Friday, November 30, 2012
Signature targets
U.S. officials said that Obama approved the use of “signature” strikes The expanded authority will allow the CIA and JSOC to fire on targets based solely on their intelligence “signatures” — patterns of behavior that are detected through signals intercepts, human sources and aerial surveillance, and that indicate the presence of an important operative or a plot against U.S. interests.
Until now, the administration had allowed strikes only against known terrorist leaders who appear on secret CIA and JSOC target lists and whose location can be confirmed.
For eight years, the United States has conducted but never formally acknowledged a program to kill terrorists associated with Al Qaeda and the Taliban away from the battlefield in Afghanistan. Using drones, the Central Intelligence Agency has made 320 strikes in Pakistan since 2004, killing 2,560 or more people, including at least 139 civilians. Another 55 strikes took place in Yemen.
Labels: CIA, drone, jsoc, signature strikes
Thursday, December 08, 2011
Rendition: Bucharest black site photos
Between 2003 and 2006, the CIA operated a secret prison from the building's basement, bringing in high-value terror suspects for interrogation and detention, minutes from the center of Romania’s capital city of Bucharest. The CIA prison opened for business in the fall of 2003, after the CIA decided to empty the black site in Poland, according to former U.S. officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the detention program with reporters.
Shuttling detainees into the facility without being seen was relatively easy. After flying into Bucharest, the detainees were brought to the site in vans. CIA operatives then drove down a side road and entered the compound through a rear gate that led to the actual prison.
The detainees could then be unloaded and whisked into the ground floor of the prison and into the basement.
The basement consisted of six prefabricated cells, each with a clock and arrow pointing to Mecca, the officials said. The cells were on springs, keeping them slightly off balance and causing disorientation among some detainees.
The CIA declined to comment on the prison.
During the first month of their detention, the detainees endured sleep deprivation and were doused with water, slapped or forced to stand in painful positions, several former officials said. Waterboarding, the notorious interrogation technique that simulates drowning, was not performed in Romania, they said.
Labels: black site, bucharest, CIA, cia flights, detainee, extraordinary rendition, Romania
Thursday, September 01, 2011
Richmore reveals records of CIA rendition charters
Richmor case suggests that the CIA's practice of using charter flights cost tens of millions of dollars for private planes in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks to transport terror suspects for questioning and its own personnel.to transport . Richmor billed at a rate of $4,900 an hour for the use of the plane and earned at least $6 million over three years, according to the invoices and other court records. Richmor accounted for only a small percentage of the CIA’s business, according to publicly available records. WP
Labels: CIA, detainee, detention, flight, n85vm, richmor. rendition
Wednesday, September 08, 2010
Jeppesen Dataplan: USCA overturns,dismisses
By a six-to-five vote, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, reversing an earlier decision, dismissed a lawsuit against Jeppesen Dataplan Inc., a Boeing subsidiary accused of arranging flights for the C.I.A.’s “extraordinary rendition” program, as it is known. The American Civil Liberties Union filed the case on behalf of five former prisoners who say they were tortured because of the program – and that Jeppesen was complicit in their treatment.
Judge Raymond C. Fisher described the case as presenting “a painful conflict between human rights and national security.” But, he said, the majority had “reluctantly” concluded that the lawsuit represented “a rare case” in which the government’s need to protect state secrets trumped the plaintiffs’ need to have any day in court. Judge Fisher took the unusual step of urging the executive branch and Congress at length to consider granting reparations to torture victims if secret records indicated that their allegations were true.
Labels: 9th circuit, CIA, dataplan, detainees, extraordinary rendition, flights, holder, Jeppesen, raymond fisher, USCA
Tuesday, August 17, 2010
The CIA has tapes of 9/11 plotter Ramzi Binalshibh being interrogated in a secret overseas prison. The tapes depict Binalshibh's interrogation sessions at a Moroccan-run facility the CIA used near Rabat in 2002. more
At 8:10 p.m. on Sept. 23, 2003, the Boeing 737 took off from a runway in Rabat. On board were al-Hawsawi, al-Nashiri, Zubaydah and Binalshibh. At 1 a.m. the following day, the plane touched down at Guantánamo.
