03/28/14 03/28/14 [captioning made possible by democracy now!] from pacifica, this is democracy now! if the senate can declassify this report, we will be able to ensure that an un-american brutal program of detention and interrogation will never again be considered or permitted. >> as the senate intelligence committee and cia feud over the agency's harsh interrogation and secret detention program, we will speak to the cia lawyer credited with being one of the

legal architects of the agency's secret programs after 9/11. >> hasn't been tortured. as a lawyer, we have a certain standard and other people have their own moral beliefs about what is torture, but had it been torture, as a lawyer, that would have ended it right then and there. >> today, john rizzo, former acting general counsel of the cia versus human rights attorney and law professor scott horton. all of that and more coming up. this is democracy now!, democracynow.org, the war and peace report. i'm amy goodman. the united nations general assembly has voted to reject russia's annexation of crimea from ukraine. the resolution was proposed by ukraine and backed by the united states and european union. ukraine's acting prime minister spoke before the vote. >> over the last months, we have witnessed the most flagrant

violations of international law since the inception of the united nations. after two weeks of military occupation, an integral part of ukraine has been forcibly annexed by a state that has previously committed itself to guarantee the independence, sovereignty, territorial integrity of my country. >> the resolution declares this mud -- this month's referendum invalid. the russia's ambassador to the united nations said the people of crimea had made the choice to join russia. mr. president, on march 21, an event occurred which is truly historic. following the referendum in crimea during which an overwhelming majority of the crimean population voted in favor of being with russia, following that, there is a reunification of crimea in the

russian federation. we call on everyone to respect that voluntary choice just as russia has done. >> ukraine plans to hold elections on may 25 following the ouster pro russian president viktor yanukovych. the former prime minister thursday she intends to run. u.s. lawmakers in both the house and senate have voted nearly unanimously to pass a $1 billion aid package for ukraine. chairr robert menendez, of the senate foreign relations committee, said congress should take further steps if needed. >> we will continue to engage in whatever we think will be helpful to position the united states and away that exerts leadership with our european vladimirives president putin a real since there are consequences for any further actions, and also says to other global actors in the world, don't think about it because it's not going to be worth your time. tothe u.s. aid package adds $18 million and vans to ukraine from the imf in exchange for

austerity reforms. the u.n. human rights committee has issued a wide-ranging report criticizing the human rights record of the united states. the report assessed u.s. compliance with the key human rights treaty and found it lacking a more than two dozen areas. obama of concern include administration's drone program, nsa spying, the death penalty, detention of homeless people and immigrants, life sentences imposed on juveniles, racial profiling and police brutality. the committee called for closing guantánamo, losing the senate intelligence committee report on the bush of ministrations torture and condition program, and prosecuting those involved in torturing prisoners. four people have been killed after three bombs went off in a market area in baghdad. today's attack follows a wave of bombings that killed more than 30 people in baghdad on

thursday. meanwhile, the u.n. envoy to iraq says about 400,000 people have been displaced so far this year i violence in western iraq, including the cities of falluja and ramadi. president obama announced thursday insurance enrollment under his signature health care law has reached 6 million people. sign-ups have spiked in the lead up to monday's deadline. the administration issued an extension until mid april for those who apply but are not able to complete enrollment by march 31. president obama was in italy on thursday where he met with pope francis for the first time. during his visit, protesters gathered outside the u.s. embassy in rome to criticize obama's policies. them, the leader of the cobas trade union. >> obama is not changed the us government policy be it for the wars engage in nor the division the u.s. creates and countries

to then be able to intervene, or be it for the economic accords like the transatlantic trade partnership which will be destructive for the environment and the social conditions in this country. therefore, we are here to say that he is not a welcome guest. >> the death toll from a mudslide northeast of seattle, washington stands at 25 with 90 still missing. officials have warned the toll could rise substantially to their tomorrow pending reports from the medical examiner's office. bp has more than doubled its estimate for the size of its oil spill in lake michigan, which supplies drinking water to millions of people. the company now says up to 39 barrels or about 1600 gallons of oil spilled from an indiana refinery that processes tar sands crude from alberta, canada . the u.s. air force has fired nine commanders entrusted with the oversight of nuclear weapons amid a cheating scandal at a

