorized access to any classified information? He didn't even get the meaning of the title of his book right. According to Agency historians who looked up the actual quote, "A Legacy of Ashes" was a phrase President Eisenhower directed at the military intelligence establishment, not CIA. Rizzo's book does not shy away from his most controversial assignment related to enhanced interrogation techniques and treatment of high value detainees. The introduction of the book is titled, "The Tale of the Torture Tapes," and it provides the most detailed and accurate description of a program authorized by the president, found legal by the Department of Justice, and agreed to by the leadership of the intelligence oversight committees and the House and Senate. This ultimately scuppered his nomination to be the CIA's General Counsel, a Senate-confirmed position. His description of the process, decision-making, and agonizing that went into the establishment, oversight, and review of the program is both the most accurate to date and the most chilling, not because of the techniques used but rather the effect it had on highly dedicated and conscientious civil servants who carried it out. When your lawyers have to get lawyers, you might as well pack up and leave. The most striking parts of the book to an old hand like me are his wonderful descriptions of the many characters he ran into over the many years: Bill Casey, Stan Sporkin, George Tenet, Yuri Nosenko, Dewey Clarridge, Cofer Black, John Bellinger, Pat Fitzgerald, John Deutch, and a host of others, including the traitor Aldrich Ames. Rizzo's interactions with members of Congress, including the shabby treatment he received during his confirmation process, should be required reading for any lawyer or policy-maker with designs on saving the world in Washington. Rizzo was entirely too polite in his book. Read Bob Gates's descriptions of Congress in his book, "Duty": Members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee were "rude, nasty, and stupid." Senators were "hypocritical and obtuse." And the most complete: "I saw most of Congress as uncivil, incompetent at fulfilling their basic constitutional responsibilities...micromanagerial, parochial, hypocritical, egotistical, thin-skinned and prone to put self (and re-election) before country." With the exception of Porter Goss and maybe David Boren, that's about right, from my years (including military service) working for eight presidents, eleven administrations, nine DCIs/ directors of CIA, and ten CIA general counsels. As for Ron Wyden, who is much in the news lately and who seemed to take a personal dislike to Rizzo and the lead in unfairly trashing his nomination and ability--well, for someone who looks like a badly-aged Howdy-Doody, he's a perfect representative of those spineless dweebs infesting U.S. politics who would have been feebly waving their ACLU cards as the Soviet jackboots came up their streets and the mushroom cloud blossomed over Washington, all the while bleating, "Our government is after your liberties!" If you want the views and memories of an actual insider participant in CIA history, as opposed to ignorant outsiders, read this book. It has as companions several other good memoirs written by Rizzo's contemporaries: "The Art of Intelligence" by Ambassador Hank Crumpton, "Hard Measures" by Jose Rodriguez, “At the Center of the Storm" by George Tenet, "Circle of Treason" by Sandy Grimes and Jeanne Vertefeuille. All honorable, distinguished, and unabashed patriots. And they were actually there.

John Rizzo first came to my attention when the Obama Administration released the "torture memos". John Rizzo played an integral part in that process. It was his role in this process that motivated me to read the book for additional background into that process, the book however discussed the entire sweep of a career of over 30 years. The true message of this book is that in the vast majority of cases the CIA is a highly accountable organization with a keen sense of legalities. If you believe, mindlessly, that the CIA is a bunch of rogue James Bond types you'll be sadly disappointed. While every large organization has it's problems and its problem people it also has many people of integrity like John Rizzo. This is by no means a typical 'tell all' book if your interested in not only policy but the process of implementing policy you'll find it interesting and highly informative. It also offers insight into the process of Congressional 'oversight' and how politicized and potentially ineffective it is.I found it to be excellent in the sense of providing the reader with a sense of context and I was left with the impression that Mr. Rizzo was being as straightforward as it is possible to be in writing a book about an essentially sensitive organization. The book clearly reflects Mr. Rizzo's personality. I'd like to have a beer with Mr. Rizzo.

