So did Clarke just say he was responsible for rendition(s)?

As Ray McGovern pointed out on the News Hour a couple of weeks ago, Panetta may have been incidentally involved as Clinton’s chief of staff, but the connection is “tenous at best” and the practice was not common and certainly not an established policy as it is now “on a grand scale.”

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb…..01-06.html

Even if he did, ’say’, he didn’t.

Even if he was, (’responsible’) he wasn’t.

It is all perfectly clear, isn’t it?

;~D

My ‘3′ to Rayne’s ‘1′.

My God! The GOP is giving away our secret techniques! Traitors!

-G

It would be interesting to see how these renditions were handled pre-Bush 43. I believe that Clarke has always asserted that they were done with the assurances that those renditioned would be handled through the legal process of their “home country” and that most of the renditions were done with the cooperation of the “host country”. The individuals were oftentimes anathema in the “host” country as well as considered a criminal in the home country. Thus the action served principally as a way of cutting through the formalities of non-existant extradition treaties. The US often acted as an intermediary for transport, though they may have interrogated the individuals en route. Some of these were drug traffickers, not terrorists…although they may have been associated with groups labeled as narco-terrorists.

And sometimes the extraordinary rendition actually was TO the United States. One of the most famous was that of Manuel Noriega. And, of course, there was Eichmann. I suspect if bin Laden is ever captured and brought to the US for trial it will involve extraordinary rendition, simply because holding him in a jail in Pakistan or Afghanistan until the legal extradition process occurs would be nearly impossible and lead to the destabilization of the countries. Removal will be granted by the leaders of the country he is captured in, but it won’t be done through the ordinary legal procedures.

And then there are the cases of cross-border private “bounty hunters”.

It would certainly be interesting to see the manner in which extraordinary rendition was usedand how it has evolved through time.

heart-felt and cornyn
ha ha ha

Seriously. Is the taint of this administration going to stretch out and lay over everything? I mean, seriously!

Remember what they did? http://tv1.com/playlists/123

Oh lordie, the thought of watching that bottom feeder Chambliss croak about rendition gives me the heebiejeebies.

It certainly would be interesting, cinnamonape …

What do you suspect the chances are that we shall ever have an honest assessment or appraisal?

Talk about ‘extraordinary’. That would be. Quite.

More likely, ’twill be rendered as ‘business as usual’ and ‘national security’by its very ‘nature’, prohibits the ‘people’ from knowing what was done in their name … essentially forever.

;~(

Renditions during the Bush the Elder years and then during the Clinton years were much more genteel and occasional affairs than what has emerged in the past eight or so years. They were not about “kidnapping” so much as highly orchestrated extraditions, with the orchestration being done via US intelligence, diplomatic, and law enforcement channels. The idea behind pre-9/11 renditions was to get a few dangerous terrorists out of circulation by inducing an allied country to legally arrest a terrorist suspect so that the suspect could face justice in yet another allied country’s justice system. It’s problematic that some of the (third world) countries involved in renditions were equipped with crude, abusive, or inequitable criminal justice systems, but the idea was to apply a legal process and deliver justice as an exceptional measure.

The operative ideas in 90s-era renditions were “a few” and “legally arrest and face justice.” No one ever thought it would be effective as widespread practice–it was applied to a few “hard cases.” There was also an emphasis on adhering to the norms of various international and bilateral legal standards.

All that being said, Panetta may have had passing knowledge of renditions, but as both Clarke and McGovern note, he was not a participant in Clarke’s CSG and thus out of the loop on Clinton-era rendition operations.

Typically, administrations can’t keep all their dubious acts classified forever. It is common practice to keep things secret for 20 years or more, until the culprits are too old (or deceased) to be held accountable. For the good of the country, doncha know.

OT – today is Dr Martin Luther King, Jr’s birthday.