In early March 2004, as the legal documents piled up at the Supreme Court, the high court announced that oral arguments would be held in April. After that, a ruling could come at any time, and everyone at the island prison — secretly or not — would be covered.
On March 27,2004, a Gulfstream IV jet left Guantánamo Bay . The plane landed in Rabat the next morning. By the time the Supreme Court ruled June 28 that detainees should have access to U.S. courts, the CIA had once again scattered Zubaydah, al-Nashiri and the others throughout the black sites.
Two years later, after The Washington Post revealed the existence of the program, Bush emptied the prison network. Fourteen men, including the four who had been at Guantánamo Bay years earlier, were moved to the island prison. They have remained there ever since.
Labels: black site, CIA, Mauritania, morocco, rabat, Ramzi Binalshibh, tapes
Wednesday, March 03, 2010
Ghost Writer: a fine piece of mischief
“The Ghost Writer” plays off the British public’s disillusion with Tony Blair and the recurring complaints about Blair’s alleged collaboration with the C.I.A. Yet, when Lang is cornered by the Ghost, the P.M. speaks with impressive conviction. In effect, he defends the use of torture; he takes the Cheneyesque hard line, ridiculing liberals who want safety and, at the same time, the luxury of high-mindedness. The answer to the question of why he’s so acquiescent to the Americans is worked out in thriller (rather than policy) terms. It’s the kind of supposition that may strike viewers, here and in Britain, as frivolous, or just plain wrong, but it’s a fine piece of mischief—suggestive, wounding to Blair, and, as a fiction, emotionally gratifying in the way of le Carré’s conspiracy plots.
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Labels: Britain, CIA, detainee, extraordinary rendition, flight, Ghost Writer, rendition
Friday, December 11, 2009
Blackwater "never under contract to participate"
Mark Corallo, a spokesman for Xe Services, said Blackwater was never under contract to participate in covert raids with CIA or Special Forces troops "in Iraq, Afghanistan or anywhere else." Corallo added: "Any allegation to the contrary by any news organization would be false."
Some requests from the field for lethal raids were rejected at CIA headquarters because they posed excessive risks to the U.S. teams or to civilians, or because intelligence experts merely wanted to keep watching the prospective targets.
But when the time came to carry out those raids -- often against figures who were thought to be al-Qaeda leaders -- some CIA field officers assigned responsibilities among the available personnel without regard to which ones were contractors or federal employees, according to the source, who asked not to be identified because he was not authorized to discuss classified operations.
That meant Blackwater personnel helped to kill some of the targets and did not merely defend the CIA officers taking part in the raids, the source said.
Labels: Blackwater, CIA, detainee, detention, extraordinary rendition, Xe Services
Review of all Blackwater contracts with C.I.A.
On an almost nightly basis during the height of the Iraqi insurgency from 2004 to 2006, Blackwater personnel played central roles in “snatch and grab” operations, clandestine raids with C.I.A. officers against people suspected of being insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan and the transporting of detainees. Separately, former Blackwater employees said they helped provide security on some C.I.A. flights transporting detainees in the years after the 2001 terror attacks in the United States. George Little, a C.I.A. spokesman, would not comment on Blackwater’s ties to the agency. But he said the C.I.A. employs contractors to “enhance the skills of our own work force, just as American law permits.”
