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The War Profiteers - War Crimes,
Kidnappings & Torture |
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October 30th,
2006 - Outsourcing: The C.I.A.’s Travel Agent |
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Outsourcing: The C.I.A.’s
Travel Agent By Jane Mayer The New Yorker October 30, 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 travelling
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. External link: http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2006/10/30/061030ta_talk_mayer |