Sed Quis Custodiet Ipsos Custodes: The CIA's Office of General Counsel?

Abstract

But who guards the guardians? At the Central Intelligence Agency, the General Counsel and the other lawyers in the office range in their function between watchdogs and lapdogs. They go from pure oversight to slavish facilitation. This Article, by suggesting a more balanced breed, presents and assesses several views about CIA lawyers as well as offering the author's first-hand accounts of top dogs John Rizzo, Scott Muller, and Robert McNamara. Crucial to the CIA's detention and interrogation program was the advice government lawyers gave about the torture statute. Also significant have been the referrals to the Justice Department for investigations into possible crimes. Other topics for CIA lawyers include the guidelines for covert action and intelligence gathering, the Classified Information Procedures Act, the state secrets privilege, and the Freedom of Information Act. This Article is part of a broader project that analyzes internal checks on the intelligence community.

Keywords: Oversight, intelligence, espionage, CIA, interrogation, internal checks, classified information, covert action, criminal referrals, secrecy