“Contractors give you flexibility in shaping and managing your talent mix — especially in the short term — but the accountability’s still yours,” he said. The C.I.A. director, recently initiated an internal review examining all Blackwater contracts with the agency to ensure that the company was performing no missions that were “operational in nature,”
Labels: Blackwater, CIA, cia flights detainees, extraordinary rendition, snatch and grab
Friday, November 20, 2009
Rendition to Lithuania black site
In July 2005, a CIA-chartered Gulfstream IV, tail number N63MU, flew direct from Kabul to Vilnius. Several former intelligence officials involved in the CIA's prison program confirmed the flight as a prisoner transfer to Lithuania. The Vilnius prison was closed.
Labels: black site, CIA, extraordinary rendition, Gulfstream IV, Kabul, N63MU, Vilnius
Wednesday, November 04, 2009
Italian court convicts 23 in CIA rendition case
An Italian court on 04 November convicted 22 CIA operatives and a U.S. Air Force colonel of orchestrating the kidnapping of a Muslim cleric here in 2003 and flying him to Egypt, where he said he was tortured. The case is the only instance in which CIA operatives have faced a criminal trial for the controversial tactic of extraordinary rendition, under which terrorism suspects are seized in one country and forcibly transported to another without judicial oversight. A similar case involving a German citizen kidnapped in the Balkans has resulted in arrest warrants and a civil lawsuit but has not gone to trial.
The CIA and other U.S. officials have contended that extraordinary renditions, which began during the Clinton administration and accelerated under the Bush White House after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, are permissible under U.S. law to capture terrorism suspects in foreign countries.
"I am not guilty. I am only responsible for following an order I received from my superiors," R. S. Lady said. "It was not a criminal act. It was a state affair."
Labels: CIA, egypt, extraordinary rendition, John le Carré, Lady R S, rendition
Wednesday, August 12, 2009
Black Sites
Kyle D. Foggo, Dusty: In November 2004, he was named the C.I.A.’s executive director, in effect its day-to-day administrative chief. He was eventually convicted in a bribery scandal involving former Representative Randall Cunningham of California. Mr. Foggo pleaded guilty and is serving a sentence on the fraud count. here
Labels: black site, CIA, detainees, Foggo, John Rizzo, prison
Wednesday, July 22, 2009
ENDING IRELAND’S ROLE IN RENDITIONS
Shannon Airport
Labels: Abu Omar, CIA, detainee, extraordinary rendition, John le Carré, Shannon
Thursday, July 02, 2009
Mauritania, right?
Working with friendly foreign intelligence services, the C.I.A. built or renovated buildings in several countries, including Afghanistan, Thailand and Poland. After the location of the prisons in Eastern Europe was revealed in late 2005, C.I.A. officials scrambled to move the prisoners to other, still-secret places. here and see and this
Labels: black site, CIA, cia flights detainees, detainee, detention
Monday, April 13, 2009
There are extreme situations
Obama hasn't banned the process known as "extraordinary rendition." This technique has been used by U.S. intelligence and law enforcement agencies for more than 30 years to seize people overseas, either unilaterally or with permission of the host country, and take them somewhere else for interrogation and possible judicial action. That authority hasn't changed, nor has the CIA's ability to work with foreign intelligence services that are interrogating terrorist suspects.
"The Obama team agrees with Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson that the Constitution isn't "a suicide pact," and it understands that there are extreme situations where the rules on interrogation might have to be stretched." David Ignatius
Labels: CIA, extraordinary rendition, flight, Panetta, rendition
Thursday, January 22, 2009
No brave new world -3rd
President Obama is expected to sign executive orders that would allow its officers abroad to temporarily detain terrorism suspects and transfer them to other agencies, but would no longer allow the agency to carry out long-term detentions. They could also allow Mr. Obama to reinstate the C.I.A.’s detention and interrogation operations in the future, by presidential order, as some have argued would be appropriate if Osama bin Laden or another top-level leader of Al Qaeda were captured. The White House might be open to allowing the use of methods other the 19 techniques allowed for the military.
