Security Checks for CIA Rendition Flights--or Let's Hope TSA Doesn't Get Serious

A new European Parliament report has again brought CIA rendition flights into the headlines and I started to blog about how some private contractors, including a Boeing subsidiary, Blackwater and some smaller airline charter companies that have been involved in the business of transporting terrorist suspects to CIA "black sites" or secret prisons, but instead I decided it would be more interesting to provide a glimpse into the security procedures the CIA uses for rendition flights. A similar report issued last June by the Council on Europe pieced together how detainees are prepared for the flights.  Warning:  this is not for the squeamish:

The “security check” used by the CIA to prepare a detainee for transport on a rendition plane was described to us by one source in the American intelligence community as a “twenty-minute takeout”." His explanation was that within a very short space of time, a detainee is transformed into a state of almost total immobility and sensory deprivation. “The CIA can do three of these guys in an hour. In twenty minutes they’re good to go.”  An investigating officer for the Swedish Ombudsman was struck by the “fast and efficient procedure” used by the American agents, while the Swedish interpreter who witnessed the CIA operation at Bromma Airport said simply: “it surprised me how the heck they could have dressed him so fast”. The general characteristics of this “security check” can be established from a host of testimonies as follows:

i. it generally takes place in a small room (a locker room, a police reception area) at the airport,or at a transit facility nearby.

ii. the man is sometimes already blindfolded when the operation begins, or will be blindfolded quickly and remain so throughout most of the operation.

iii. four to six CIA agents perform the operation in a highly-disciplined, consistent fashion – they are dressed in black (either civilian clothes or special 'uniforms'), wearing black gloves, with their full faces covered. Testimonies speak, variously, of “big people in black balaclavas", people “dressed in black like ninjas”, or people wearing “ordinary clothes, but hooded”.

iv. the CIA agents “don’t utter a word when they communicate with one another”, using only hand signals or simply knowing their roles implicitly.

v. some men speak of being punched or shoved by the agents at the beginning of the operation in a rough or brutal fashion; others talked about being gripped firmly from several sides

vi. the man’s hands and feet are shackled.

vii. the man has all his clothes (including his underwear) cut from his body using knives or scissors in a careful, methodical fashion; an eye-witness described how “someone was taking these clothes and feeling every part, you know, as if there was something inside the clothes, and then putting them in a bag”.

viii. the man is subjected to a full-body cavity search, which also entails a close examination of his hair, ears, mouth and lips.

ix. the man is photographed with a flash camera, including when he is nearly or totally naked; in some instances, the man's blindfold may be removed for the purpose of a photograph in which his face is also identifiable.

x. some accounts speak of a foreign object being forcibly inserted into the man's anus; some accounts speak more specifically of a tranquiliser or suppository being administered per rectum - in each description this practice has been perceived as a grossly violating act that affronts the man’s dignity.

xi. the man is then dressed in a nappy or incontinence pad and a loose-fittingjump-suit" or set of overalls; “they put diapers on him and then there is some handling with these handcuffs and foot chains, because first they put them on and then they are supposed to put him in overalls, so then they have to alternately unlock and relock them”.

xii. the man has his ears muffled, sometimes being made to wear a pair of headphones

xiii. finally a cloth bag is placed over the man's head, with no holes through which to breathe or detect light; they “put a blindfold on him and after that a hood that apparently reaches far down on his body”.

xiv. the man is typically forced aboard a waiting aeroplane, where he may be “placed on a stretcher, shackled”, or strapped to a mattress or seat, or “laid down on the floor of the plane and they bind him up in a very uncomfortable position that makes him hurt from moving”.

xv. in some cases the man is drugged and experiences little or nothing of the actual rendition flight; in other cases, factors such as the pain of the shackles or the refusal to drink water or use the toilet make the flight unbearable: “this was the hardest moment in my life”.

xvi. in most cases, the man has no notion of where he is going, nor the fate that awaits him upon arrival.

So the rendition team might behave like Austin Powers, living it up in between flights, but when it comes time to do their job, they're highly professional.

Comments

[Retired]

Note to Abraxas: Is there a business opportunity in teaching renderee processing and handling procedures to space aliens? Or vice versa? The anal probe fixation of both kidnap teams would seem to indicate some common interests, here.

[Genghis]

Good one.

But true Abraxan style would be to go to the space alien's mess hall, recruit away their rendition team for more money, then lease the little gray men back to the aliens to do the same job with a huge markup.