About CIA

[Rasputin]

LEVERETT: And in the end -- you know, look, in the end, even if that were the case, I would still say this pre-publication review process is not supposed to be about making life comfortable for an incumbent administration. It is supposed to be about the protection of classified information and nothing more.

There is no classified information in the draft that I submitted, but the White House is intervening in the process to use that rubric of protecting classified information to keep a critical view from coming out. That's what's going on.

QUESTION: Could you take a step back and look at the region and try to identify where it's going, provided no serious change of U.S. policy, or maybe articulate that window?

QUESTION: How much time do the U.S., Israel, others, have to change reality in a significant way to, fundamentally, save the region?

LEVERETT: I'm not very good at timelines, but the trends are all running in the wrong direction.

You do have Iran emerging as a more powerful, more influential state in the region.

You do have U.S. leadership and effectiveness in the region declining at the same time.

I think you have a number of radical actors in the region, whether it is Iran, Syria, Hezbollah, Hamas in the Palestinian context, whose influence and political standing has risen dramatically over the last two years.

You have Iraq, basically, in civil war, and no prospect on the horizon for the U.S. doing anything that might put that situation on a more positive trajectory.

You have other external players; China, for example, emerging as more influential players in the region.

You have long-standing American allies and partners, such as the Saudis, questioning the durability of U.S. leadership in the region and hedging their bets, strategically, in some significant ways.

I do not yet, in my own view, reach a point where I would say the U.S. position is an unrecoverable.

I think if we were to begin to pursue different kinds of policies on all of these fronts, we could repair and bolster our strategic position in the Middle East; and, by the way, along with that, do much to improve Israel's strategic position.

LEVERETT: I mean, does anybody want to argue that Israel is today in a more secure position, that its political standing in the Middle East is better today than it was five years ago?

I think that would be a hard argument to make.

We could still recover from this, but it's going to take new policies.

I don't know exactly when the window for changing course closes. But that window is not going to be open forever.

I can only hope that things don't get so bad over the next two years that whoever succeeds President Bush doesn't have the opportunity to try and put things on a better trajectory.

QUESTION: Flynt, you've criticized Baker-Hamilton for wanting to take a piecemeal approach and have argued all that is possible isn't all or nothing right now. Let me probe that just for a second.

I don't understand Baker-Hamilton as wanting to exclude a grand bargain, but rather to analyze that the situation in Iraq is so dire that there's a timeline project. When a grand bargain will take more time than a piecemeal approach, then you're going to have to concentrate on first things first.

And when the Iranians have an interest in seeing the U.S. fail in Iraq, it doesn't necessarily mean they have an interest in seeing Iraq disintegrate.

So there may be an argument for a shared interest in a very limited way that could lead to a shared outcome.

What do you say to that argument?

LEVERETT: I think, as I said, it really tries to impose a different context on the Iranians from the one that they think they're actually living in.

And that context is that -- and Secretary Baker said it when he was testifying before the Armed Services Committee after the report was released, he said, "They helped us in Afghanistan because they wanted to get rid of the Taliban and avoid instability there, and they may help us in Iraq for the same reason, because they don't want chaos there."

LEVERETT: And my argument is simply that I don't think they helped us in Afghanistan primarily because they hated the Taliban. They helped us in Afghanistan because they thought that was the way to get a better relationship with us.

And I don't think they will help us in Iraq unless we, in some way, put on the table that, "This is not just about cooperation on one issue where we have, maybe, some shared interests; this is about a bigger process that will ultimately get you a different relationship with us."

QUESTION: Are you then implicitly saying that Iran can deal with chaos and disintegration; it doesn't care about it as much as it needed to to embark on a course (ph)?

LEVERETT: I'm saying that Iran is, in my view, very well positioned right now on the ground in Iraq to defend its interests in Iraq without cooperating with the U.S. They don't need us to protect their equities in Iraq.

QUESTION: If the security guarantees from the U.S. were important enough to Iran for them to satisfy us on all these issue areas, one of them would be that they would withdraw support for violent resistance against Israel.

Do you think that would actually promote -- that would require a two-stage solution, for them. Do you think that would promote a two- state solution, their willingness to reach a grand bargain?

And if there wasn't a two-state solution and they couldn't withdraw support for Hamas and Hezbollah, would that torpedo the rest of the grand bargain?

