Company Man

From a former top-level insider — whom the Los Angeles Times has called ‘the most influential career lawyer in CIA history’ — comes an unprecedented memoir filled with revelatory stories about the US government’s intelligence program. In 1975, fresh out of law school and working in a mind-numbing job at the US Treasury, John Rizzo took ‘a total shot in the dark’ and sent his résumé to the Central Intelligence Agency. He had no notion that, more than 30 years later, he would become a notorious public figure — both a symbol and a victim of the toxic winds swirling in post-9/11 Washington. From approving the rules that governed waterboarding and other ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’ to serving as the CIA’s spokesperson during the Iran–Contra scandal, Rizzo witnessed and participated in virtually all of the significant operations of the CIA’s modern history. He was the agency’s top lawyer in the years after the 9/11 attacks, and oversaw actions that remain the subject of intense debate today. In Company Man, Rizzo charts the CIA’s evolution over the course of his career, and offers a direct window into the organisation during some of its biggest controversies. In doing so, he has produced the most comprehensive insider account of the CIA ever written — a groundbreaking, timely, and remarkable personal history of American intelligence.