base in montana. a 10th official, who was the senior officer at malmstrom air force base, is also resigning following reports of widespread cheating on exams. a law firm hired by new jersey governor chris christie says christie had no prior knowledge of lane closings on the george washington bridge that were carried out in an apparent act of illegal retaliation. according to the report, the port authority official who oversaw the closings, david waldstein, said he told governor christie about them while they were in progress. but attorney randy mastro said christie did not recall the conversation. >> we found that governor christie had no knowledge beforehand of this george washington bridge realignment idea, and that he played no role whatsoever in the decision or

the implementation of it. we further found no evidence that anyone in the governor's office besides bridget kelly knew of this idea in advance or played any role in the decision or the implementation of it. >> he's the former deputy mayor under mayor giuliani here in new york. the report cost taxpayers more than $1 million. attorneys were unable to interview key figures at the center of the scandal, including david waldstein and bridget and kelly from the former christie aid who approved the closings. a federal appeals court has upheld antitrust restrictions that have shattered a third of abortion clinics in texas. providers challenged the provisions on constitutional grounds, but the fifth circuit court of appeals ruled against them. following the law's passage, there are no abortion providers left in the rio grande valley, the poorest part of texas.

when another provision requiring hospital-style building standards comes into effect in september, the statewide total could drop to six. this week, planned parenthood announced it would open a new clinic in san antonio, texas the meets the building standards. texas has executed its fourth prisoner this year. anthony doyle was pronounced dead 25 minutes after being injected with pentobarbital from a compounding pharmacy. his execution came hours after a state judge ordered prison officials to disclose the name of the states new supplier of pentobarbital to attorneys for two prisoners suffer execution next month. the ruling came a day after no, judge struck down the state's law hiding information about execution drugs. an amnesty international report thursday rank the u.s. fifth worldwide in number of executions he carries out after china, iran, iraq, and saudi

arabia. the united nations human rights council has voted to open a probe into possible war crimes committed in sri lanka during the final phase of a military assault to crush tamil separatist. both sides are accused of carrying out serious abuses during the 26 year-long conflict , which ended in 2009. the councils high commissioner requested the inquiry into both the government and the tamil tiger rebels or ltte. >> almost five years since the end of the conflict, it is important for the human rights council to recall the magnitude and gravity of the violations alleged to been committed at that time by the government and by the ltte, which left thousands of civilians killed, injured, or missing. failure to address the grief and trauma among victims and survivors undermines confidence

in the state and reconciliation. >> in new york, domino's workers have won nearly $450,000 in restitution after being paid below minimum number -- minimum wage and denied overtime. attorney general eric schneiderman said he reached the deal with the owners of 23 domino's stores. it follows a similarly victory by mcdonald's employees, bringing the total amount of stolen wages regained by fast food workers to nearly $1 million in two weeks. the fast food for campaigns has more than 80% of new york cities fast food workers report wage that. connecticut governor malloy has signed a bill raising the minimum wage to $10.10 an hour starting in 2017. imprisonedmy veteran in an immigration detention facility in tacoma, washington says he has been placed in solitary confinement after calling for work stoppage among prisoners.

the northwest attention center is owned by the for-profit geo group. hassall moses said he try to type up a letter: for fellow prisoners to protest the halting work him up the letter is intercepted and he was placed in solitary confinement. moses spoke in an audio recording made by an attorney. basically, this facility is run by detainees. working, we stopped could negotiate by the pay raise because right now everyone is working for one dollar. we could talk about the food quality, the living conditions. >> immigrants at the prison are in their third week of a hunger strike for better conditions and in and to record deportations. those are some of the headlines. this is democracy now!, democracynow.org, the war and peace report. i'm amy goodman with juan gonzalez.

>> welcome to all our listeners and viewers from around the country and around the world. the senate select committee on intelligence is voting as soon as april 4 to declassify part of the committee 6000-page study on the cia's secret attention and interrogation programs. the study has set off an unprecedented hostages will battle between the senate and the cia. earlier this month, senate intelligence committee chair dianne feinstein took to the senate floor to accuse the cia of secretly removing pacified documents from her staff computers and spying on senate staffers and their computers in an effort to undermine the panel's report. >> if the senate can declassify this report, we will be able to ensure that an un-american drivel program of detention -- brutal program of detention and interrogation will never again be considered or permitted.

but, mr. president, the recent actions that i have just laid out make this a defining moment for the oversight of our intelligence committee. how congress and how this will be resolved will show whether the intelligence committee can be effective in monitoring and investigating our nation's intelligence activities, or whether our work can be thwarted by those we oversee. i believe it is critical that the committee and the senate reaffirm our oversight role in our independence under the constitution of the united states. >> the cia has countered by filing a crimes report with the department of justice accusing senate staffers of illegally accessing cia documents. the cia director john brennan has denied feinstein's allegations. >> as far as the allegations of the cia hacking into senate computers, nothing could be further from the truth. we would not do that.

that is just beyond the scope of reason. when the facts come out on this, i think a lot of people who are claiming that there has been this tremendous spying in monitoring and hacking will be proved wrong. meanwhile, the united nations human rights committee criticized the obama administration for closing its investigations into the cia's actions after september 11. the u.n. report stated -- today we spend the hour looking at this debate. we're joined by john rizzo, who served as acting general counsel

to much of the george w. bush administration and was a key eagle architect of u.s. interrogation and detention program after the september 11 attacks. the los angeles times described him as "the most influential career lawyer in cia history." he has recently published a book headlined, "company man: thirty years of controversy and crisis in the cia." and we're joined by human rights attorney scott horton. he is contesting editor at harper's magazine and a lecturer at the lobby a law school. he is author of the forthcoming book, "the lords of secrecy: the national security elite and america stealth foreign policy." we welcome you both to democracy now! john rizzo, first talk about the clash between the cia right now in the senate intelligence committee. do you think the report should be declassified and do you believe this cia was spying on the senate staff on the committee? >> it is good to be here. yes, i have stated publicly i

believe the report should be declassified. it is said to be 6000 pages long , estimated $50 million worth of taxpayer money was spent on it. sure, i think it should come out as well as what i read is a very detailed cia rebuttal. i say that, even though i assume the report given the description by senator feinstein and others will be extreme the critical of the cia's performance during that period. of course, that would reasonably include my performance. i do think it should come out. clip we just played in the from senator feinstein, she called it an un-american brutal program of detention and interrogations. you were involved in providing some of the legal context or justifications for the program post the attacks of 9/11.

could you talk about your assessments of that program? >> icily would not describe it as an un-american program ash i certainly would not describe it as an un-american program. the integration program was extraordinarily aggressive. some of the techniques, particularly waterboarding, could be described as brutal. i don't think any of those techniques -- i did not at the time and i don't think today -- that any of them rose to the legal threshold of torture. >> scott horton? >> it seems clear-cut to me that certainly, waterboarding and a number of the other techniques described both used individually and in commendation constitute torture, have been viewed as torture by the united states. the u.s. has aggressively criticized other nations using them. and when senator feinstein says it is un-american, she is right.