LEVERETT: I think that Iranian -- first of all, there been a number of serving and former Iranian officials who have said that if there were to be a two-state solution that the Palestinians were to negotiate freely with Israel, that Iran would not, in a sense, be more Palestinian than the Palestinians about it.

LEVERETT: Yes, I think it would be possible, as part of a grand bargain, to modify significantly Iran's position toward the Arab- Israeli conflict, toward a negotiated resolution of that conflict and toward violent and terrorist activities that have had the effect of making a negotiated settlement far more difficult to reach. I think that is possible, yes.

QUESTION: Do you think that would help bring about such a settlement?

LEVERETT: It would certainly remove one of the obstacles and sources of difficulty.

QUESTION: (OFF-MIKE) that potentially would could be going on is that there could be some fragile piece of diplomacy that we don't know about that this op-ed could derail.

And as I agree with Flynt that I don't think that this administration could pivot on the fundamental issues involving Iran and the region at this point, what is problematic about the op-ed is that if they wanted to pivot -- either on the fundamental issues are even on piecemeal diplomacy involving Iraq or anything else -- what this op-ed argues and makes a solid case for is that this administration embarrassingly decided to squander those opportunities that it has had over the past five years to do so repeatedly.

So if they decide to do it again, they inevitably are going to be paying a much higher price than they would have at any point over the past five years, and that is politically embarrassing.

MODERATOR: So what you're basically saying is if my friend is correct that there may be fragile diplomacy -- as one of the options; he didn't say there was -- that amnesia is needed?

LEVERETT: Yes.

MODERATOR: For those of you who don't know, I keep a big firewall between my blog -- the Washington Note -- and my work at the New American Foundation. Sometimes that firewall works better than at other times.

But I want to thank Flynt Leverett not only for being a great colleague here at the New American Foundation, but also for just pumping up my blog hits.

(LAUGHTER) So in about 30 minutes we'll have the stat of the CIA response with lots of black lines...

(LAUGHTER)

(CROSSTALK)

MODERATOR: ... 1,000 thousand words, which we'll get up on the blog at thewashingtonnote.com.

I want to thank Flynt. Please help me in thanking him for, I think, a very brave and important talk.

(APPLAUSE)

END

[Rasputin]

[Rasputin]

US Vice-President Dick Cheney will be called as a defence witness in the CIA leak case involving his ex-chief of staff Lewis Libby, defence lawyers say.
Mr Libby faces charges in connection with the leaking of agent Valerie Plame's identity. Her husband had publicly criticised US policy on Iraq.

Mr Libby denies five charges of perjury, making false statements and obstruction of justice.

The trial is expected to start in mid-January.

"We're calling the vice-president," defence lawyer Theodore Wells said at a hearing ahead of the trial in Washington.

Mr Libby is accused of lying to FBI investigators and a grand jury about how and when he learned that Ms Plame was a CIA officer and of lying about disclosing classified information to reporters.

CIA LEAK TIMELINE
6 Jul 2003: Joseph Wilson questions US claims about Iraq nuclear programme
8 Jul: Libby leaks classified information to reporter Judith Miller, but not agent's name, he later testifies
14 Jul: Columnist Robert Novak identifies Wilson's wife as CIA agent
30 Sept: Justice dept launches inquiry into agent's outing
28 Oct 2005: Libby charged with obstruction and perjury
6 Apr 2006: Court papers suggest Bush authorised leak of classified material (not agent's identity)


Q&A: CIA leak inquiry
Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald has been investigating whether administration officials broke the law by deliberately disclosing her identity.

Last week, he said he did not expect the White House to resist if Mr Cheney or other administration officials were called to testify.

Mr Libby's lawyers had long suggested that the vice-president - for whom he worked as chief of staff at the time - would be irrelevant as a witness in the trial.

Shortly before Ms Plame's name was leaked to the media in 2003, her husband Joseph Wilson had criticised the Bush administration's use of pre-war intelligence on Iraq.

He had been sent to Niger in 2002 to investigate reports that Iraq had bought or had sought to buy uranium there.

[Rasputin]

Ex-NSC Official Says White House Is Stifling His Criticism of Iran Policy

A former top White House official accused the Bush administration yesterday of trying to muzzle his criticism of its Iran policy and of falsely alleging that his writings contained classified material to prevent them from being published.

