Until now, we have been limited to lists of suspicious aircraft and networks of flight routes pieced together painstakingly using information from everyone from plane spotters to the European parliament. They have given us the "where", but not the "how".
In that sense, this trove of information gives us an entirely new angle – we can now begin to comprehend the renditions programme in three, rather than two, dimensions.
The documents cast light not only on destinations and planes, but also on the inner workings of the programme: its financial and logistical dimensions.
They show how, in May 2002, contractors hired by the US government sought the use of a private Gulfstream jet for government missions. Richmor Aviation offered the N85VM, on the understanding that it should be in the air at any time given 12 hours' notice.
Over the next three years, this plane flew at least 55 missions for the US government, often to Guantánamo Bay, as well as to numerous destinations worldwide.
These destinations include places that have now been associated with the CIA's secret prison programme: Kabul, where the CIA ran the notorious "Salt Pit" prison; Bangkok, where Abu Zubaydah was first taken and used as a guinea pig for "enhanced interrogation techniques"; Rabat, where prisoners were kept incommunicado and tortured by Moroccan agents who passed information to the US and Britain; and Bucharest, one of the European secret jail sites.
While many of these itineraries had already come to light, the disclosures in this case add new dimensions to the existing evidence.
Page after page of invoices lay out the financial record of the operations, including catering bills, crew costs, flight planning charges, overflight permissions and other assorted mechanisms that made the programme as a whole possible.
Air travel is a complicated business: national aviation authorities need to know where in their airspace aircraft are likely to be in order to avoid collisions; trip planners need to keep them informed and liaise with the pilot and operating companies; communications services, hotel rooms and food all need to be paid for.
All these aspects, each with a price tag, are revealed in unprecedented detail. In a word, we can begin to understand the renditions programme as a business, with all that entails.
Most astonishingly, these documents are a matter of public record. They are not classed as sensitive, they are not confidential: anyone who wants a copy can order them and peruse them at leisure.
In 2007, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and Reprieve brought a case against a trip planning company, Jeppesen, arguing that it had participated in arrangements for certain renditions flights.
The US government swiftly stepped in and shut the case down, on the basis that to argue it would reveal state secrets. The ACLU appealed to the supreme court, which in May 2011 declined to consider the case. In the same month, Richmor's litigation concluded, after unveiling this mass of documentation.
You have to ask yourself: if Richmor was allowed to bring its case in the open, why weren't Guantánamo detainees Binyam Mohamed and Bisher al-Rawi given their day in court? This case removes all doubt that what the CIA seeks to protect in renditions cases is not a genuine 'state secret' so much as its own prerogatives.
2011-09-01
US court documents reveal inner workings of CIA renditions | Clare Algar | Comment is free | The Guardian
via guardian.co.uk
