Monthly Archives: August 2011

I’ve railed against extraordinary rendition over and over in my posts about torture, Guantanamo Bay, the Bush administration, etc. Here we go again. A New York billing dispute ended up revealing details of secret CIA rendition flights.

Of course, if one were to ask Dick Cheney, one would hear him bluster and boast and huff-and-puff about all the evil terrorists BushCo rounded up and how much safer this country is because of their illegal immoral deplorable daring war crimes efforts.

AP:

Documents filed in a New York court case show that the firms aiding in the “extraordinary rendition” flights ranged from a major government contractor, DynCorp, to flight companies and even caterers that stocked the planes with fruit platters and bottles of wine.

WaPo:

[D]etails about shadowy CIA flights… have emerged in a small Upstate New York courthouse in a billing dispute between contractors. The court documents offer a rare glimpse of the costs and operations of a controversial program that President Obama shut down shortly after taking office. [...]

In other cases, the government has invoked the “state secrets” privilege to shut down litigation about the CIA program, but the case in Columbia County proceeded uninterrupted in an almost empty courtroom. [...]

[The logs] show multiple calls to CIA headquarters, to the cell and home phones of a senior CIA official involved in the rendition program, and to a government contractor, DynCorp, based in Falls Church, that worked for the CIA. [...]

“This new evidence tells a chilling story, from the CIA’s efforts to disguise its illegal activities to the price it paid to ferry prisoners to torture chambers across the world,” said Cori Crider, Reprieve’s legal director. … Over the course of 36 months, between 2002 and 2005, the Richmor plane flew at least 1,258 hours for the agency, including routine flights to transfer personnel to Guantanamo and other destinations, according to the court records.

The flights went to Guantanamo Bay, Germany, and the Middle East on a regular basis. The Bush crime family was clearly being sensitive to their dire need for fruit platters and wine.