this is one of the principles on which the united states defined itself going back to the revolutionary war and george washington who denounced torture and pledged the u.s. would treat prisoners humanely in wartime. that is been part of the nation's birthright of until this last conflict. so i think we are seeing something quite profound. also, this is essentially has historical study. they're not looking at a program that is underway right now, that is still being used. it is a review of things that went on in the past. certainly, most of these practices were terminated at the end of 2006. it is really astonishing that there is such ferocious pushback to publication of a report. i think john rizzo is commended for coming out and clearly stating, as he has, that the report should be out there and

be published. about thezzo, talk main argument you make in your book "company man." >> the argument about the program? >> overall, the main point you're making about the cia, the 30 years of controversy and crisis at the cia. >> i was a career cia lawyer. i joined as a young guy in 1976 and retired at the end of 2009, having served most of the post-9/11 period as the chief legal officer. -- part of it is devoted to the post-9/11 years, when my name first became public. -- my career the basically tracked the modern evolution of the cia. and during the course of those

30 plus years, i was involved in ,irtually every crisis controversy, screwup that the cia was involved in. an unprecedented insider memoir that i thought would use my story and my expenses and my observations to describe to the reader how the cia has evolved in the last 30 years. include evolution would the birth of congressional oversight that occurred right about the time i arrived and then on through the years through all sorts of crises. the fundamental point is that the cia is a very resilient organization. and also, it must be stated that the cia manages to get itself into controversies every few years like clockwork. >> we're going to take a break and come back to this conversation. we will talk about the issues of torture iran dish and that the torture and rendition of

the cia has been accused of. our guests are john rizzo, retired cia attorney who served as the agency's acting general counsel during most of the bush administration. he is the author of the new book, "company man: thirty years of controversy and crisis in the cia." and we're joined by scott horton , human rights attorney and could to ridding editor at harper's magazine. we will be back in a moment. ♪ [music break]

>> video footage taken from 35 years ago on this date, the anniversary of the worst nuclear accident in u.s. history, the partial meltdown of the reactor at three mile island. you can go to democracynow.org and see that. this is democracy now!, democracynow.org, the war and peace report. i'm amy goodman with juan gonzalez.

we are spending power talking about the cia. john rizzo is with us and washington, d.c., retired cia attorney who served as the agency's acting general counsel during most of the bush administration. he has just written a book called, "company man: thirty years of controversy and crisis in the cia." with us, horton is longtime human rights attorney and considering editor at harper's magazine. he is the author of the forthcoming book called, "the lords of secrecy: the national security elite and america stealth foreign policy." john rizzo, before the break your mentioning there was a periodic crises that erupted with the ca's activities. your early in your career, you said in your book, he involved in one of the great constitutional crises, the iraq contract. you talk about how former cia director william casey asked you at one point to provide the most expansive finding you could to

allow the was government to continue to back the particular signs the reagan administration was then supporting in central rebels, the guatemalan the nicaraguan contras. could you talk about the findings than and in retrospect, because that turned out to be a huge battle between congress and the administration and the cia over foreign policy. >> sure. occurredcona scandal about 10 years into my career. basically, looking back amid the turning point of my career. my first opportunity to have a front row seat and participate first-hand and a major confrontation and investigation between cia and the congress. indicated the cia director

at the time william casey was a very forceful, very aggressive -- anti-communist advocate. he directed me, and i was not a senior attorney at the time, but he directed me because i was the lawyer for the clandestine service to draft authorization for president reagan the signed -- to my experience to date, was very aggressive. as you indicated him a in central america, the contra against, covert actions to support vision dean and afghanistan. it was rather breathtaking. scandal erupted pursuant tocia's

what house to wretch and oliver directionhite house oliver north, concocted a scheme to trade, basically, u.s. arms iranian-backede has below is holding. .- hezbollah it was a huge uproar. there is a special congressional committee created. it was a template for a number of clashes between cia and congress over the years. i have been away five years now, so you don't have any information -- inside information. clashikes me as a counter over congressional committee asked as the document. of times over of

my career -- i'm flummoxed that this has escalated the way it has. >> scott horton, you're familiar with the iran-contra scandal and a constitutional crisis that developed. could you give your perspective? >> i think john used the word resilient. that is clearly right. i found most remarkable in his book. we have been told things like the church committee and the iran-contra probes clipped the wings of the cia, left it weak and unwilling to go out and do its work. i never had the impression of that. i think one thing that emerges from john's book is, in fact, how little impact these things had on the agency and its operations, which continued to be very, very aggressive. and also the relationship with the white house was stressed

