Ex-CIA Lawyer Says Bush Not Told at First About Waterboarding
A memoir by John Rizzo, longtime acting general counsel for the CIA, says Bush was not initially informed about the use of waterboarding and other harsh interrogation techniques that critics later called torture, despite Bush’s claim to the contrary in his 2010 book.
Bush later signed on, and Rizzo repeats previous CIA claims that key members of Congress, including Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco), were fully briefed on what the CIA called “enhanced interrogation techniques” and did not object, something Pelosi has denied.
In “Company Man,” Rizzo writes that the CIA also sought permission for another technique “so gruesome that the Justice Department later stopped short of approving it” and it was not used. CIA censors prohibited him from describing the technique, but other officials say it was mock live burial of prisoners.
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