How the CIA Blew Its Prisons Cover

NY Sun ^ | 12-08-2005 | JOSH GERSTEIN

[AliVeritas]

WASHINGTON - While Secretary of State Rice fends off questioning in Europe over CIA-run air flights of prisoners in the war on terror, some analysts outside the CIA are asking how the flights were exposed so easily.

The CIA's legendary capacity for stealth, celebrated in so many cloak-and-dagger books and films, seems to have been all but absent as hooded prisoners were zipped from one airport to another by agency airplanes, a journalist who helped prepare one of the first detailed reports on the air transfer program said.

"I would say they didn't give a damn," Fredrik Laurin, a producer with a Swedish television show, "Kalla Fakta," or "Cold Facts," said when asked what priority the agency gave to keeping the air operation secret. "If I was an American taxpayer, I would be upset," Mr. Laurin said in a telephone interview from Sweden yesterday.

In May 2004, the Swedish show reported on the CIA's involvement with the expulsion of two men from Sweden to Egypt in December 2001. The tail number of an aircraft involved in the transfer led quickly to information about at least six other occasions on which the same small Gulfstream V jet was used to move prisoners from various locations to countries such as Egypt, Jordan, and Syria. "Once we had the identity of the plane, which we were able to find out in many ways - a plane leaves a lot of traces - it was obvious the plane was fishy," Mr. Laurin said.

[bkepley]

"If I was an American taxpayer, I would be upset," Mr. Laurin said in a telephone interview from Sweden yesterday.

Good point. Copy GWB.

[Mo1]

Check this story out

[Coldwater Creek]

The CIA need's to have their biscuit scrubbed!!!!!!!!!

[Paisan]

I smell a rat.

Journalists don't arbitrarily check out airplane tail numbers without someone telling them that they should...

[Bigg Red]

Good point. Copy GWB.

&&
I think the President is already aware that there are elements in the CIA that are working against him and his policies.

[DeaconRed]

"I would say they didn't give a damn,"

Oh but they do.
They know exactly what they are doing.
It is obvious there is a big rift between the WH & the CIA. This was done on purpose to make the WH look bad, and it worked, FOR A WHILE.

[Wristpin]

"If I was an American taxpayer, I would be upset,"

As a taxpayer I'm upset we didn't have this going on pre 9/11. Bin Laden declared War on the US in the 90's!

[mtbopfuyn]

They know exactly what they are doing.

Which is why there's much more to this story than we'll ever know.

[Eric in the Ozarks]

The agency needs to be shaken like a dirty throw rug.

[NearlyNormal]

Yup, it's time for Goss to pull his list and perform a well overdue "ethics cleansing" of the entire agency. Hopefully there's a Federal prison that's capable of holding the well trained traitors that get expunged.

We need a CIA that works for the US, not against it.

[GAB-1955]

"Journalists don't arbitrarily check out airplane tail numbers without someone telling them that they should..."

Yes, but that someone could have been the planespotter. I have a related hobby--shortwave radio--and in the hobby postings, the planespotters are obsessive about matching tail numbers with organizations and with patterns of flight. You can track movements of transport planes very easily combining the WUN radio hobby postings and the planespotters, and this provides intelligence. In fact, the intelligence communities in radio monitoring are very aware of the hobbyists, and when they start making too good deductions, they change codewords and patterns.

Now, the spotters know which planes are CIA cover planes, if only by deduction; they're government, but not Air Force, State Dept, etc. They know where they're landing in Europe (the hobby is strongest in Europe) and they make keen deductions. The spotter called the European press, and there we are.

You can't run a long-term operation without someone knowing about it.

[longtermmemmory]

The CIA is globally legendary FOR INCOMPETENCE!

The CIA is globally legnedary for being UNABLE to keep a secret.

The CIA needs a massive purging of all left wing loonies.

[Baby Driver]

The President needs to start compartmentalising and
shutting down all but the neccesary operations and
start a mole search..once thew leaker(s) is/are
identified...the leakers need to start having
"accidents".

Time to sanction the traitors among us.

[ContemptofCourt]

Perhaps you haven't seen this thing called the "internet". There is a website devoted to plane sightings, complete with pics of every plane out there, as well as dates, times, and locations of every takeoff and landing.

Lets face facts...the internet has become a godsend for the obsessive/compulsive of the world....

[Paisan]

"Journalists don't arbitrarily check out airplane tail numbers without someone telling them that they should..."


I'll stand by my original assertion...

[sgtbono2002]

Where is the proof of these accusations? Here we have another story making accusations without proof. This story seems to me to be mere conjecture.

[Grendel9]

I agree. The tailend of the story clues us
into the idea that CIA "leakers" may be
responsible.

Course, we don't know the whole story...
probably never will. After George Tenet, a
holdover from the Clinton Administration,
was found guilty of gregious "oversights,"
one has to wonder just how many other
Democratic workers are still on staff there.

[battlecry]

You are so right. Michael Chrichton was on to this early on and wrote that the CIA was really a front for the US Department of Agriculture, which was the real intelligence gathering operation, using their offices located everywhere, their overseas advisors, and their large budget which they used to pay people not to grow crops. There was no way he could see the CIA being a serious intel ops group.