US News

New doubt on CIA pick

The CIA lawyer who gave the final approval to use waterboarding and other harsh interrogation techniques in the war on terror last night rebutted public comments by President Obama’s nominee to head the spy agency.

During an appearance at Cardozo Law School in the Village, John Rizzo, the retired CIA general counsel, said he never heard John Brennan utter a single doubt about the interrogation tactics from which he’s trying to distance himself.

“He never expressed any concerns to me and his office was 50 feet away from mine,” Rizzo said. “It would have been something I wanted to know at the time.”

Rizzo offered up the revelation only four days after Brennan told a Senate confirmation hearing, “I had expressed my personal objections and views to some agency colleagues.”

He didn’t say who those colleagues were.

Brennan, the chief counterterrorism adviser during Obama’s first term, has said repeatedly he was aware that harsh interrogations had been approved and were being used during President George W. Bush’s administration.

In the face of strong opposition from those who oppose such methods as “torture,” he told the hearing he was aware of the program but not in a position to endorse or stop it.

Brennan has previously called himself a “strong opponent’’ of the now-banned tactics used to extract information from al Qaeda operatives.

Brennan’s role at the CIA during the Bush administration led him to remove himself from contention for the CIA director’s job after Obama was first elected.

In an interview with The Post last night, Rizzo cast doubt on Brennan’s explanation to senators who will vote on his confirmation.

“He didn’t tell me,” Rizzo said.

Asked whether Brennan might have told any other top CIA officials at the time, Rizzo said, “I would like to think that one of those guys would have come to me at the time, but I didn’t hear it.”