C.I.A. Expanding Terror Battle Under Guise of Charter Flights

....

Secrecy Is Difficult

Aero's much-larger ancestor, Air America, was closed down in 1976 just as the United States Senate's Church Committee issued a mixed report on the value of the C.I.A.'s use of proprietary companies. The committee questioned whether the nation would ever again be involved in covert wars. One comment appears prescient.

When one C.I.A. official told the committee that a new air proprietary should be created only if "we have a chance at keeping it secret that it is C.I.A.," Lawrence R. Houston, then agency's general counsel, objected.

In the aviation industry, said Mr. Houston, who died in 1995, "everybody knows what everybody is doing, and something new coming along is immediately the focus of a thousand eyes and prying questions."

He concluded: "I don't think you can do a real cover operation."

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/31/national/31planes.html?pagewanted=1&ei=5094&en=fb926b60a8326025&hp&ex=1117512000&partner=homepage

What a load of shit.

when something is out of the prdinary. In 2001, the USAF still hadn't incorporated that routine.

Remember Payne Stewart? They had jets surrounding that plane shortly after losing radio contact.

" New Swedish Documents Illuminate CIA Action
Probe Finds 'Rendition' Of Terror Suspects Illegal

By Craig Whitlock
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, May 21, 2005; Page A01

STOCKHOLM -- The CIA Gulfstream V jet touched down at a small airport west of here just before 9 p.m. on a subfreezing night in December 2001. A half-dozen agents wearing hoods that covered their faces stepped down from the aircraft and hurried across the tarmac to take custody of two prisoners, suspected Islamic radicals from Egypt.

Inside an airport police station, Swedish officers watched as the CIA operatives pulled out scissors and rapidly sliced off the prisoners' clothes, including their underwear, according to newly released Swedish government documents and eyewitness statements. They probed inside the men's mouths and ears and examined their hair before dressing the pair in sweat suits and draping hoods over their heads. The suspects were then marched in chains to the plane, where they were strapped to mattresses on the floor in the back of the cabin.

Contd at;
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/20/AR2005052001605.html

'Ghost' jet used for terror suspects
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=102&topic_id=1103442

Jet's trail spurs questions Mysterious Amer. plane tied to torture flights
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=102&topic_id=1155474


Germany Looks Into a U.S. Link in Kidnapping and Torture Claim -NYT
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=102&topic_id=1133488

US Said to Regret Kidnapping of German

-snip-

According to Monday's edition of Der Spiegel newsmagazine, Washington has used unofficial channels to apologize to Berlin for kidnapping Khaled el-Masri. The 41-year-old German citizen says he was seized at the Serbian border with Macedonia in December 2003 and detained for five months at a prison in Afghanistan.

-snip-

German prosecutors have opened an investigation into the matter and have said they are taking el-Masri's claims "extremely seriously" after they managed to corroborate his story up until the moment of his alleged arrest at Serbian-Macedonian border.

-snip-

He says he was handed over to officials whom he thought were Americans, who flew him to Afghanistan, where he was shackled, beaten, injected with drugs and questioned about his alleged ties to the Al-Qaeda network.

-snip-

"It is an unusual case," Hofmann said. "The political dimension is huge. Under German law, we can charge a person with kidnapping, but not a country. Countries cannot kidnap people."

www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,1564,1459629,00.html

TYY:kick: