The Limits of Espionage

Event Details

Television Broadcast: May 4, 2014

JOHN RIZZO had a 34-year career as a lawyer at the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), culminating with seven years as the Agency’s chief legal officer. In the post-9/11 era, he helped create and implement the full spectrum of aggressive counterterrorist operations against al Qaeda, including the so-called “enhanced interrogation program” and lethal strikes against the al Qaeda leadership. Since retiring from the CIA, he has served as senior counsel at a Washington, DC, law firm and is a visiting scholar at the Hoover Institution. In his book, Company Man: Thirty Years of Controversy and Crisis in the CIA, 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.

GENEVIEVE LESTER is visiting assistant professor, coordinator of intelligence studies, and senior fellow at Georgetown’s Center for Security Studies. Her areas of interest are American politics, international relations, and security, with an emphasis on intelligence and accountability. Currently a research fellow at the University of California Washington Center, Lester served as a research fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies-U.S., an editor of International Affairs, and a Fulbright Scholar at the Technical University, Berlin.