John Rizzo, CIA lawyer who approved torture program, dies at 73
Source: Washington Post
John Rizzo, a self-described “company man” who worked as a CIA lawyer for more than three decades, laying the legal groundwork for proxy wars, drone strikes and the “enhanced interrogation” program, in which suspected terrorists were tortured in secret prisons overseas, died Aug. 6 at his home in Washington. He was 73.
The cause was not yet known, said his son, James Rizzo.
Mr. Rizzo spent nearly his entire career at the CIA, where he offered legal advice on covert operations as well as on more mundane issues of environmental, contract and tax law. He was named the agency’s top lawyer two months after the 9/11 terrorist attacks and went on to serve as acting general counsel for more than six years, in two stints.
But he was ultimately denied the official role of general counsel, with his Senate confirmation blocked in 2007 by Democratic opposition over his role in the agency’s brutal detention and interrogation program. Under the George W. Bush administration, at least 39 detainees were subjected to sleep deprivation, waterboarding and other methods widely condemned as torture.
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By Harrison Smith
Today at 5:01 p.m. EDT
Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/obituaries/john-rizzo-dead/2021/08/12/6c9a632e-faac-11eb-9c0e-97e29906a970_story.html
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From the link in the OP:
“It’s basically a hit list,” he told Newsweek in 2011, two years after retiring from the CIA. He then pointed a finger at the reporter’s forehead and pretended to pull a trigger. “The Predator is the weapon of choice,” he remarked, referring to the drone, “but it could also be someone putting a bullet in your head.”
...
Mr. Rizzo often noted the irony that targeting and killing terrorism suspects, including through drones strikes, appeared to be “less legally risky” than capturing and interrogating them. “I have no doubt that if I had said the word, much if not all of the [interrogation program] would have quietly died before it was born,” he wrote in a 2014 memoir, “Company Man.” “It would have been a relatively easy thing to do, actually.”
But he said he had few regrets. “Mostly my conscience is clear,” he told Brown Alumni Magazine. “I’m content.”
I burst out laughing at your comments. Definitely made my night!
being waterboarded for eternity in Hell.
Please let it be so. 