Clarke’s 2007 book Breakpoint in the discount bin at Walgreens for five bucks. Its Clarke’s novel concerning a fictional attack on the internet tubes. In tv interviews, Clarke has advocated for a separate internet for banking and other important things. He has dreamed up this potentially real scenario – Breakpoint is the book. Half a chapter into it, its cliched and a little silly. I had to take a rest.

Clarke’s experience may shed some light on actual bureaucratic system functions and protocol.

We are better because he lived. Too short a time but did so much good while here. Bless him.

Yepper.

And by then, the statute has prolly reached its ‘limitation’ …

Or the miscreant is an elder ’statesman(woman)’, highly respected, quite wealthy and still very well-connected.

Besides, who cares about ‘old’ news.

This is America, we only look FORWARD. (Gotta look where we’re goin’… or we’ll go where we’re lookin’)

He’d have been 80. Difficult to imagine.

We forget the lessons of the past on purpose so that we may make our own Destiny – repeating mistakes for profit. Creating Cheney’s reality.

And we have to remember that even under Clinton these operations were basically to work through diplomatic channels with the host country. Recall the efforts to “rendition” bin Laden from Sudan. Clinton’s SoS and a variety of diplomats went through long and hard negotiations with the Sudanese to get bin Laden out, and to get his “native” country to accept him. The Saudi’s simply didn’t want to accept him…too much of a hot potato. They preferred him in “exile” rather than sitting as a martyr in their own prisons.

So the Sudanese allowed bin Laden to fly to Aghanistan. This was, of course, all before the bombings of the US Embassies in East Africa (but after the placement of bin Laden as an unindicted conspirator re. the WTC I attacks). Quite simply, the US didn’t have an extradition treaty with Sudan (which might require the sending of Sudanese dissidents to Sudan on trumped up charges)…or even overt diplomatic relations.

Repeating mistakes of profit. I think you’ve hit on something important there. Part of the reason the powers that be have little interest in improving education. Keeping us ignorant makes it easier to fleece the flock.

The Divine Right of Money, trumps all, hackworth.

You have seen the ’soul’ of America, and provided us a glimpse of our ‘future’ REALITY.

Unless there is real, actual ‘change’ (as opposed to three pennies and a nickel …)

;~(

Shear enuff! ratfood, shear enuff true…

panetta probably doesn’t deserve these questions, but the clinton administration does – and i’ll be glad to see it questioned, even if only by two-faced lying hypocritical republicans.

Actually they are just getting around to revealing many of the Korean War scandals that have been kept secret for…ummm…more than 50 years. There’s a historian in the CIA Archives who has decided to fast-track declassification on a couple of issues, such as the faking of the intelligence that led to the Gulf of Tonkin attacks. Personally we need a score of these people in there, establishing whether the keeping the intelligence secret actually a) protects significant US Security objectives; b) interferes with essential evaluation of the methods, sources and use of intelligence; c) is being done merely to protect criminal or negligent actions by former officials (and thus allowing them to continue in their jobs or offer advice without a balanced measure of their activities).

I am inclined to agree. As annoying as it was, Monicagate actually helped Clinton by diverting attention from more important matters. U.S. complicity in the East Timor slaughter, for example.

Oh! Oh! Oh!

I vote for letter ‘C’.

Bet its the winnah, too.

Yepper.

amen!

More often than not, the answer is (c). The current administration always has a stake in covering the wrongdoing of previous administrations, lest they establish a precedent that will come back to bite them on the ass one day.

If Panetta is, indeed, asked this question (”whether he played any role in ordering terrorism suspects extrajudicially kidnapped and sent to other countries for questioning and probable torture while he was chief of staff”), would it be acceptable (if true) for him to simply answer “no” and then move on?

David

more to it than that. from jane mayers’ OUTSOURCING TORTURE The secret history of America’s “extraordinary rendition” program.

The C.I.A. also felt that other agencies sometimes stood in its way. In 1996, for example, the State Department stymied a joint effort by the C.I.A. and the F.B.I. to question one of bin Laden’s cousins in America, because he had a diplomatic passport, which protects the holder from U.S. law enforcement. Describing the C.I.A.’s frustration, Scheuer said, “We were turning into voyeurs. We knew where these people were, but we couldn’t capture them because we had nowhere to take them.” The agency realized that “we had to come up with a third party.”

