Question Time (Rizzo hearing offers Dems chance to probe CIA practices)

[Rose Siding]

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Congressional staffers are already preparing for hearings the committee is expected to hold on whether the Senate should confirm John Rizzo, a veteran CIA attorney, as the agency’s general counsel. President Bush nominated Rizzo to the CIA’s top legal post in mid-March. Currently the CIA's senior deputy general counsel, Rizzo has been acting as the agency’s top legal adviser after the previous chief lawyer left the agency in August 2004.

Congressional aides said a date for Rizzo’s confirmation hearings has not yet been set. However, officials on Capitol Hill and inside the intelligence community said that everyone involved in the confirmation process is aware that the hearings are likely to become a forum in which administration critics, particularly Senate Democrats, can question a senior agency official in detail about contentious CIA procedures for detaining and interrogating prisoners, as well as the agency’s practice of “rendition,” in which terror suspects are transported by undercover agency operatives to foreign countries. (Domestic and foreign critics say the Bush administration’s rendition policies have amounted to the “outsourcing” of torture.)

Senate critics are also likely to ask Rizzo about CIA investigations into alleged media leaks, including the probe that led to the recent firing of veteran CIA analyst Mary McCarthy for alleged unauthorized contacts and discussions of classified information with Washington Post reporter Dana Priest and at least one other journalist. Rizzo could also be asked about whether Congress should take action to plug perceived loopholes in the law currently governing unauthorized disclosures of classified information.

In his current position as CIA senior deputy general counsel, and in his previous job as deputy general counsel for the agency’s Operations Division, which conducts clandestine and covert espionage activities, Rizzo was privy to key decisions and legal opinions rendered by CIA and other government lawyers regarding potentially contentious counterterror operations involving the agency, particularly following the 9/11 attacks. Aside from rendition, these operations include the CIA’s own use of aggressive, or “enhanced” interrogation techniques—including some alleged techniques that human-rights activists describe as torture—and the agency’s operation of what amounts to a secret network of detention centers where it is believed to be holding two to three dozen high-level Al Qaeda detainees, including Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, alleged mastermind of the 9/11 attacks.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12501762/site/newsweek/