comes through clearly. in the end, that may raise the fundamental question of how effective as congressional oversight ever been? certainly even in periods when there was a sharp clash, and approach used on policy between congressional overseers and the cia seems it is only rarely that the congressional oversight has been able to move or slow down the ca in any way. and that carries forward to the current controversy with this new report on torture. and the way this has been slow walked. it is an amazing amount of time it is taken to get it out. we see the eruption of this -- in any event, it is bizarre that it could be such a controversy because the whole function of oversight axalves having the

reviewing the documents. the suggestion that members of congress from a members of the oversight committee could've done something wrong by reviewing documents which is the responsibility to review, is just bizarre. >> that's talk about some concrete examples of the issues that are being looked at now. i want to ask about extraordinary rendition in the case of khaled el-masri, the german citizen who sued the cia for illegally kidnapping him in 2000 three after accusing him of being a member of al qaeda. the cia flew him to a secret prison in afghanistan and held him for five years. he was only released for five months. -- for five months. he was only released after the ca relies they had attained the wrong man and left him alone on an abandoned road in albania. while in cia custody, khaled el-masri says he was repeatedly beaten, drugs, roughly interrogated by masked men, detained in squalid conditions, and denied access to an attorney or his family.

this is khaled el-masri. .> they took me to this room i had handcuffs and a blindfold. when the door was closed, i was beaten from all sides. i was hit from all sides. . was humiliated that i wascould hear being photographed in the process when i was completely naked. then my hands were tied on my back or to my back. ankles andains to my a bag over my head, just like the pictures we have seen of guantánamo, for example. i was dragged brutally into the

airplane. in the airport, i was thrown to the floor. i was tied to the floor and to the sides of the airplanes. at some point when i woke up again, i found myself in afghanistan. i was brutally dragged off the airplane and put in the trunk of a car. , talk about khaled el-masri in this case. but thee to do this, khaled el-masri case, the u.s. government still considers that whole episode to be classified. i'm constrained about talking about it in any detail. i did not talk about it in the book. then he briefly say about

rendition. the ca did conduct some .enditions in the post-9/11 era some. it has been alleged there were dozens or even hundreds. yes, the cia did conduct renditions. renditions, however, actually go back to several administrations. renditionxtraordinary is puzzling because renditions were not a product of post-9/11 era and the fact the obama administration carefully preserved its authority at the same time when a close the interrogation program, preserved its authority to conduct renditions. themselvesin and of are actually a fairly well-established fact in american and the world intelligence organizations. >> do you think it is fair to call the kidnapping?

>> sure. it is taking someone against their will. to authorize -- it is an authorized government program, but the term kidnapping means taking someone who doesn't want to be taken and taking them somewhere else. euphemistically, you could describe it that way. >> scott horton, talk about this case. >> is significant for a number of reasons. the first is, john can talk about it because it is classified. it is secret. this is one of several cases where we can see secrecy being invoked and used a cover-up mistakes. khaled el-masri has a name similar to someone who was a serious al qaeda terrorist. he was mistaken for that individual. up, brutalized, tortured and imprisoned because of that mistake. that is something a democratic

society and we should be able to talk about it and discuss and be able to have government accountability and closure on these issues him a bit secrecy is used effectively to block that. these issues, but secrecy is used effectively to block that. they handed down a very important decision, landmark decision, which is now viewed as perhaps their most important single judgment dealing with the torture issue. in that decision, they concluded the procedures that were used that you heard mr. khaled el-masri described himself, did constitute torture. and they also said the government of macedonia had failed in its legal responsibilities by not opening a criminal inquiry and prosecuting those who were involved. and those who involved were by

