Even as the interrogation controversy escalated over the last three years, Rizzo's name was rarely mentioned among those of other lawyers, including John C. Yoo and Jay S. Bybee, who were more closely associated with the program.
But that changed when the White House released Justice Department memos in April arguing that waterboarding and other brutal methods did not constitute torture. Rizzo's name was at the top of each memo, making clear his role in requesting those controversial rulings.
Rizzo had never dealt with legal questions about interrogation until officials from the agency's Counterterrorism Center approached him in 2002 with a list of techniques they wanted to employ to get a suspected Al Qaeda captive, Abu Zubaydah, to talk. Among them was waterboarding, in which a prisoner is strapped to a plank and doused to make him feel he is drowning.
If Rizzo was troubled by the proposal, he didn't say so, according to officials familiar with the matter.
Instead, he set about making sure the agency had legal cover for the inevitable day those interrogation methods would come to light.
Rizzo had lived through earlier scandals and was acutely aware of the stakes.
In a 2007 videotaped discussion with students at a law school in Minnesota, Rizzo said his greatest regret was that he had not been "more aggressive or intrusive" in trying to uncover or prevent the CIA's involvement in the Iran-Contra arms-for-hostages scandal of the 1980s.
Rizzo kept close watch on the interrogation program. Once, during a 2005 trip by senior CIA executives to Kabul, Afghanistan, Rizzo disappeared from the crowd after dinner with Afghan intelligence officials.
It wasn't until the next day, one participant remembered, that Rizzo revealed he had arranged a midnight trip to the Salt Pit, a secret CIA prison on the outskirts of the city, to see detention operations up close.
A CIA detainee had died at the site in 2002. But Rizzo came away newly assured that the operation was well-run, former officials said.
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Career lawyer
Rizzo grew up in Boston, the son of a department store executive. He was a bright student with a small frame and an easy way with people. It was after joining a fraternity at Brown University that he acquired his trademark taste for flamboyant clothes.
He's a fan of pinstriped Ralph Lauren suits, Thomas Pink ties and Armani shoes. Former CIA Director Michael V. Hayden joked that if Rizzo "could get away with it, he would come to work in spats."
