Former CIA General Counsel Is in the Crosshairs in Leak Probe

The Department of Justice is investigating the unauthorized disclosure of key details of the CIA’s secret drone program from a February Newsweek story crafted from an interview with John Rizzo, the CIA’s former general counsel.

News of the probe, first reported by the National Journal, was confirmed Thursday to The Daily Beast by two U.S. officials who asked not to be named. These officials say the CIA submitted what is known as a crime report after the publication of the Newsweek story to the Justice Department, noting that classified information was disclosed in the article.

Rizzo, who declined to comment for the story, told Newsweek at the time that the lawyers for the CIA’s counterterrorism center chose human targets that comprised a hit list for the agency’s program that operates the Predator unmanned aerial vehicles in Pakistan. Even though the former CIA director Leon Panetta and Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the chair of the Senate Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, have discussed the drone program in public in the past, it is considered a covert-action program and subject to the highest levels of secrecy.More >