and large cia agents. not just any cia agents, it ciauded very senior functionary who directed the entire thing was subsequently went on to be the head of the , a briefer atnit the white house, and so forth. the cia says we should not use her name, although, it is very well known. i think hugely significant events, hugely embarrassing, but something, frankly, it would behoove the united states and the cia to come clean about. >> it is not just a mistake about the kidnapping. he lived to tell about what was done to him. >> correct. the criminal, investigation in germany. interviewed -- i interviewed some of those in munich and they said, he gave an account and we were able to absolutely verify his account about what was done to him including the use of

psychotropic drugs and so forth, all of which has come out. they were able to make their conclusions by examining his body, cutting his hair, dealing with hair samples and so forth. we know from that, some of the things that were done to him in captivity, both in macedonia and afghanistan. aey were very serious issues violation of the law. he was just a simple german grocer. for him to be objected to this abuse is horrible. >> the white house just said they did it to the wrong man. >> i want to ask about one of the infamous cia renditions that took place in milan, italy when a muslim clerk was snatched off the streets in 2003. omar was taken to the u.s. bases in italy and germany before being sent to egypt or he says he was tortured -- where he says he was tortured. tried in were absentia.

one of the agents broke her silence and broke to the mcclatchy newspapers. i have to live with myself and the rest of my life knowing exactly what happened, in particular, knowing the u.s. rendered an individual that they had no profitable evidence against. and worse, after the rendition, it turns out it was a big is understanding between cairo and rome. the egyptians maintain the only reason they issued an arrest warrant for him was at the behest of the americans. after the rendition, agents came back and said the information to prosecute him, and the cia station chief said, i thought you had the information. in cairo said, no, we don't. we issue this arrest warrant on your behalf. so where is the information? and that is why he was finally set free. there is no prosecutable information to get him convicted and put away. >> did abu omar pose an imminent

danger to american lives? >> if you was danger and posed ,n imminent and clear danger the italian police would have picked him up right away. he was under investigation for two years. bupretty aggressive investigation. , i'm sure thathn rizzo was one case that you came across during your time at the cia. what can you tell us about that? >> i'm really sorry. i don't like to stonewall, but again, that is a particular rendition the u.s. government still considers classified. i will say parenthetically i agree with my friend scott that too many things remain classified for too long. i would be happy to talk about

either one of those cases, but with deep regret, my hands are tied. x what is interesting, it goes to the issue of classification. these cia agents were tried in absentia. this is all brought out in court. you have this cia agent speaking about it publicly and yet the cia says you cannot talk about this. >> well, i'm afraid, yeah. with her. she was a fine officer. soundbite, -- she is retired from the agency, but she was not given authorization to talk about the program and neither am i. >> scott horton, if you can tell us what exactly happened here? clearly, she and the other agents cannot go to europe as they were convicted and sent you. convicted.6 people

i think this is one of the things that demonstrates the huge risk of this program and the lack of just simple wisdom being applied for targets. the program is selected against people who really presented in imminent danger and were plotters of hijacking things. i don't think it was going to raise that much of an issue in europe or elsewhere, but in the extent, it focused on people likea bu omar and khaled el-masri. and it is very embarrassing. we see 26 people being convicted -- >> did they kidnap them off the streets of oman? >> and they took him to a base. another man was also charged in the outset. he was taken to germany and then to egypt. >> what happened to him? >> he was held and interrogated

for quite some time. the egyptian said, we don't get it, this guy is not an important figure. he doesn't have important information. at this point, the embarrassment factor weighs in. they just want him to be held. people in cairo confirmed were put under intense pressure by the cia to keep them quiet and to hold him there to basically because he were afraid of what he would come out to say. this is nonsense. in the case of italy, if we look back, there were people in the community who went to ronald reagan and said, let's just swoop in and grab the terrorists been held by the italians. reagan said, we don't do that because that will damage our long-term relations with an important nato ally. reagan is right. and i think you see what happens here when you take the wrong course. >> john rizzo, i want to ask about a topic i think you can