The book is interesting mainly because of the insights provided into the workings of the CIA. Rizzo was a high level CIA lawyer, spending a few years as acting Chief Counsel. However, he is a Republican apologist, though far from being a Fox News type. For example, he opines that the Valerie Plame affair was trivial, whereas a fair commenter would perceive its similarity to Nixon's cover ups. He hardly mentions Cheney's role in the torture episode or his visit to the CIA to pressure them to make up stories about Saddam's weapons of mass destruction. I was disturbed when he stated that he always votes for an incumbent president for the reason that a change in administration is upsetting to the CIA. I think that a more loyal American would vote for the person he considers best for the USA, not the CIA. He sheds a lot of light on the important players in the CIA and offers his opinion on its succession of leaders, which in this case is less politically influenced. He was nominated by Bush I to be the chief counsel of the CIA but rejected by the Senate. He writes as though the fact that he supported Republicans had nothing to do with his selection.

I am familiar with Rizzo and his history. His longevity and involvement in so many key issues makes him a Forrest Gump-like character--in the right place at the right time for a good deal of the Agency's history. Rizzo gives a good account of the events he describes, but does an awkward job at times in pulling his punches. Specifically, he'll offer what I believe is legitimate criticism of someone, but then quickly try to mend any potential offense by offering a defense of the inappropriate activity he criticizes and claiming that the instigator remains a great friend. Look--you can't have it both ways. Call a spade a spade. It's inevitable that not everyone is going to love you if you write a book like this. The author should have accepted that fact. Beyond that fault, which I found annoying, the book offers an outstanding overview of some key and controversial Agency activities and explains them in a perspective that is fresh and will be educational for interested readers. That quality earns four stars, but trying to stay buddies with those whom the author criticizes cost him the fifth star in my review.

'Company Man' doesn't offer much in terms of operational details about the CIA's work but it is definitely interesting when the author discusses the CIA's relationship with Congress and the US Government which is largely what the book is about. The dominance of this angle obviously has to do with the work of the author in the CIA's Office of General Counsel (OGC) over a period of more than thirty years. The book covers a lot of ground from the mid 1970s to the beginning of the Obama administration and Rizzo has interesting things to say about practically all the scandals the CIA was involved in over this period, including older ones like Iran-Contra. He starts off with the story of the notorious 'torture tapes' which contained video recordings of the water boarding sessions of the well-known Al-Qaeda operative Abu Zubaydah and which ended up destroyed by CIA officials. Rizzo writes, interestingly, that Abu Zubaydah was not waterboarded (i.e. strapped to the board for a session) 83 times, as many of the CIA's critics have said, but had water splashed on him 83 times which is not the same, of course. He also offers many details about the by now well-known story of the 'torture memo's', which were signed off by officials of the Department of Justice under George W. Bush and gave the CIA legal justificaton to carry out the notorious 'Enhanced Interrrogation Techniques' (EITs). By the time these memo's became public under the newly-installed Obama Administration, the Department of Justice officials who had signed off on them earlier had moved on to positions outside government and the CIA, as has happened so often in its history, was left to carry the blame under a new administration. The book makes clear for the umpteenth time that when working on the operational side of the CIA it is absolutely necessary to have a good insurance policy which covers legal aid in case you ever have to appear in court as a consequence of having carried out orders from superiors, even though in this particular case and in the case of the destroyed torture tapes nobody from the CIA was ever tried by a court. One of the glaring omissions in the book, understandably but unfortunately, is the drone war against Al-Qaeda which took off under the presidency of George W. Bush and was intensified under Obama, but about which the US Government keeps largely silent to this day. According to press accounts I have seen, John Rizzo was also deeply involved in this. 'Company Man' has a light, bantering tone which makes it a very easy read. Its main virtue is in the fact that it offers a vivid account of many controversial episodes from the CIA's recent history from the perspective of the organization itself and not from the perspective of the extremely critical press accounts one usually reads.