Flynt Leverett, a former CIA analyst who became a senior director for Middle East policy for the National Security Council before leaving the administration in 2003, said the White House decided that substantial passages of an opinion article he had written for the New York Times involved classified information. Leverett said the article was only a summary of a longer paper he had written a few weeks earlier -- which had been cleared by the CIA as containing no classified information.

He said no fact in the proposed Times article differed from the earlier paper, which he wrote for the Century Foundation.

The assertion that the Times article contained classified information "is false," Leverett said yesterday in a speech about his policy proposals at the New America Foundation. "Indeed, I would say that claim is fraudulent. The people making that claim know it is not true."

Leverett voted for George W. Bush in 2000 but since leaving the White House has emerged as a fierce critic of administration policy, particularly toward Iran. His paper for the Century Foundation made the case for engaging with Tehran on a comprehensive basis to seek a "grand bargain" with the Islamic republic -- at a time when administration officials have resisted pressure to enter in talks with Iran on Iraq and other issues.

"The White House is using the rubric of protecting classified information, not to protect classified information, but to limit the dissemination of the views of someone who is very critical of their approach to Iran policy," Leverett said. The Times article was written with his wife, Hillary Mann Leverett, an Iran specialist who is also a former NSC staff member in the Bush administration.

White House and CIA spokesmen adamantly disputed Leverett's charges. NSC spokesman Gordon Johndroe said that career staff members on the access and records management staff, who determine whether classified material is involved, made the ruling without political appointees being involved.

Johndroe and CIA spokesman Mike Mansfield said that, in a lapse, the CIA did not circulate the Century Foundation paper to the White House. Johndroe said sections of that paper probably would have been deemed classified. "It was an oversight," Mansfield said. "It should have been shared with them."

As a former CIA official, Leverett is required to submit his writings for pre-publication review. Mansfield said that the CIA reviews the material only to determine whether it is classified but decided to send the proposed op-ed article to the White House, which had an interest because Leverett had once served there.

Leverett said it is his understanding that this is the first time the White House has reviewed his writings, and that it occurred because the White House had complained to the CIA about other articles. Mansfield declined to comment on whether any of Leverett's previous articles had been sent to the White House for review.

"It is very disappointing to me that former colleagues at the CIA have proven so spineless in the face of this kind of tawdry political pressure from the White House," Leverett said. He said CIA officials told him that they felt the article "did not contain classified information, but they had to bow to the wishes of the White House."

Leverett said the CIA ordered two sections concerning U.S. dealings with Iran in his article to be heavily redacted, even though the material had appeared in news reports or had been discussed publicly by administration officials.

One section described Iran's cooperation in helping create a new government in Afghanistan, which Leverett said in his Century Foundation paper led Iranian officials to believe the two countries were on the cusp of a diplomatic opening. But that ended when Bush named Iran as part of the "axis of evil," he said.

The other section concerned his description of an offer the Iranian foreign ministry sent the administration in 2003, through Swiss diplomatic channels, to resolve outstanding bilateral issues with the United States. The White House rejected the approach, which has been widely described in news reports since then.

"The administration's handling of Iran policy has been the strategic equivalent of medical malpractice," Leverett said.

[Rasputin]

Former Press Secretary Says Libby Told Him of Plame

Former White House press secretary Ari Fleischer testified yesterday that I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby divulged Valerie Plame's identity to him in July 2003, three days earlier than Libby has told investigators he first learned of the undercover CIA officer.

Fleischer's narrative of Libby's "hush-hush" disclosures over a lunch table in a White House dining room made President Bush's former spokesman the most important prosecution witness to date in the week-old perjury trial of Vice President Cheney's onetime chief of staff.

Though a series of government officials have told the jury that Libby eagerly sought information about a prominent critic of the Iraq war, former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, Fleischer was the first witness to say Libby then passed on what he learned: that Wilson's wife was a CIA officer who had sent him on a trip to Africa. Wilson's mission there was to explore reports, ultimately proved false, that Iraq had tried to buy nuclear material in Niger.

Fleischer, testifying under an immunity agreement with the prosecution, also made it clear that Libby had told him Wilson's wife held a position in the CIA's counterproliferation division, where most employees work in a covert capacity.

Fleischer said he believes Libby mentioned Plame's name, although he told the jury he could not be sure. Libby "added that this was something hush-hush or on the QT, that not many people knew this information," Fleischer testified.

