1 Boring Old Man

Jose A. Rodriguez is a career C.I.A. employee who succeeded Stephen Kappes on November 16, 2004 to become the Deputy Director for Operations [later Director of the National Clandestine Service], retiring on September 30, 2007. We know very little about how the order to actually destroy the tapes was formulated other than the final order was given by Jose Rodriguez. In both of these emails, the implication is that Rodriguez was acting a bit like ‘wild card’ – something that seems unlikely for a career employee.

The [REDACTED] names are opaque to us, but not to John Durham, the Special Prosecutor investigating the destruction of the tapes. I’ve labeled the people involved A, B and C based on my context guesses. We know that A, B and C are not CIA Attorney John Rizzo, White House Counsel Harriet Miers, CIA Director Porter Goss, in the CIA OIG, Executive Director of the CIA Dusty Foggo, or the author of these emails. It is reasonable to assume that A, B and C are CIA people. So, says the email author, either Jose Rodriguez was a ‘loose cannon’ who took this matter that had been on the back burner for several years into his own hands, or person B=C was involved in the interrogations, wanted the tapes destroyed, and misled or manipulated Rodriguez. The third option is that Jose himself is C.

After the destruction of the tapes, Jose Rodriguez remained on the job for a two years. He has declined to testify in a Congressional Hearing already, and has not testified before John Durham’s Grand Jury. It is also reported that he has asked for immunity in return for his testimony. Attorney John McPherson who did the first review of the tapes has been granted immunity and is scheduled to testify before the Grand Jury this month.

In May 2002, Rodriguez became head of the CTC [Counterterrorism Center] until he was promoted to DDO in November 2004. That’s in the Zubaydah window. So Jose himself could be C. The CTC was certainly in the thick of the CIA efforts in Afghanistan. That would make D the CTC itself. There’s another CIA character, Robert Grenier. At the time of Zubaydah’s capture and interrogation, he was CIA station chief in Islamabad, Pakistan, where he helped plan covert operations in support of the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan. When Rodriguez was promoted, Grenier became the head of the CTC to replace him. In February 2006, Rodriguez fired Gernier. There were lots of stories about why. Gernier opposed Rendition. Gernier wasn’t tough enough. Gernier had just testified in the Libby trial [January 2006] and didn’t make Libby look so hot. But it could be that he was B=C and had misled Jose. Thing is, G·E·R·N·I·E·R is too long to fit the [REDACTED] slots. J·O·S·E fits the C space.

I’m not the one to figure all of this out. CIA politics isn’t in my skillset. But Jose Rodriguez has certainly been quiet, and he did seem to be leading the charge with this tape destruction thing. At the least, he knows all the answers to how it all happened. If he weren’t suspect for acting on his own, why wouldn’t John Durham just give him immunity and get all the answers?