Taylor Marsh – TaylorMarsh.com – News, Opinion and Weblog on Progressive Politics

Extraordinary Rendition, to be broadcast on PBS Frontline on November 6 at 9 pm ET.

Firedoglake Chat with Stephen Grey
author of
“Ghost Plane, The True Story of the CIA Torture Program”
TODAY: 11:00 a.m. eastern – 8:00 a.m. pacific

Bill O’Reilly was talking about the move “Rendition”
recently, but not in any positive way. He praised anyone refusing to see the
film as “patriots.” Ah yes, Bill-O, nothing like Fox supporting the
America the ignorant theory. Can’t have citizens made aware of what’s happening
in our name.

Most are now familiar with the term rendition, the process by which suspects
are transferred from one country to another without any legal process or court
hearing. The legal means to do this is called extradition, as you likely know. But this rendition to justice as it’s called, is the snatching of people
in one country in order to appear in court in another.

Extraordinary rendition is something else entirely. In fact, it doesn’t really
exist as a real term, though it’s a very real tactic. It’s the capture of someone
in one country who is then transferred to another country, then another, but
not for legal purposes. Instead this person disappears in a country where no
accountability is brought to bear. This person is never heard from again or
is brought out at a much later date with some miraculous story of confession
for some heinous crime needing a perpetrator. It’s a practice that began in
the 1990s, but has become synonymous with the reign of Bush, especially after 9/11. It always includes coerced interrogation, otherwise known as torture.

A man made famous by our tactics of extraordinary rendition is Ibn al-Sheikh
al-Libi, who was part of a
previous Frontline documentary, “The Torture Question” which I’ve
written about before. Al-Libi was the man who helped bring Colin Powell down.

As with the story of Zarqawi and his network, I can trace the story of a senior terrorist operative telling how Iraq provided training in these weapons to al Qaeda. Fortunately, this operative is now detained, and he has told his story. I will relate it to you now as he, himself, described it. This senior al Qaeda terrorist was responsible for one of al Qaeda’s training camps in Afghanistan. His information comes firsthand from his personal involvement at senior levels of al Qaeda. He says bin Laden and his top deputy in Afghanistan, deceased al Qaeda leader Mohammed Atef, did not believe that al Qaeda labs in Afghanistan were capable enough to manufacture these chemical or biological agents. They needed to go somewhere else. They had to look outside of Afghanistan for help. Where did they go? Where did they look? They went to Iraq. The support that (inaudible) describes included Iraq offering chemical or biological weapons training for two al Qaeda associates beginning in December 2000. He says that a militant known as Abu Abdula Al-Iraqi (ph) had been sent to Iraq several times between 1997and 2000 for help in acquiring poisons and gases. Abdula Al-Iraqi (ph) characterized the relationship he forged with Iraqi officials as successful. Secretary of State Colin Powell

Ibn al-Sheikh al-Libi is the “senior terrorist operative” that Bush
had “detained” and to whom Powell refers above. There’s only one problem.
The information we got through this extraordinary rendition was not only false
and was eventually recanted by al-Libi, but it led this country into a war that may take
us another decade from which to extricate ourselves. That hasn’t kept people
like Stephen Hayes from repeating them in articles for the Weekly Standard,
as well as in books and on “Meet the Press.” Dana Priest broke the
real story of Ibn al-Sheikh al-Libi eighteen months after Powell used the information
from what is believed to have been the coerced interrogation, but
was actually torture, though the C.I.A. has never admitted this publicly.

An al Qaeda commander who initially told interrogators that Iraq had provided chemical and biological weapons training to the terrorist organization later told CIA officers his statement was not true, according to intelligence officials. Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, a Libyan captured in Pakistan on Nov. 11, 2001, later “changed his story, and we’re still in the process of trying to determine what’s right and what’s not right” from his information, a senior U.S. intelligence official said yesterday. “He told us one thing at one time and another at another time.” Al-Libi’s statement formed the basis for the Bush administration’s prewar claim that Osama bin Laden collaborated with Iraq, according to several U.S. officials. In an October 2002 speech in Cincinnati, for example, President Bush said: “We’ve learned that Iraq has trained al Qaeda members in bomb-making and poisons and gases.” Other senior administration officials, including Secretary of State Colin L. Powell in a speech to the United Nations, made similar assertions. Al-Libi’s statements were the foundation of all of them. Al Qaeda-Iraq Link Recanted Captured Libyan Reverses Previous Statement to CIA, Officials Say

Jane Mayer has done in
depth pieces on rendition for The New Yorker. Her article “The
Memo,” illustrates how the efforts to ban torture was thwarted at every
level of the Bush administration. But in August of this year, her piece on “The
Black Sites” offers a look into the C.I.A.’s secret interrogation program
that involves the confession of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM) for the murder
of Daniel Pearl. The story Mayer tells, which includes the disbelief of Pearl’s
widow after hearing about the confession, is amazing. That KSM’s confession
for the murder of Pearl mimics al-Libi’s confession that provided Powell bogus
information is not lost on anyone who has read up on how extraordinary rendition
doesn’t work. But that hasn’t kept this country from employing it during the reign of Bush.

There’s a lot in the news about extraordinary rendition, especially with the
movie coming out. Firedoglake will have a live chat with Stephen
Grey, author of “Ghost
Plane, The True Story of the CIA Torture Program,
today at 11:00 a.m. eastern time – 8:00 a.m. pacific. I have not read
his book yet, but I have no doubt it’s worth your time, because I know enough
about the subject to appreciate its importance.. The video above is an interview
with Mr. Grey for an upcoming Frontline program, which will air November 6th
on PBS.