The discovery and initial disclosure by Reprieve of documents in a court case is almost too explosive to fully comprehend because it touches on several issues in the so-called war on terror.
The Retrieve report Huge stash of rendition documents reveal how the CIA covered its tracks supplies the easy takeaways that the evidence supports:
A complicated billing chain obscured the ultimate end user of the flights -- the CIA
The US government used the same aircraft – tail number N85VM, owned by Liverpool FC owner Philip Morse -- for over 55 flights to Guantanamo Bay, Kabul, Bangkok, Dubai, Islamabad, Cairo, Baghdad, Djibouti, Rabat, Frankfurt, Ramstein, Rome, Tenerife, the Azores and Bucharest
The plane, a Gulfstream jet, frequently passed through British and Irish airports en route, including Shannon, Glasgow, Edinburgh and London Luton
Richmor executives used disturbing newspeak to describe the prisoners – in Richmor’s phrase, the ‘invitees’ – they were shuttling to torture sites
All rendition flights were covered by a "letter of convenience" from the State Department
The CIA continued to pay millions to cover its its tracks, well after its illegal rendition-to-torture programme was made public.
Long-term dKos readers will recall the days when plane spotters were reporting on mysterious airplane flights and tracking those planes through their tail numbers. Inquiring minds wanted to know what was going on, but such minds were stymied by too little information and an inability to view this as anything but nefarious. (Or CT and therefore, disallowed, by non-inquiring minds.) One fact I gleaned from those reports is that airplane tail numbers cannot be changed.
As covered by The Guardian in How US firms profited from torture flights byIan Cobain and Ben Quinn, the documents Reprieve retrieved were from a court case between “Sportsflight, an aircraft broker, and Richmor, an aircraft operator.” A dispute over money. And therefore, the courthouse doors were wide open to the litigants.
The court heard that in October 2004 the aircraft's tail number was changed, to N227SV, after the US government discovered that its movements were being tracked. The following March the aircraft was publicly linked to the Abu Omar rendition.
Oops. Oops.
As Reprieve points out, the ACLU suit, Mohamed et al. v. Jeppesen Dataplan, Inc., was dismissed by US Federal courts because the Bush and Obama administrations invoked the state secret privilege. From the NY Times
The state secrets privilege allows the government to shut down litigation simply by invoking national security. The privilege was a particular favorite of the Bush administration, which asserted it in dozens of cases, including ones challenging the legality of extraordinary rendition and warrantless surveillance.
(That privilege was created in 1953 in the
United States v. Reynolds. The fact that there were no national security issues in that case and it was a ruse, a successful ruse, to avoid liability in a wrongful death suit remains irrelevant.)
Then there was the money. From The Guardian:
Sportsflight entered into an arrangement to make a Gulfstream IV executive jet available at $4,900 an hour rather than the market rate of $5,450. A crew was available to fly at 12 hours' notice. The government wanted "the cheapest aircraft to fulfil a mission", Sportsflight's owner, Don Moss, told the court. But it was the early days of the rendition programme, and business was booming: the court heard that Sportsflight told Richmor: "The client says we're going to be very, very busy."
About those “invitees.” This is found in the trial transcript.
Q – Who or what was Raymor transporting the the Gulfstream IV aircraft.
A – We were transporting government personnel and their invitees.
Q – In connection with the first six months of the contract
THE COURT: – Invitees?
THE WITNESS: Invitees.
….
Q – And were your services accepted?
A – Oh, yes. We were complimented all the time.
THE COURT: By the invitees for the government, or Mr. Moss?
THE WITNESS: Not the invitees, the government. And Mr. Moss.
These “invitees” would be the hooded and shackled passengers on those flights that “would go anyplace in the world.”
A relevant reprieve from the dirty tricks of the US government (can you guess why it's relevant?):