Greg Miller’s Rendition Amateur Hour
By Larry Johnson on February 2, 2009 at 9:45 PM in Current Affairs
(bumped up from 6:50 p.m. ET)
What a pathetic piece of reporting!!! I refer to a Sunday article in the Los Angeles Times penned by Greg Miller, who asserts:
Obama preserves renditions as counter-terrorism tool
The role of the CIA’s controversial prisoner-transfer program may expand, intelligence experts say.The CIA’s secret prisons are being shuttered. Harsh interrogation techniques are off-limits. And Guantanamo Bay will eventually go back to being a wind-swept naval base on the southeastern corner of Cuba.
But even while dismantling these programs, President Obama left intact an equally controversial counter-terrorism tool.
Current and former U.S. intelligence officials said that the rendition program might be poised to play an expanded role going forward because it was the main remaining mechanism — aside from Predator missile strikes — for taking suspected terrorists off the street. . . .
The European Parliament condemned renditions as “an illegal instrument used by the United States.” Prisoners swept up in the program have sued the CIA as well as a Boeing Co. subsidiary accused of working with the agency on dozens of rendition flights.
But the Obama administration appears to have determined that the rendition program was one component of the Bush administration’s war on terrorism that it could not afford to discard.
But then I took time to actually read the Executive Orders. President Obama did not, I REPEAT, did not leave George Bush’s rendition program intact.
Miller is helping perpetuate the notion that “rendition” is a specific practice that is well defined. But that is not the case. Let’s start with some basic definitions. First there is extradition:
The surrender by one state or country of a person charged with a crime in another state or country. Formally, the request of the state (usually through the Governor’s office) claiming the right to prosecute is made to the Governor of the state in which the accused is present. Occasionally a Governor will refuse to extradite (send the person back) if he/she is satisfied that the prosecution is not warranted, despite a constitutional mandate that “on demand of the Executive authority of the State from which [a fugitive from justice] fled, be delivered up, to be removed to the State having jurisdiction of the crime.” The defendant may “waive extradition” and allow himself/herself to be taken into custody and returned to the state where charges are pending.
So what happens when you catch a bad guy, like Ramzi Yousef (mastermind of the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center towers), and you do not have in place a legal agreement for taking the person into custody and removing him from the foreign country? In the case of Ramsi he was put on an FBI plane and flown to the United States and put on trial. That is one type of rendition.
There is a lot of erroneous information floating around about “renditions.” Former CIA analyst Michael Scheuer is a major source for much of the confusion because he claims that he started the “renditions” program in 1995. Horseshit!
The CIA’s controversial “rendition” program to have terror suspects captured and questioned on foreign soil was launched under US president Bill Clinton, a former US counterterrorism agent told a German newspaper. Michael Scheuer, a 22-year veteran of the CIA who resigned from the agency in 2004, told Thursday’s issue of the newsweekly Die Zeit that the US administration had been looking in the mid-1990s for a way to combat the terrorist threat and circumvent the cumbersome US legal system.
“President Clinton, his national security advisor Sandy Berger and his terrorism advisor Richard Clark ordered the CIA in the autumn of 1995 to destroy Al-Qaeda,” Scheuer said, in comments published in German.“We asked the president what we should do with the people we capture. Clinton said ‘That’s up to you’.”
Scheuer, who headed the CIA unit that tracked Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden from 1996 to 1999, said that he developed and led the “renditions” program, which he said included moving prisoners without due legal process to countries without strict human rights protections.
“In Cairo, people are not treated like they are in Milwaukee. The Clinton administration asked us if we believed that the prisoners were being treated in accordance with local law. And we answered, yes, we’re fairly sure.”
Poor Michael (who fortunately was removed from his job in the CIA’s Counter Terrorism Center) never heard of Fawaz Younis. Younis was the first terrorist rendered and it happened in 1987 while Ronald Reagan was President. According to the FBI:
It was a bright, clear September day in the international waters of the eastern Mediterranean. A motorboat carrying a suspected terrorist — who was distinctly hung over from too much partying the night before — approached an 80-foot sailing yacht. From the yacht’s deck, two women in shorts and halter tops beckoned him to come aboard. He eyed them appreciatively, thinking ahead to his imminent meeting with Joseph, an international drug dealer, who was promising him an opportunity to begin a lucrative new career.
Was he ever about to be surprised.
The women and Joseph were undercover FBI agents. Once on deck, he was arrested and taken aboard a U.S. Navy munitions ship, the USS Butte, where he was read his rights and interrogated. As the Butte steamed toward a rendezvous with the aircraft carrier USS Saratoga, the suspect confessed to his involvement in several acts of terrorism. From the Saratoga, he was flown for a record-breaking thirteen hours in a Navy Viking S-3 jet to be arraigned in Washington, D.C., and ultimately was tried, convicted, and sentenced in a U.S. court. Case closed.