The unusual spectacle of a president's top spokesman testifying in open court widened the rare view the trial is providing the jury -- and the public -- of the inner workings of a White House that has proudly guarded its privacy.

Libby is charged with lying to FBI agents and a grand jury as well as obstructing justice in a federal investigation of who revealed Plame's name to journalists, including columnist Robert D. Novak, who first published it July 14, 2003. He is not charged with the leak itself, which administration critics have contended was designed to discredit Wilson's argument that the White House was twisting his findings as it justified the invasion of Iraq.

Libby has pleaded not guilty to all five felony counts. He told investigators he learned about Plame's identity during a telephone call on July 10, 2003, with NBC's Washington bureau chief, Tim Russert. He and his attorneys contend he did not remember the conversations he had with reporters about Plame amid the crush of his national security work.

Fleischer's testimony buttressed Special Counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald's case in at least two ways. Fleischer testified that his lunch with Libby -- the first he ever had with Cheney's top aide, a week before the press secretary was to leave his White House job -- took place on July 7, 2003, before Libby spoke with Russert.

Fleischer also reinforced the prosecution's central argument: that Libby had been so determined to learn and spread information about Wilson and Plame that he could not have forgotten his efforts.

Both sides have portrayed Libby and Cheney as especially eager to knock down news accounts that Cheney had asked for Wilson's trip.

Under cross-examination by defense attorney William Jeffress Jr., Fleischer said that his conversation with Libby about Wilson's wife had been short and that Fleischer had not relayed that information to reporters until he heard a similar account from another White House aide.

Fleischer testified that, later on the day of his lunch with Libby, he and other top aides left with President Bush on a five-day trip to several African nations. He said that while he was on Air Force One between South Africa and Uganda, he overheard Dan Bartlett, at the time Bush's communications director and now counselor to the president, "vent" about news accounts that Cheney had requested Wilson's mission.

Fleischer said that he decided to tell two reporters, NBC's David Gregory and Time magazine's John Dickerson, as they were walking along a road in Uganda: "If you want to know who sent the ambassador to Niger, it was his wife; she works there" -- a reference to the CIA.

In an interview yesterday, Dickerson, who has left Time and is writing about the trial for Slate, an online magazine, said he recalls that Fleischer had merely urged Gregory and him to "check and see who sent Wilson" on the trip. Dickerson said he first learned about Plame's CIA role from then-colleague Matthew Cooper by telephone several hours after he spoke with Fleischer.

Fleischer testified that neither Libby nor Bartlett invoked a White House protocol under which colleagues warned him when they were providing classified information that could not be discussed with reporters. He said he "never in my wildest dreams thought this information would be classified."

In September 2003, about 2 1/2 months after his conversations with reporters about Plame, Fleischer testified that he saw a news account that the CIA had asked the Justice Department to investigate a possible illegal leak of a covert CIA officer's identity.

"I thought, 'Oh, my God. Did I play a role in somehow outing a CIA officer? . . . Did I just do something that I could be in big trouble for?' "

He said that, although he believed he had passed on classified information unwittingly, he hired lawyers who negotiated his immunity from prosecution, except for the possibility of perjury.

Late yesterday afternoon, Cheney's current chief of staff, David S. Addington, took the witness stand, testifying that Libby had, early in the summer of 2003, asked him whether the president had authority to declassify government secrets and whether the CIA kept paperwork documenting its work. Addington said he replied yes to both.

He testified that Libby did not tell him why he was asking. But Addington said he surmised that the reason might have been Wilson's criticism of the president and the war.

U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton said that former New York Times reporter Judith Miller, the first of several prominent journalists who figure in the case, probably would testify today.

[Rasputin]

[Rasputin]

The European parliament has approved a damning report on secret CIA flights, condemning member states which colluded in the operations.
The UK, Germany and Italy were among 14 states which allowed the US to forcibly remove terror suspects, lawmakers said.

The EU parliament voted to accept a resolution condemning member states which accepted or ignored the practice.

The EU report said the CIA had operated 1,245 flights, some taking suspects to states where they could face torture.

The report was adopted by a large majority, with 382 MEPs voting in favour, 256 against and 74 abstaining.

Vigilance

The final version denounces the lack of co-operation of many EU member states and it condemns the actions of secret services and governments who accepted and concealed renditions.