The obvious choice, Scheuer said, was Egypt. The largest recipient of U.S. foreign aid after Israel, Egypt was a key strategic ally, and its secret police force, the Mukhabarat, had a reputation for brutality. Egypt had been frequently cited by the State Department for torture of prisoners. According to a 2002 report, detainees were “stripped and blindfolded; suspended from a ceiling or doorframe with feet just touching the floor; beaten with fists, whips, metal rods, or other objects; subjected to electrical shocks; and doused with cold water [and] sexually assaulted.” Hosni Mubarak, Egypt’s leader, who came to office in 1981, after President Anwar Sadat was assassinated by Islamist extremists, was determined to crack down on terrorism. His prime political enemies were radical Islamists, hundreds of whom had fled the country and joined Al Qaeda. Among these was Ayman al-Zawahiri, a physician from Cairo, who went to Afghanistan and eventually became bin Laden’s deputy.

In 1995, Scheuer said, American agents proposed the rendition program to Egypt, making clear that it had the resources to track, capture, and transport terrorist suspects globally—including access to a small fleet of aircraft. Egypt embraced the idea. “What was clever was that some of the senior people in Al Qaeda were Egyptian,” Scheuer said. “It served American purposes to get these people arrested, and Egyptian purposes to get these people back, where they could be interrogated.” Technically, U.S. law requires the C.I.A. to seek “assurances” from foreign governments that rendered suspects won’t be tortured. Scheuer told me that this was done, but he was “not sure” if any documents confirming the arrangement were signed.

A series of spectacular covert operations followed from this secret pact. On September 13, 1995, U.S. agents helped kidnap Talaat Fouad Qassem, one of Egypt’s most wanted terrorists, in Croatia. Qassem had fled to Europe after being linked by Egypt to the assassination of Sadat; he had been sentenced to death in absentia. Croatian police seized Qassem in Zagreb and handed him over to U.S. agents, who interrogated him aboard a ship cruising the Adriatic Sea and then took him back to Egypt. Once there, Qassem disappeared. There is no record that he was put on trial. Hossam el-Hamalawy, an Egyptian journalist who covers human-rights issues, said, “We believe he was executed.”

A more elaborate operation was staged in Tirana, Albania, in the summer of 1998. According to the Wall Street Journal, the C.I.A. provided the Albanian intelligence service with equipment to wiretap the phones of suspected Muslim militants. Tapes of the conversations were translated into English, and U.S. agents discovered that they contained lengthy discussions with Zawahiri, bin Laden’s deputy. The U.S. pressured Egypt for assistance; in June, Egypt issued an arrest warrant for Shawki Salama Attiya, one of the militants. Over the next few months, according to the Journal, Albanian security forces, working with U.S. agents, killed one suspect and captured Attiya and four others. These men were bound, blindfolded, and taken to an abandoned airbase, then flown by jet to Cairo for interrogation. Attiya later alleged that he suffered electrical shocks to his genitals, was hung from his limbs, and was kept in a cell in filthy water up to his knees. Two other suspects, who had been sentenced to death in absentia, were hanged.

On August 5, 1998, an Arab-language newspaper in London published a letter from the International Islamic Front for Jihad, in which it threatened retaliation against the U.S. for the Albanian operation—in a “language they will understand.” Two days later, the U.S. Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania were blown up, killing two hundred and twenty-four people.

The GOP is merely trying to rehabilitate GWB and his rendition policies by trying to point out, as they have repeatedly, that Clinton did it first so the “radical left” or whatever they want to call it should just sit down, shut up and let the “grown ups” who know about the “dark side” handle it.

It all dove-tails nicely with their rattling off the various things that have done to “enemy combatants” and saying, what, a little loud music, a little cold air, how can that be torture or not be appropriate for those who, if they could, would crash planes into American buildings.