What’s the significance of this remarkable operation? This was the first international terrorist to be apprehended overseas and brought back to the United States to stand trial.
When did it happen? Seventeen years ago this week, on September 13, 1987.
Who was the terrorist? Fawaz Younis, one of the individuals implicated in the 1985 hijacking of a Royal Jordanian airliner. After taking the passengers hostage – including two Americans – and making several demands that were not met, the hijackers ordered the airplane’s crew to land first in Cyprus, then Sicily, and finally Beirut. There they released the hostages, held a press conference, blew up the plane on the tarmac, and fled.
What Younis did not know was that his actions triggered a law passed by Congress just the year before — the Comprehensive Crime Control Act of 1984 — that gave the FBI jurisdiction over terrorist acts in which Americans were taken hostage – no matter where the acts occurred. That authority was expanded in 1986 with the passage of the Omnibus Diplomatic Security and Antiterrorism Act.
Thus “Operation Goldenrod”– the first time those new authorities were used, sending a message to terrorists that we would pursue them no matter where they tried to hide.
What was the outcome? Younis was convicted of conspiracy, aircraft piracy, and hostage-taking. In October 1989, he was sentenced to 30 years in prison.
The practice of “Extraordinary Rendition” commenced in earnest under the Bush Administration in the wake of 9-11 and was specifically designed to allow suspected terrorists to be tortured by other governments–we could get the information without getting our hands dirty.
So let’s look specifically at what President Obama ordered last week:
Sec. 3. Standards and Practices for Interrogation of Individuals in the Custody or Control of the United States in Armed Conflicts.
(a) Common Article 3 Standards as a Minimum Baseline. Consistent with the requirements of the Federal torture statute, 18 U.S.C. 2340 2340A, section 1003 of the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005, 42 U.S.C. 2000dd, the Convention Against Torture, Common Article 3, and other laws regulating the treatment and interrogation of individuals detained in any armed conflict, such persons shall in all circumstances be treated humanely and shall not be subjected to violence to life and person (including murder of all kinds, mutilation, cruel treatment, and torture), nor to outrages upon personal dignity (including humiliating and degrading treatment), whenever such individuals are in the custody or under the effective control of an officer, employee, or other agent of the United States Government or detained within a facility owned, operated, or controlled by a department or agency of the United States.
(b) Interrogation Techniques and Interrogation-Related Treatment. Effective immediately, an individual in the custody or under the effective control of an officer, employee, or other agent of the United States Government, or detained within a facility owned, operated, or controlled by a department or agency of the United States, in any armed conflict, shall not be subjected to any interrogation technique or approach, or any treatment related to interrogation, that is not authorized by and listed in Army Field Manual 2 22.3 (Manual). Interrogation techniques, approaches, and treatments described in the Manual shall be implemented strictly in accord with the principles, processes, conditions, and limitations the Manual prescribes. Where processes required by the Manual, such as a requirement of approval by specified Department of Defense officials, are inapposite to a department or an agency other than the Department of Defense, such a department or agency shall use processes that are substantially equivalent to the processes the Manual prescribes for the Department of Defense. Nothing in this section shall preclude the Federal Bureau of Investigation, or other Federal law enforcement agencies, from continuing to use authorized, non-coercive techniques of interrogation that are designed to elicit voluntary statements and do not involve the use of force, threats, or promises.
Anybody see the section authorizing CIA to turn suspects over to a third country for torture? Nope, it ain’t there.
What about Section 4?
Sec. 4. Prohibition of Certain Detention Facilities, and Red Cross Access to Detained Individuals.
(a) CIA Detention. The CIA shall close as expeditiously as possible any detention facilities that it currently operates and shall not operate any such detention facility in the future.
(b) International Committee of the Red Cross Access to Detained Individuals. All departments and agencies of the Federal Government shall provide the International Committee of the Red Cross with notification of, and timely access to, any individual detained in any armed conflict in the custody or under the effective control of an officer, employee, or other agent of the United States Government or detained within a facility owned, operated, or controlled by a department or agency of the United States Government, consistent with Department of Defense regulations and policies.
So a simple question to Greg Miller–what the hell are you talking about?
The orders signed by Obama do not preclude a terrorist suspect being rendered for judicial proceedings. That was never a problem not an objectionable matter. What President Obama is clearly signaling is an end to the practice of taking terrorist suspects and putting them in the hands of foreign governments that will torture for us. And there is nothing in the Executive Orders signed by Obama that contradicts that. But you would not know that if you read Miller’s piece.
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