Company Man: Thirty Years of Controversy and Crisis in the CIA

John Rizzo

May 2014 · Tantor Media Inc · Narrated by Pete Larkin

About this audiobook

In 1975, fresh out of law school and working a numbing job at the Treasury Department, John Rizzo took "a total shot in the dark" and sent his resume to the Central Intelligence Agency. He had no notion that more than thirty years later, after serving under eleven CIA directors and seven presidents, he would become a notorious public figure-a symbol and a victim of the toxic winds swirling in post-9/11 Washington. From serving as the point person answering for the Iran-Contra scandal to approving the rules that govern waterboarding and other "enhanced interrogation techniques," John Rizzo witnessed and participated in virtually all of the significant operations of the CIA's modern history. In Company Man, Rizzo charts the CIA's evolution from shadowy entity to an organization exposed to new laws, rules, and a seemingly never-ending string of public controversies. Rizzo offers a direct window into the CIA in the years after the 9/11 attacks, when he served as the agency's top lawyer, with oversight of actions that remain the subject of intense debate today. In Company Man, Rizzo is the first CIA official to ever describe what "black sites" look like from the inside and he provides the most comprehensive account ever written of the "torture tape" fiasco surrounding the interrogation of Al Qaeda suspect Abu Zubaydah and the birth, growth, and death of the enhanced interrogation program. Spanning more than three decades, Company Man is the most authoritative insider account of the CIA ever written-a groundbreaking, timely, and remarkably candid history of American intelligence.

About the author

John Rizzo had a thirty-four-year career as a lawyer at CIA, culminating with seven years as the Agency's chief legal officer. Since retiring from the CIA, he has served as senior counsel at a Washington, D.C., law firm and is a visiting scholar at the Hoover Institution.

Pete Larkin is an AudioFile Earphones Award winner and a 2014 Audie Award finalist. He was the public address announcer for the New York Mets from 1988 to 1993. An award-winning on-camera host, Pete has worked on many industrial films and has done hundreds of commercials, promos, and narrations.