We must be vigilant that what has been happening in the past five years may never happen again

Giovanni Fava
Italian Socialist MEP and report author


Tales of torture
Rendition or rights?

It is unlikely, the report says, that European governments were unaware of rendition activities on their territory, something the British government, among others, has denied.

"This is a report that doesn't allow anyone to look the other way. We must be vigilant that what has been happening in the past five years may never happen again," said Italian Socialist Giovanni Fava, who drafted the document.

The parliament also called for an "independent inquiry" to be considered and for closure of the US' Guantanamo Bay detention camp.

Human rights campaigning group Amnesty International welcomed the EU lawmakers' vote, but urged member states to carry out independent investigations.

Revealing facts

Although the report has no force in EU law, Mr Fava said during the parliamentary debate that the related investigation, over a year, had uncovered much new evidence.

EU STATES INVOLVED
Austria
Belgium
Cyprus
Denmark
Germany
Greece
Ireland
Italy
Poland
Portugal
Romania
Spain
Sweden
United Kingdom


Key excerpts of report

Many of those taken from EU states were subjected to torture to extract information from them, the report said.

It said there was a "strong possibility" that this intelligence had been passed on to EU governments who were aware of how it was obtained.

It also uncovered the use of secret detention facilities used as the flights made their journey across Europe towards countries such as Afghanistan.

It was not possible to contradict evidence or suggestions that secret detention centres were operated in Poland and Romania, the report said.

'Incommunicado detention'

Centre-right MEPs - the largest group in parliament - have been highly critical of the report, saying it is primarily motivated by anti-Americanism.

EU Justice Commissioner Franco Frattini said the commission would act on the truth, even if it were uncomfortable or unpalatable. But he called for a relaunching of the Euro-Atlantic relationship and said Europe must continue to work with its US partners.

During the course of their investigation, delegations of MEPs travelled to countries including Romania, Poland, the UK, the US and Germany to investigate claims of European involvement in so-called extraordinary renditions.

The governments of Austria, Italy, Poland, Portugal and the UK were criticised for their "unwillingness to co-operate" with investigators.

The report defines extraordinary renditions as instances where "an individual suspected of involvement in terrorism is illegally abducted, arrested and/or transferred into the custody of US officials and/or transported to another country for interrogation which, in the majority of cases involves incommunicado detention and torture".

[Rasputin]

نمايندگان پارلمان اروپا فعاليت های پنهانی سازمان اطلاعات مرکزی آمريکا (سيا) در کشورهای اروپايی را با اکثريت آراء محکوم کردند.
به گزارش روزنامه نخريشتن، پارلمان اروپا در نشست روز گذشته خود با غيرقانونی خواندن فعاليت های پنهانی سازمان اطلاعات مرکزی آمريکا در کشورهای اروپايی خاطرنشان کرد : اقدامات سيا به هيچ وجه قابل پذيرش نيست.

شمار زيادی از سازمانهای اطلاعاتی و امنيتی کشورهای اروپايی علاوه بر اعلام موافقت خود با نظر پارلمان اروپا تصريح کردند: پنهان نگه داشتن فعاليت هايی که سيا در ميان کشورهای اروپايی انجام داده نمی تواند توجيه خوبی برای آمريکايی ها به شمار آيد.

نمايندگان ايتاليا ، اسپانيا ، سوئد ، پرتغال و مقدونيه در اين باره خاطر نشان کردند : مقامات امنيتی کشورهای اروپايی بايد گزارش دقيقی درباره اطلاعات جمع آوری شده خود درباره اقدامات سيا تهيه کنند.

به نوشته اين منبع خبري، گزارش پايانی کميته تحقيق از فعاليت های سيا با 382 رای از کل 712 رای پارلمان اروپا رای آورده است.

" فرانکو فراتينی " کميسر قضايی اتحاديه اروپا خواستار کنترل بيشتر سازمانهای امنيتی از سوی پارلمان اروپا شد .

برخی اخبار حاکی از آن بود که آلمان از سال 2001 ميلادی از فعاليتهای پنهانی سيا در اروپا مطلع بوده است . چندی است که اروپا و آمريکا به علت فعاليتهای مخفی سازمان اطلاعات مرکزی آمريکا(سيا) دارای اختلاف نظرهايی هستند .

