Slowly the pieces are starting to come together. Where to next?
It seems that ordinary Americans are involved (some unwittingly?) in the extraordinary rendition of terrorism suspects, and this is occurring in various places in America, including - most surprisingly to me, being in Boston - Dedham, MA, as well as Smithfield, NC.
More below the fold...
Alternet has an
informative, yet disturbing, article/interview with the authors of
"Torture Taxi: On the Trail of the CIA's Rendition Flights" by Trevor Paglen and AC Thompson.
Here are two excerpts from the Alternet article:
"When U.S. civilian airplanes were spotted in late 2002 taking trips to and from Andrews Air Force Base, and making stops in Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay, journalists and plane-spotters wondered what was going on. It soon became clear that these planes were part of the largest covert operation since the Cold War era. Called extraordinary rendition, the practice involves CIA officials or contractors kidnapping people and sending them to secret prisons around the world where they are held and often tortured, either at the hands of the host-country's government or by CIA personnel themselves."
"From family lawyers who bolster the shell companies, to an entire town in Smithfield, N.C., that hosts CIA planes and pilots, Torture Taxi is the story of the broad reach of extraordinary rendition, and, as Hannah Arendt coined the phrase, the banality of evil."
This is amazing...and frightening. I knew from the moment I got that chill down my spine earlier this year that things in this country were going to get ugly fast. Yet it appears that ordinary Americans (and when I say "ordinary Americans," I mean non-politicians) are collaborating to unearth the reality of BushCo's plan for this country. According to Paglen and Thompson, "when the plane-spotter community and journalists came together, it became one of the few ways to see the outlines of this [rendition] program."
Front companies are being created to enable the transport of terrorism suspects via US civilian aircraft to dungeons throughout the world. Thompson outlines one case of a company called Premier Executive Transport Services:
"We found Colleen Bornt who was an exec at a company called Premier Executive Transport Services. Premier was the company that owned the plane that took Khaled el-Masri to the Salt Pit. When you go look at the paper documents that Colleen signed, you find that every one of her signatures looks completely different. That's because each one was made by a different person. When we started looking for more traces of Colleen there was no home address, no phone number, nor any other proof that she's existed at all... That's the same with all these companies. They don't have real headquarters, staff or anything besides these paper documents they filed to incorporate and a handful of lawyers who helped set these companies up and serve as the registered agents for them."
And the lawyers for these front companies - who are they? Thompson replies,
"These are family lawyers in suburban Massachusetts and Reno, Nevada. People in our communities are doing dirty work for the CIA. This is not just people being snatched up from one faraway country and taken to a country that's even farther away."
As for the legality of such practices,
"As far as I can tell, it's 100% illegal under the business and professions codes in any state. I don't think that it would be legal anywhere. I also don't think that it's legal in any state for a lawyer to set up a phony business for people who they know don't exist. It's also likely at odds with the ethics provisions of most state bar organizations for lawyers. Strictly speaking, I don't think any of these things are legal."
Paglen and Thompson went many places across the country researching this phenomenon (for lack of a better term), and one such place was Smithfield, NC. When asking questions of the locals, Thompson says,
"What you start to figure out by spending time in Smithfield is that a lot of people know about the company and have at least an inkling of what goes on at the airport. Most don't want to talk about it and don't take a critical view of it. Folks we met there framed the debate within this religious discourse. The activists that we talked to were god-fearing devout Christians who felt like this was not what they signed up for as religious people, that it violates the religious tenets they adhere to. Interestingly, folks on the other side of the debate seem to be coming from a similar place, but just coming to a different conclusion. The subject of whether or not torture was permitted by the Bible was discussed in church there--and many congregants believed it was."
Paglen adds,
"It's this small town with this open secret that nobody wants to talk about. It shows what's going on culturally. When a country starts doing things like torturing and disappearing people, it's not just a policy question, it's also a cultural question."
Around this time last year, the NYT published an article entitled "Navy Secretly Contracted Jets Used by CIA." The article is apparently no longer on the NYT website, but a copy can be obtained at TruthOut.
Why aren't things like this being covered more in the MSM? I'm also curious as to where in the NYT paper edition the article above appeared -- probably way below the fold.
A person close to me has said that I have nothing to worry about, since these are terrorism suspects. I mentioned that the worse case scenario would be that BushCo eventually use this "program" on US citizens who don't support the Party. My friend replied, "In that case, he'd need to arrest half the country." I didn't have a response at the time (I was also very tired), but when I think of it now, I think that this is just practice for BushCo. This is just the tip of the iceberg. If we don't wake up en masse and stop this madness, eventually -- one by one, perhaps -- we'll get a knock on our door at 2 in the morning. And at such a time "I told you so" won't feel so good. By then it will be too late.