talk about. in 2010 in his first major interview since leaving office, former president george w bush admitted he approved of waterboarding. >> why is waterboarding legal in your opinion? >> because the lawyers said it was legal. it did not fall within the anti-torture act. i'm not a lawyer. but you got to trust the judgment of the people around you, and i do. >> you say it is legal and the lawyers told me. >> we used this technique on three people. we captured a lot of people and used it on three. we gain valuable information to protect the country. it was the right thing to do as far as i'm concerned. is legal, president bush, if an american is taken into custody in a foreign country -- not necessarily a uniformed -- >> i'm not going to debate the issue. >> would it be ok for foreign country to waterboard an american? >> all i ask is people read the book.

they can reach the same conclusion as they made the same decision i made are not. >> you would do it again today? >> yeah, i would. >> in your book, you don't recall the events quite the same way as president bush recalled them. >> it is a rather curious episode. in his memoir, president bush involved in he was the interrogation program from the beginning, and approved all the techniques in advance. he talked about having vetoed a couple of them. these are very vivid conversations he claimed to have had with george tenet. this would be in the 2002-2003 timeframe. reading that, i do not recall any of that. i get with george tenet daily in those days. i was consumed with this program period, asart up

was he. he never told me about talking with president bush about what was a new program, much less, giving any guidance or direction to the president. out, ie book came reached out to george tenet because i thought i missed something. i said, did you have these conversations with president bush? he said yet no recollection of ever having discussed the interrogation program with the president in those early days. frankly, i found the passage incredibly bouldering. wrote "i took a look at the list of techniques. there were two i felt went too far, even if there were legal. i directed the cia not to use them. tenet asked if you permission to use them."

>> george bush, when asked why he says the lawyers tell me it was legal, but of course, the department of justice is certainly one of the blackest chapters in history. when they go in and do their internal review, they say, we look at the two lawyers involved in preparing memoranda and we are very concerned that the offer of advancement given to these lawyers -- one was offered an appointment to the court of appeals dangled in front of him and the other was offered an assistant attorney general position -- that this influenced and undermined their exercise of independent professional judgment. so i think it is a good demonstration of how power can corrupt, and how lawyers not exercising independent or festal judgment can lead -- professional judgment can lead to huge problems for the country down the road. >> if you didn't authorize it,

what does it mean? >> in this case, there's no question but the responsibility rests ultimately with the president for this, whether he was specifically conscious of the individual techniques or participated in briefings or not. i think one thing that john rizzo's book does in spades is show how careful the cia was going both to the justice department to get opinions, but ultimately, also to the white house, preparing this, briefing it in detail, giving consent. when we see the white house withheld 9000 pages of documents from the senate select committee, i think this portrait that john rizzo provides gives us a clear sense of what those documents are likely to be. >> we're going to go to break and then come back with this discussion, spending the hour with john rizzo, retired cia attorney and author of, "company man: thirty years of controversy and crisis in the cia." and scott horton, human rights

attorney. when we come back, who should be held responsible for rendition? should administration officials be brought to trial? we will be back in a moment. ♪ [music break]

from pacifica, this is democracy now! with juan gonzalez. andguest is john rizzo scott horton. >> i want to ask about a policy issue in terms of the growth and expansion of the cia in recent decades, especially his relationship to the official american military. you take guantanamo for instance. it is a military base, but yet it also became the site of the

cia interrogations of prisoners there in the war against terrorism. owncia's possession of its air force, its own ability to attack people around the world with missiles and targeted killings. what do you see as the problems between established military in a system of accountability to the public versus the cia as they continue to expand its efforts around the world? >> that is a fascinating question. i will try to be concise. before i start, just briefly clarify, the cia interrogation program did not take place at guantanamo. in black sites overseas. there were no ca interrogations done at guantanamo. it was a military dod operation.