It works to some degree, because, rather than the Clinton people being able to say definitively no, we didn’t do that, they have to go, well yes, but we were different.

But that’s politics in the age where the US wants to be The Superpower and ends up doing what “superpowers” do – trampling on the little guys. And in the end, the ’superpower” typically reaps what it sows – but who reads history anymore anyways.

It’s like signing statements: Other presidents did them before Bush the Younger, but far less often and with far less abuse.

Excellent synopsis, ctc.

Keep ‘em comin’ …

;~D

Richard Clarke, who was White House counterterrorism czar from Bush 41 to early in Bush 43’s term, exonerates Panetta

,
Scheuer conceeded the same in a recent panel discusssion on PBS Newshour (?), referring to his own briefings of WH officials. And he actually started off gunning for him on that issue.

Not sure where I heard this but it was him, the VIPS (McGovern?) guy and someone very monontone, so I assume it was PBS.

So did Clarke just say he was responsible for rendition(s)?

Yeah, he’s been saying that for a while. Says that in his book that’s been out for years.

Renditions during the Bush the Elder years and then during the Clinton years were much more genteel and occasional affairs than what has emerged in the past eight or so years. They were not about “kidnapping” so much as highly orchestrated extraditions, with the orchestration being done via US intelligence, diplomatic, and law enforcement channels.

What’s your understanding of the word “genteel” ?
These people were sent to regimes that torture, first guy rendered under Clinton was sent to Egypt where he was promptly tortured to death and then they said “right, let’s do that again”.

Baer and Scheuer have done a hell of a lot of interviews about the GWOT and not once made any bones about the fact that this was the entire point. Baer’s summary of how the redition destination was chosen, was that it was on the basis of whether you wanted them tortured or tortured to death.

So………

gen⋅teel
–adjective
1. belonging or suited to polite society.
2. well-bred or refined; polite; elegant; stylish.
3. affectedly or pretentiously polite, delicate, etc.

…..are you fucking kidding ?

Thank you for your even-tempered and thoughtful response to my comment.

I think I acknowledged in my post that countries with which the US allied itself on renditions posed a significant problem:

It’s problematic that some of the (third world) countries involved in renditions were equipped with crude, abusive, or inequitable criminal justice systems, but the idea was to apply a legal process and deliver justice as an exceptional measure.

I am familiar with Scheuer and Baer’s assertions on the subject of renditions, particularly regarding the reputation of the Egyptian security services–no one can dispute that a prisoner delivered into the hands of nearly any third world security service can be expected to face harsh and inhumane treatment.

Nonetheless, the differences between Bush-era renditions and 90s era renditions–the genteel-ness if you will–were that:

1) 90s-era renditions were subjected to a lot more scrutiny than Bush-era renditions, from a number of standpoints: internal CIA (legal and operational), policymaker (NSC), diplomatic, and legislative oversight. One bit that emerges from accounts of post 9-11 renditions is the near-total lack of scrutiny at all levels–the sheer amount of stupidity and incompetence in evidence in the 2003 Abu Omar rendition/kidnappings speaks for itself.

2) 90s-era renditions were a lot more judicious than Bush-era renditions. Many of those rendered in the early 90s, for example, were fugitives from Cold War-era leftist/nationalist terrorism, and had pretty firm “trails” of prosecutorial attention behind them. The “goofs” of inadvertent or mistaken renditions (Masri of Germany and Arar of Canada come to mind) are a direct result of a cowboy, “we’re not risk averse anymore” mindset pervasive among Bush policymakers and senior intelligence managers.

3) There was at least a fig leaf of propriety behind 90s-era renditions. Much care was given to making sure that 90s-era rendition subjects were subject to some nominal legitimate legal process (from the standpoint of international law and bilateral legal arrangements, admittedly, not from the standpoint of human rights standards). It’s also worth noting that not all 90s-era rendition subjects were delivered to countries known for their torture chambers.