Outsourcing Torture - the Boeing connection

[Peter Langston]

Forwarded-by: David Michael <harp at olympus.net>
[ACLU attorney Ben Wizner may amend lawsuit to name Boeing as defendant
in Masri vs. George Tenet case.....dm]

  *Outsourcing: The CIA's Travel Agent*
  By Jane Mayer
  The New Yorker

  Monday 23 October 2006

    On the official Web site of Boeing, the world's largest aerospace
company, there is a section devoted to a subsidiary called Jeppesen
International Trip Planning, based in San Jose, California. The write-up
mentions that the division "offers everything needed for efficient,
hassle-free, international flight operations," spanning the globe "from
Aachen to Zhengzhou." The paragraph concludes, "Jeppesen has done it all."

    Boeing does not mention, either on its Web site or in its annual report,
that Jeppesen's clients include the C.I.A., and that among the international
trips that the company plans for the agency are secret "extraordinary
rendition" flights for terrorism suspects. Most of the planes used in
rendition flights are owned and operated by tiny charter airlines that
function as C.I.A. front companies, but it is not widely known that the
agency has turned to a division of Boeing, the publicly traded blue-chip
behemoth, to handle many of the logistical and navigational details for
these trips, including flight plans, clearance to fly over other countries,
hotel reservations, and ground-crew arrangements.

    The Bush Administration has defended the clandestine rendition program,
which began during the Clinton years, as an effective method of transporting
terrorists to countries where they can be questioned or held. Human-rights
activists and others have said the program's primary intent is to send
suspects to detention centers where they can be interrogated harshly, and
have criticized it as an illegal means of "outsourcing torture."

    A former Jeppesen employee, who asked not to be identified, said
    recently that he had been startled to learn, during an internal corporate
meeting, about the company's involvement with the rendition flights. At the
meeting, he recalled, Bob Overby, the managing director of Jeppesen
International Trip Planning, said, "We do all of the extraordinary rendition
flights-you know, the torture flights. Let's face it, some of these flights
end up that way." The former employee said that another executive told him,
"We do the spook flights." He was told that two of the company's trip
planners were specially designated to handle renditions. He was deeply
troubled by the rendition program, he said, and eventually quit his job. He
recalled Overby saying, "It certainly pays well. They" - the C.I.A. - "spare
no expense. They have absolutely no worry about costs. What they have to get
done, they get done."

    Overby, who was traveling last week, did not return several phone calls.
Mike Pound, the head of corporate communications for Jeppesen, said that he
would have no comment, and he added, "Bob Overby will have no comment as
well." Tim Neale, the director of media relations for Boeing's corporate
office in Chicago, said, "The flight-planning services we provide our
customers are confidential, and we do not comment publicly on any work done
for any customer without their consent." The C.I.A. had no comment.

    The British journalist Stephen Grey, in a new book, "Ghost Plane,"
    refers to documents obtained by Spanish law-enforcement officials, along
with flight logs, which indicate that international flight planners provided
essential logistical support for many of the C.I.A.'s renditions, including
that of Khaled el-Masri, a German car salesman who was apparently mistaken
for an Al Qaeda suspect with a similar name, in January of 2004. (Although
documents show that Jeppesen provided this support, Grey's book does not
mention the company.) Masri, who is a Muslim, was arrested at the border
while crossing from Serbia into Macedonia by bus. He has alleged in court
papers that Macedonian authorities turned him over to a C.I.A. rendition
team. Then, he said, masked figures stripped him naked, shackled him, and
led him onto a Boeing 737 business jet. Flight plans prepared by Jeppesen
show that from Skopje, Macedonia, the 737 flew to Baghdad, where it had
military clearance to land, and then on to Kabul. On board, Masri has said,
he was chained to the floor and injected with sedatives. After landing, he
was put in the trunk of a car and driven to a building where he was placed
in a dank cell. He spent the next four months there, under interrogation.
Masri was released in May, 2004, on the orders of Condoleezza Rice, then the
national-security adviser, after she learned that he had mistakenly been
identified as a terrorism suspect.

    Ben Wizner, an A.C.L.U. attorney who is representing Masri in his
    lawsuit against the former C.I.A. director George Tenet and private
aviation
companies, says that if Boeing can be proved to have played a role in
Masri's rendition the A.C.L.U. may amend the lawsuit to name the company as
a defendant.

    The American flight crew fared better than their passenger. Documents
show that after the 737 delivered Masri to the Afghan prison it flew to the
resort island of Majorca, where, for two nights, crew members stayed at a
luxury hotel, at taxpayers' expense.

----- End forwarded message -----
--
Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org
______________________________________________________________
ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820            http://www.ativel.com
8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A  7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE

[demime 1.01d removed an attachment of type application/pgp-signature which had a name of signature.asc]