to your larger question, yes, certainly,een -- 9/11, accelerated the phenomenon inincreased cia involvement paramilitary activities -- you know, creation of the air force. that would seem to parallel the normal existing traditional roles and duties of the u.s. military. personally, i did get increasingly concerned about this overlap between the cia's traditional historical function and getting into, in my mind, activities that could be more effectively carried out by the pentagon. after all, is a much bigger organization with much more money at its disposal. i think it is a trend that bears

watching. >> scott horton? >> i think of the and when we review all of these issues around the cia, this is the big question which is, is the cia's mission really true to the original vision of the national security act? i think it has changed. the original vision was, it was going to be an intelligence gathering and analysis organization that would largely be divorced from operations. in may have a little authority on rare occasions to engage in covert operations, but i think the idea was it would be quite rare. largely, operations would be controlled by the military. i think what we see today is they have their own air force, military units have been waging 7, 8, 9 year drone war in pakistan with hundreds of strikes -- more than 300 right now. that seems almost impossible to reconcile with the original vision. the question you come back to,

question that harry truman asked, at the end of 1963 after the failed bay of pigs incident after president kennedy's assassination, he said he was really very worried about what had happened to the cia. it had become so heavily engaged itsperation that intelligence gathering and analysis function was failing. today, we see a russian invasion in crimea and only days before that, we see cia analyst on the hill saying there's is no realistic risk of such a thing happening. we see a failure to for the arab spring's. sort of the analytical function is going down. there's a direct connection between those failures and the heavy emphasis on operations. >> you're the chief legal officer for seven years, john rizzo. in 2011 your quoted by newsweek in an article titled "inside the killing machine" describing drone killings as "murder" and

discard the target list -- target list as a hit list. would you stand by those characterizations now? , to be honest,ew was a mistake on my part. i thought i was off the record and the reporter thought we were on the record. so i said things in that interview that i never wanted or intended to be published. is to targetgram and kill terrorists. it is directed and authorized by the president of the united states. i think i should not have used the term murder, but it is

definitely a killing program. it is a killing machine. list? the hit >> it was a euphemism. probably an un-politic choice of words, but when you get right down to it, it is a list of people who are targeted for lethal actions. ofand we do know from all the information out, thousands of innocent people have been killed. you look at the nyu stanford report living under drugs and other information that has come out. i wanted to ask about the issue of prosecution will stop scott horton, who should be held accountable? john the end of the day, in his book talks about the prosecution or the investigations that were undertaken both under president bush and under president obama that led to no action and a

prosecution. from investigation started the bottom. they started with the allegations -- actually, starting with the cia inspector general's report and then focused on individual cia officers. i think there's a fundamental problem with the u.s. department of justice dealing with these things. and that is that it is almost impossible to deal with them divorced from the policy choices that was made. it is those who set the policies who bear ultimate responsibility of criminal violations are incurred. we have the department of justice involved in this process of fixing the problems seize, so it could not investigate itself. i think that is the dilemma of examination and prosecution. i think we see even now with the senate select committee's report that -- there's no discussion of

accountability. that point.hey find we have a clear problem there. >> should rumsfeld and cheney be prosecuted, president obama? >> there should be an independent investigation, which still hasn't occurred as far as i'm concerned. the basis has to be disclosure of much more factor of details. i want to add one other thing. john said no cia operations a quantum oh. -- at guantanamo. that is silly huge question. i've seen a lot of evidence to justin the contrary. we have strawberry fields and penny lane operations going on out there, which were operations geared toward perhaps turning risner's who are about to be released -- prisoners who are about to be released, turning them into assets. that goes on in every single war.

we have a lot of evidence linking the cia to those programs. >> john rizzo, even if you thought you were off the record, you stand by what you're said. you're talking murder, hit list. do you think the administration official should be prosecuted? can't -- i'miously somewhat biased since i was one of the senior officials involved that took part in the implementation and conception of the program. this is why-- look, i support the senate report coming out. all of the facts should come out. the american people deserve to know what was done in their name. they can make their own judgments. but at this point, going back now