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Fmr. CIA Lawyer: Senate Interrogation Report 'Unfair and Preposterous'

December 9, 2014

Former CIA Lawyer John Rizzo said that a Senate Intelligence Committee report on CIA interrogation techniques set to be released Tuesday is "absolutely unfair and preposterous," and part of a political calculation by outgoing Chairwoman Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D., Calif.) to smear the agency and President George W. Bush's administration.

"It is going to conclude that the CIA, including myself, I assume, misled Congress, the White House, the Justice Department, the American people, lord knows who else," Rizzo said on Fox & Friends Tuesday. "It's absolutely unfair and preposterous."

Rizzo said the CIA's interrogation techniques--which Senate Democrats, the State Department, and the White House have called "torture"--yielded and continue to yield valuable intelligence critical to apprehending 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and other terrorist operatives.

"It continues. As you know in your set-up, it continues to yield valuable intelligence," Risso said. "Even Leon Panetta, the CIA director under Obama, who called the program 'torture' says in his book, it produced critical intelligence."

Rizzo agreed that the release of the report was a political move by Senate Democrats--particularly Feinstein, as she steps down from her leadership position on the Intelligence Committee.

"Chairman Feinstein is about to lose her chairmanship, and before she walks out door, she's apparently determined to throw this out the door," Rizzo said.