آمريکا پس از حادثه 11 سپتامبر جمع زيادی از زندانيان مظنون به تروريسم را به کشورهای ديگر جهان منتقل کرده است. اين خبر رسوايی بزرگی برای دولت آمريکا در سال 2005 به وجود آورد و واکنش متفاوت کشورهای جهان را برانگيخت. .اين در حالی است که آمريکا هنوز واکنش دقيقی نسبت به اين مسئله نشان نداده است .

[Rasputin]

Thirty eight people believed to have been held in secret CIA prisons - or black sites - are missing, according to a report by a US human rights group.
The Human Rights Watch (HRW) report also details torture allegations made by a terror suspect who was held in secret custody for more than two years.

The group has asked US President George W Bush to reveal the location of these detainees and close all US black sites.

Last year Mr Bush said the prisons had all closed and had not used torture.

'Missing' prisoners

In a televised address in September, Mr Bush admitted that 14 detainees had been held at secret CIA prisons that used interrogation methods that were "tough" but "lawful and necessary".

"The United States does not torture," Mr Bush said at the time. "It's against our laws, and it's against our values. I have not authorised it - and I will not authorise it."

He said the prisoners had since been transferred to the US military camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and the CIA was not holding any more terror suspects.

But in a report published on Tuesday, HRW has named another 38 people who were believed to have been held in secret CIA prisons, who are now missing.

Quoting US intelligence officials, The Washington Post says more than 60 people have been held in the prisons since 2001.

'Beaten and burned'

The group has called on the US to reveal the location of all detainees held by the CIA since 2001 and end its "illegal" secret detention and interrogation programmes.

Palestinian Islamic extremist Marwan al-Jabour told HRW he saw or spoke to a number of those named in the report while he was held by the CIA between 2004 and 2006.


John B Bellinger III has attacked EU probes into secret CIA flights

Mr Jabour, who was arrested in Lahore, Pakistan in May 2004, also detailed torture tactics he says were used against him while he was in US custody.

He says at various periods during his 28-month detention Pakistani authorities kept him naked and chained to a ceiling. He says he was beaten, burned and handcuffed in stress positions.

During this time he was also reportedly interrogated by US agents for hours on end, but Mr Jabour says he was only tortured when the Americans were not around.

Mr Jabour admits that in 1998 he trained in Afghanistan in the hope of fighting in Chechnya. He also says he helped Arab militants who had fled Afghanistan for Pakistan in 2003, but he denies any links to al-Qaeda or terror activities.

EU threat

Meanwhile, the US has warned the European Union that ongoing inquiries into secret CIA flights within Europe linked to the black sites are threatening intelligence ties between Europe and the US.

The investigations "have not been helpful with respect to necessary co-operation between the United States and Europe," John Bellinger, legal adviser to US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, said.

Mr Bellinger also labelled a European Parliament report into the flights, released earlier this month, as "unbalanced, inaccurate and unfair".

[Rasputin]

[Rasputin]

[Rasputin]

[Rasputin]

When Mendez saw that the military presence was light, he signaled all-clear to his film crew. The Americans entered the airport with trepidation. They hadn't been in public, after all, in nearly 80 days. Most of the escapees had worked in the consulate, and they all knew what it was like to scrutinize official paperwork, looking for flaws. Worse yet, three of them had worked in the visa line. They'd been seen by thousands of Iranians, many of whom might harbor grudges for being turned down.

Everyone breathed easier when check-in at the Swissair counter and customs went smoothly. The group made small talk as Schatz approached immigration, presented his passport, and got his stamp. The Americans were momentarily terrified when the officer disappeared with the rest of the crew's passports. But then he absent-mindedly wandered back to the counter with some tea and waved the group on to the departure lounge without bothering to match the yellow and white forms.

The wait was agonizing. Everyone kept their heads down. Joe Stafford picked up a local paper at one point and then remembered that Canadian film crews don't read Farsi. He also kept using people's real names, giving the others serious jitters. It was getting later and brighter. The airport was filling with people. They knew there was no backup plan. Mendez wasn't even carrying a gun, and the Revolutionary Guards were arriving, wandering around in fatigues and harassing passengers. Look them in the eye, Mendez had coached the six in case anyone was questioned. Be confident but seem innocent. But he knew from the agency's reconnaissance that the guards could be tough, even subjecting people to sudden body cavity searches. A mechanical problem caused a delay, and the Revolutionary Guards were starting to turn their attention to foreign passengers.

