In Legal Cases, C.I.A. Officers Turn to Insurer

[Robbien]

Source: NYT

WASHINGTON — When Jose A. Rodriguez Jr. came under investigation for ordering the destruction of Central Intelligence Agency interrogation videotapes, one of his first calls was to a small Virginia insurance company that thrives on government trouble.

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The standard Wright policy costs a little less than $300 a year. The government pays half the premium for all supervisors and certain other high-risk employees, a group that includes hundreds of C.I.A. officers, including everyone at the agency involved in counterterrorism or counterproliferation.

The more scandal official Washington produces, the better for Wright’s niche business for federal employees. Every whiff of investigation or litigation drives additional nervous federal workers to the company’s door.

When Al Qaeda attacked the United States in 2001, Wright & Company was insuring about 17,000 federal employees against the legal hazards of their work. Today, that total has nearly doubled to 32,000, Wright executives say, spurred in part by a spate of lawsuits, investigations and criminal prosecutions related to mistreatment of detainees from Iraq to Guantánamo Bay, an immigration crackdown and other aftershocks of 9/11. The insurance is popular with F.B.I. agents, Secret Service officers, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement workers as well as C.I.A. officers.

“The things that help us are any negative events related to the federal government, and there have been plenty,” said Bryan B. Lewis, Wright’s president and chief executive

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/20/washington/20lawyers.html?ref=business