Labels: black site, CIA, cia flights, craig obama, extraordinary rendition, John le Carré, prison
Monday, January 12, 2009
No brave new world - con'd
What Bush and Cheney did was different less in kind than in degree—creating a vast program of renditions and secret prisons, as well as aggressively pursuing "targeted killings" of "high-value targets." Congressional leaders were informed, but some said that the briefings were cryptic. National security is an unavoidably murky world. But it doesn't have to be quite so dark as Cheney et al. made it, loosing the dogs of war from some "undisclosed location." So much of the anger against the Bush administration could have been avoided if Bush had gone to Congress in the first place. Obama’s Cheney Dilemma By Stuart Taylor Jr. and Evan Thomas
Evan Thomas claimed that when Americans are "under threat, we sort of make this pact" with the government allowing it to "[g]o off and be secret and do dirty things" without "tell[ing] us about it." wmv
Labels: black site, CIA, detainees, Evan Thomas, flight, Obama, Panetta, prison, rendition
Monday, December 15, 2008
No brave new world
John A Rizzo
New York Times on 14 Dec. 08:
Mr. Obama will soon face the same awful choices that confronted George W. Bush and Bill Clinton, and he could well be forced to accept a central feature of their anti-terrorist methods: extraordinary rendition. If the choice is between non-deniable aggressive questioning conducted by Americans and deniable torturous interrogations by foreigners acting on behalf of the United States, it is almost certain that as president Mr. Obama will choose the latter.
New York Times on 14 Dec. 08:
Mr. Obama will soon face the same awful choices that confronted George W. Bush and Bill Clinton, and he could well be forced to accept a central feature of their anti-terrorist methods: extraordinary rendition. If the choice is between non-deniable aggressive questioning conducted by Americans and deniable torturous interrogations by foreigners acting on behalf of the United States, it is almost certain that as president Mr. Obama will choose the latter.
Labels: black site, CIA, extraordinary rendition, John le Carré, torture
Monday, October 13, 2008
Wild and unverifiable charges Denied
alfred matua
In late 2006, the Bush administration backed a full-scale Ethiopian military offensive that ousted the Islamist authorities from Somalia’s capital, Mogadishu. The fighting caused thousands of Somalis, including some who were suspected of terrorist links, to flee across the Kenya border.
An unknown number of them — likely dozens — were questioned by the Central Intelligence Agency and Federal Bureau of Investigation agents in Addis Ababa. From February to May 2007, Ethiopian security officers daily transported detainees — including several pregnant women — to a villa where U.S. officials interrogated them about suspected terrorist links. At night the Ethiopian officers returned the detainees to their cells.
For the most part, detainees were sent home soon after their interrogation by U.S. agents ended. Of those known to have been interrogated by U.S. officials, just eight Kenyans remain. (A ninth Kenyan in Addis Ababa was rendered to Ethiopia in August 2007, after U.S. interrogations reportedly stopped.) read
"Wild and unverifiable charges that the Government deported Kenyans to Ethiopia are baseless. The Government has been very clear that it repatriated combatants to Somalia after they, the combatants, said they were not Kenyan. After a comprehensive audit, eight of the combatants and suspected terrorists were found to be Kenyan and brought back home. Claims of 19 Kenyans being held in Ethiopia are mere speculation and activism statements." read
In late 2006, the Bush administration backed a full-scale Ethiopian military offensive that ousted the Islamist authorities from Somalia’s capital, Mogadishu. The fighting caused thousands of Somalis, including some who were suspected of terrorist links, to flee across the Kenya border.
An unknown number of them — likely dozens — were questioned by the Central Intelligence Agency and Federal Bureau of Investigation agents in Addis Ababa. From February to May 2007, Ethiopian security officers daily transported detainees — including several pregnant women — to a villa where U.S. officials interrogated them about suspected terrorist links. At night the Ethiopian officers returned the detainees to their cells.