Mendez disappeared. He had a contact at the airport and went to check on the flight status. No sooner had he learned that the delay would be short than they heard the announcement: "Swissair flight 363, ready for immediate departure." As they boarded the plane from the windy tarmac, Anders noticed the word AARGAU was printed across the fuselage — the name of the Swiss region where the plane originated was strangely similar to that of their cover story. He punched Mendez's arm and said, "You guys arrange everything, don't you?"

Mendez smiled. After the plane's wheels went up, Mendez knew he had just pulled off one of the most successful deception operations of his career. The bar opened once they left Iranian airspace, and everyone ordered Bloody Marys. Mendez leaned into the aisle, looked back at the group, and raised a toast: "We're home free."

A few hours later, Studio Six Productions got its first and last call on the secret third line. Startled, Andi picked up the phone. "It's over," an unidentified voice said. "They made it out."

[Rasputin]

US company sued over CIA flights

A subsidiary of aerospace company Boeing is being sued over its alleged role in the CIA's "extraordinary rendition" programme.

The American Civil Liberties Union says flight services provided by Jeppesen Dataplan, Inc enabled the secret transportation of three men to overseas locations where they were tortured.




The case involves the alleged mistreatment of Binyam Mohamed, an Ethiopian citizen, Elkassim Britel, an Italian citizen, and Ahmed Agiza, an Egyptian citizen, the human-rights organisation said on Thursday.

The men claimed through their family and lawyers that they have been tortured and abused.






Steven Watt, an attorney for the ACLU, told Al Jazeera: "[Jeppesen Dataplan] ensured that flights got from point A to point B and at the end of those flights torture was awaiting the suspects that were on those planes.

"They knowingly participated in the extraordinary rendition programme, they knew what its aims were, they knew terrorist suspects were going to be flown to countries where there was substantial likelihood of torture."

Support services

According to the lawsuit, filed on Wednesday in the US district court in California, Jeppesen provided flight and logistical support to at least 15 aircraft that have made a total of 70 rendition flights since December 2001.


"We don't
need to
know specific details ...
It's not our practice to ever inquire about the purpose of a trip"

Mike Pound,
Jeppesen Dataplan spokesman
Mike Pound, a spokesman for Jeppesen, said company officials had not yet seen the lawsuit and had no immediate comment.

He said Jeppesen provides support services, rather than the flights themselves, for airlines, private pilots and companies.

"We don't know the purpose of the trip for which we do a flight plan," Pound said.

"We don't need to know specific details. It's the customer's business, and we do the business that we are contracted for. It's not our practice to ever inquire about the purpose of a trip."

Boeing itself is not named in the lawsuit.

Torture claims

The rights organisation said Mohamed was subjected to two incidents of rendition. In July 2002, he was allegedly flown to Morocco where he was detained for 18 months and tortured by Moroccan intelligence services.

Then, in January 2004, Mohamed was again blindfolded, stripped, and shackled by CIA agents and flown to a secret US detention facility known as the "Dark Prison" in Kabul. He was later transferred to another facility and then to Guantanamo Bay.

Britel was taken from Pakistan to Morocco in May 2002, where he was tortured by Moroccan intelligence agents and remains imprisoned, the ACLU said.

Agiza has allegedly been in jail in Egypt since December 2001 when he was chained, shackled, and drugged by the CIA for a flight from Sweden.

The ACLU also represented Khaled El-Masri, a German citizen who was taken by the CIA from Macedonia to Afghanistan, in a lawsuit against the US government which was dismissed when the "state secrets" privilege was invoked.

Washington has acknowledged the secret transfer of suspects to third countries, but has denied that it tortured them or handed them to countries that did.

[Rasputin]

CIA to Air Decades of Its Dirty Laundry

The CIA will declassify hundreds of pages of long-secret records detailing some of the intelligence agency's worst illegal abuses -- the so-called "family jewels" documenting a quarter-century of overseas assassination attempts, domestic spying, kidnapping and infiltration of leftist groups from the 1950s to the 1970s, CIA Director Michael V. Hayden said yesterday.

The documents, to be publicly released next week, also include accounts of break-ins and theft, the agency's opening of private mail to and from China and the Soviet Union, wiretaps and surveillance of journalists, and a series of "unwitting" tests on U.S. civilians, including the use of drugs.

