Central Intelligence Agency Archives - Page 4 of 5 - Journal of National Security Law & Policy

Military-Intelligence Convergence and the Law of the Title 10/Title 50 Debate

Leon Panetta appeared on PBS Newshour not long after the raid that killed Osama bin Laden. He was the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency at that time, and during the course of the interview he took up the question of the CIA’s role in the attack.

One Lantern in the Darkest Night: The CIA’s Inspector General

Summing up their history of the statutory Inspector General at the CIA, the authors conclude that “The ‘independent watchdog’ of a statutory IG did not expose major shortcomings that otherwise would have gone unnoticed.

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

After 9/11, two officials at the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) made decisions that led to major news. In 2002, one CIA official asked the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) to clarify how aggressive CIA interrogators could be in questioning al Qaeda operatives held overseas. This request led to the August 2002 memorandum, later leaked, in which John Yoo argued that an interrogator crosses the line into torture only by inflicting pain on a par with organ failure. Yoo further suggested that interrogators would have many defenses, justifications, and excuses if they faced possible criminal charges. One commentator described the advice as that of a “mob lawyer to a mafia don on how to skirt the law and stay out of prison.” To cool the debate about torture, the Bush administration retracted the memorandum and replaced it with another.