Jose Rodriguez is a senior Central Intelligence Agency officer of the post-September 11 era and one of the figures most prominently named by John Kiriakou in his account of agency wrongdoing in connection with the enhanced interrogation program. Kiriakou identifies Rodriguez — alongside George Tenet, John McLaughlin, Michael Morell, and Rick Pavitt — as among the senior officials responsible for “a lot of crimes that were committed in the name of national security” during the agency’s post-9/11 detention and interrogation operations.[1]
Role in the EIT program
Rodriguez ran the operational deployment of Mitchell and Jessen’s enhanced interrogation techniques at CIA black sites. “Every time Mitchell and Jessen were put in charge of the interrogation sessions at the black sites, every FBI person in the country would leave.”[2]
Destruction of waterboarding tapes
Rodriguez is identified, in the cold-open montage of Dalton Fischer Podcast Part 1, as the official responsible for the destruction of “92 other tapes that … show Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Nashiri being waterboarded.”[3]
Kiriakou’s framing
Kiriakou’s recurring analysis is that Rodriguez and others of his rank operated under the conviction that they were doing right:
I’m confident that Jose Rodriguez thinks he’s the good guy and that James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen think they’re the good guys — no doubt in my mind.[4]
This is the foundation of his broader critique that the CIA’s personnel-selection process puts “sociopaths in positions of authority where they come to believe that they’re above the law, and that because they’re the good guys they can and should do anything that they want to do.”[5]
In post-2007 discussions of Kiriakou’s view of accountability, he draws a categorical distinction between Rodriguez (and the others above) and John Brennan: Brennan, in Kiriakou’s framework, “plotted against an elected president of the United States” — a different and, in Kiriakou’s view, more dangerous category of conduct than the EIT-era crimes.[1]
Acknowledged interview offer
In November 2023, Kiriakou stated publicly that he would welcome the opportunity to debate Rodriguez and James Mitchell on neutral ground: “I would like to have you in here just as I would like to have Jim Mitchell in here, Jose Rodriguez, sure — and decide for myself, and I hope the listeners do the same.”[6]