Rodriguez Is an American Hero

In case you wanted more information about Jose A. Rodriguez Jr., the former Deputy Director of Operations at the center of the controversy over destruction of CIA interrogation tapes, the NYTimes has a pretty thorough article. He's about to get raked over the coals for this, so it's nice to know more about him.

The article recounts Rodriguez's many years of service and describes some of his exploits. Congressman Silvestre Reyes calls him "American Hero." The article put me in mind of what moron SGT Dave wrote this weekend about the intelligence community facing difficult choices:

If the tapes were destroyed to hide illegal actions, the boss should fry. If, however, the boss destroyed the tapes because some damn weasel was going to give them to a congresscritter who was then going to pass them to the NYFT to pass out the identities of our interrogators, then the boss just did what he is supposed to do. Protect the F'ing source and your people. Safeguard the information. Accept responsibility and act decisively. In this case, throw self under bus instead of your troops.

That last line may be gospel; with the change in congress possibly forcing a re-alignment at the Justice Department, the man in charge made a call. Should he be fired for it? Probably. Was it still the right call? Yes.

I'm sure we'll be hearing more about this, though I hope that this is my last post about it for a while.

posted by Gabriel Malor at 01:03 PM

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