Most of it is unflattering, but it is CIA's history," Hayden said in a speech to a conference of foreign policy historians. The documents have been sought for decades by historians, journalists and conspiracy theorists and have been the subject of many fruitless Freedom of Information Act requests.

In anticipation of the CIA's release, the National Security Archive at George Washington University yesterday published a separate set of documents from January 1975 detailing internal government discussions of the abuses. Those documents portray a rising sense of panic within the administration of President Gerald R. Ford that what then-CIA Director William E. Colby called "skeletons" in the CIA's closet had begun to be revealed in news accounts.

A New York Times article by reporter Seymour Hersh about the CIA's infiltration of antiwar groups, published in December 1974, was "just the tip of the iceberg," then-Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger warned Ford, according to a Jan. 3 memorandum of their conversation.

Kissinger warned that if other operations were divulged, "blood will flow," saying, "For example, Robert Kennedy personally managed the operation on the assassination of [Cuban President Fidel] Castro." Kennedy was the attorney general from 1961 to 1964.

Worried that the disclosures could lead to criminal prosecutions, Kissinger added that "when the FBI has a hunting license into the CIA, this could end up worse for the country than Watergate," the scandal that led to the fall of the Nixon administration the previous year.

In a meeting at which Colby detailed the worst abuses -- after telling the president "we have a 25-year old institution which has done some things it shouldn't have" -- Ford said he would appoint a presidential commission to look into the matter. "We don't want to destroy but to preserve the CIA. But we want to make sure that illegal operations and those outside the [CIA] charter don't happen," Ford said.

Most of the major incidents and operations in the reports to be released next week were revealed in varying detail during congressional investigations that led to widespread intelligence reforms and increased oversight. But the treasure-trove of CIA documents, generated as the Vietnam War wound down and agency involvement in Nixon's "dirty tricks" political campaign began to be revealed, is expected to provide far more comprehensive accounts, written by the agency itself.

The reports, known collectively by historians and CIA officials as the "family jewels," were initially produced in response to a 1973 request by then-CIA Director James R. Schlesinger. Alarmed by press accounts of CIA involvement in Watergate under his predecessor, Schlesinger asked the agency's employees to inform him of all operations that were "outside" the agency's legal charter.

This process was unprecedented at the agency, where only a few officials had previously been privy to the scope of its illegal activities. Schlesinger collected the reports, some of which dated to the 1950s, in a folder that was inherited by his successor, Colby, in September of that year.

But it was not until Hersh's article that Colby took the file to the White House. The National Security Archive release included a six-page summary of a conversation on Jan. 3, 1975, in which Colby briefed the Justice Department for the first time on the extent of the "skeletons."

Operations listed in the report began in 1953, when the CIA's counterintelligence staff started a 20-year program to screen and in some cases open mail between the United States and the Soviet Union passing through a New York airport. A similar program in San Francisco intercepted mail to and from China from 1969 to 1972. Under its charter, the CIA is prohibited from domestic operations.

Colby told Ford that the program had collected four letters to actress and antiwar activist Jane Fonda and said the entire effort was "illegal, and we stopped it in 1973."

Among several new details, the summary document reveals a 1969 program about CIA efforts against "the international activities of radicals and black militants." Undercover CIA agents were placed inside U.S. peace groups and sent abroad as credentialed members to identify any foreign contacts. This came at a time when the Soviet Union was suspected of financing and influencing U.S. domestic organizations.

The program included "information on the domestic activities" of the organizations and led to the accumulation of 10,000 American names, which Colby told Silberman were retained "as a result of the tendency of bureaucrats to retain paper whether they needed it or acted on it or not," according to the summary memo.

CIA surveillance of Michael Getler, then The Washington Post's national security reporter, was conducted between October 1971 and April 1972 under direct authorization by then-Director Richard Helms, the memo said. Getler had written a story published on Oct. 18, 1971, sparked by what Colby called "an obvious intelligence leak," headlined "Soviet Subs Are Reported Cuba-Bound."

Getler, who is now the ombudsman for the Public Broadcasting Service, said yesterday that he learned of the surveillance in 1975, when The Post published an article based on a secret report by congressional investigators. The story said that the CIA used physical surveillance against "five Americans" and listed Getler, the late columnist Jack Anderson and Victor Marchetti, a former CIA employee who had just written a book critical of the agency.