For the most part, detainees were sent home soon after their interrogation by U.S. agents ended. Of those known to have been interrogated by U.S. officials, just eight Kenyans remain. (A ninth Kenyan in Addis Ababa was rendered to Ethiopia in August 2007, after U.S. interrogations reportedly stopped.) read
"Wild and unverifiable charges that the Government deported Kenyans to Ethiopia are baseless. The Government has been very clear that it repatriated combatants to Somalia after they, the combatants, said they were not Kenyan. After a comprehensive audit, eight of the combatants and suspected terrorists were found to be Kenyan and brought back home. Claims of 19 Kenyans being held in Ethiopia are mere speculation and activism statements." read
Labels: Alfred Matua, CIA, detainee, Ethiopia, Kenya, rendition
Tuesday, February 19, 2008
Abu Laith al-Libi
Dell L. Dailey
The airstrike that killed the al-Qaida commander was carried out entirely by the U.S. agency without any approval from the Pakistani government. Officials said they often get their best results from such operations, where they act alone based on information from well-paid informants ("all it takes is bags of cash," said one official). After the successful strike against Libi, officials expect support for autonomous operations will grow in Washington, and, if there's a struggle for power after the elections it could mean Pakistan's leaders would be too worried about other matters to interfere. here
The airstrike that killed the al-Qaida commander was carried out entirely by the U.S. agency without any approval from the Pakistani government. Officials said they often get their best results from such operations, where they act alone based on information from well-paid informants ("all it takes is bags of cash," said one official). After the successful strike against Libi, officials expect support for autonomous operations will grow in Washington, and, if there's a struggle for power after the elections it could mean Pakistan's leaders would be too worried about other matters to interfere. here
Labels: Abu Laith al-Libi, CIA, Dell L. Dailey, erased, pentagon
Thursday, January 17, 2008
Rodriguez had no authority to destroy tapes
Rizzo testifies in closed session
Representative Peter Hoekstra, Republican of Michigan, said Jose A. Rodriguez Jr., head of the C.I.A.’s clandestine service at the time, had not “gotten authority from anyone” to destroy the tapes. “Matter of fact, it appears that he got direction to make sure the tapes were not destroyed,” he said.
Mr. Hoekstra spoke after hearing testimony from John A. Rizzo, the C.I.A.’s top lawyer, who addressed the committee on Wednesday during a closed session lasting nearly four hours. Mr. Hoekstra did not provide details, including who may have told Mr. Rodriguez not to destroy the tapes. The lawmaker said it was important to have Mr. Rodriguez testify before the committee to get his version of events.
A lawyer for Mr. Rodriguez, Robert S. Bennett, challenged Mr. Hoekstra’s comments about what agency officials told his client. “Nobody, to our knowledge, ever instructed him not to destroy the tapes,” Mr. Bennett said. “Had the director or deputy director or general counsel told him not to destroy the tapes, they would not have been destroyed.” here
Representative Peter Hoekstra, Republican of Michigan, said Jose A. Rodriguez Jr., head of the C.I.A.’s clandestine service at the time, had not “gotten authority from anyone” to destroy the tapes. “Matter of fact, it appears that he got direction to make sure the tapes were not destroyed,” he said.
Mr. Hoekstra spoke after hearing testimony from John A. Rizzo, the C.I.A.’s top lawyer, who addressed the committee on Wednesday during a closed session lasting nearly four hours. Mr. Hoekstra did not provide details, including who may have told Mr. Rodriguez not to destroy the tapes. The lawmaker said it was important to have Mr. Rodriguez testify before the committee to get his version of events.
A lawyer for Mr. Rodriguez, Robert S. Bennett, challenged Mr. Hoekstra’s comments about what agency officials told his client. “Nobody, to our knowledge, ever instructed him not to destroy the tapes,” Mr. Bennett said. “Had the director or deputy director or general counsel told him not to destroy the tapes, they would not have been destroyed.” here
Labels: CIA, John Rizzo, Jose A. Rodriguez, tapes, Thailand, torture
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