The CIA's No-Questions-Asked Travel Agent

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http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0725,hentoff,76995,6.html

The CIA's No-Questions-Asked Travel Agent
A private corporation joins Bush administration's conspiracy to obstruct justice
by Nat Hentoff
June 19th, 2007 8:51 PM


CIA director Michael Hayden, defending the practice of sending terrorism suspects to countries that interrogate by torture via secret "renditions," told USA Today last month that this program is "lawful, in keeping with Western values.

"I've never managed a more sensitive, law-abiding workforce in my life," added the former head of the National Security Agency, which has long engaged in lawless spying on American phone calls and e-mails.

In its story, USA Today failed to note that a 1998 U.S. law, the Foreign Affairs and Restructuring Act, explicitly states: "It shall be the policy of the United States not to expel, extradite or otherwise effect the involuntary return of any person to a country in which there are substantial grounds for believing the person would be in danger of being subjected to torture."

The ACLU, in its lawsuit against Boeing's subsidiary, Jeppesen DataPlan (which, among other things, operates an elite travel agency), is representing three victims of the CIA's renditions—an Ethiopian, Italian, and Egyptian. In court papers, the ACLU reveals how this branch of the world's largest aerospace company collaborates with Hayden's "men in black" to ignore both our laws and international treaties:

"In providing its services to the CIA, Jeppesen knew or reasonably should have known that plaintiffs would be subjected to forced disappearances, detention, and torture in countries where such practices are routine. Indeed, according to published reports, Jeppesen had actual knowledge of its activities ."

The ACLU then goes to the smoking gun in this case, as first reported by The New Yorker's Jane Mayer in "The CIA's Travel Agent" (October 30, 2006):

"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.'"

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