Renditions still allowed by Obama

iVillage Member
Registered: 02-19-2008
Renditions still allowed by Obama
3
Mon, 02-02-2009 - 7:00pm

I guess this is change we can believe in. It turns out rendition isn't really a bad thing.

http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/world/stories/DN-renditions_01int.ART.State.Edition2.4c55e62.html#

Renditions still allowed under new Obama directive

Greg Miller, Los Angeles Times

WASHINGTON – The CIA's secret prisons are being shuttered. Harsh interrogation techniques are off-limits. And Guantánamo Bay will eventually go back to being a wind-swept naval base in southeastern Cuba.


FILE 2007/The Associated Press
Abu Omar (showing a scar) is one of the people who have accused the CIA of rendition, a practice that may get an expanded role. He alleged he was abducted by the CIA.

But even while dismantling these discredited programs, President Barack Obama left an equally controversial counterterrorism tool intact.

Under executive orders he issued last week, the CIA still has authority to carry out what are known as "renditions" – secret abductions and transfers of prisoners to countries that cooperate with the United States.

Current and former U.S. intelligence officials said that the rendition program may play an expanded role because it is the main remaining mechanism – aside from Predator missile strikes – for taking suspected terrorists off the street.

The rendition program embarrassed the CIA and earned international scorn as details emerged in recent years of botched captures, mistaken identities and allegations that prisoners were turned over to countries where they were tortured.

The European Parliament condemned renditions as "an illegal instrument used by the United States." Prisoners swept up in the program have sued the CIA as well as a Boeing Corp. subsidiary that's accused of working with the agency on dozens of rendition flights.

Obama's decision underscores that the battle with al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups is far from over and that even if the U.S. is shutting down the prisons, it is not done taking prisoners.

"Obviously you need to preserve some tools. You still have to go after the bad guys," said an Obama administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity when discussing the legal reasoning.

A provision in one of Obama's orders states that the instructions to close the CIA's secret prison sites "do not refer to facilities used only to hold people on a short-term, transitory basis." The prohibition against using most other counterterrorism tools could prompt intelligence officers to resort more frequently to the "transitory" technique.

Obama's decision to preserve rendition has not drawn major protests, even among human rights groups. Leaders of such organizations said that reflects a sense that the U.S. and other nations need certain tools to combat terrorism.

"Under limited circumstances, there is a legitimate place" for renditions, said Tom Malinowski, the Washington advocacy director for Human Rights Watch. "What I heard loud and clear from the president's order was that they want to design a system that doesn't result in people being sent to foreign dungeons to be tortured."

Malinowski said he has urged the Obama administration to require that prisoners be transferred to other countries only when there is a guarantee they will get a public hearing in an official court.

CIA veterans involved in the rendition program said that it was used mainly for terrorism suspects not valuable enough for the agency itself to keep and that the program was of limited use in gathering intelligence.

"The reason we did interrogations is because renditions for the most part weren't very productive," said a former senior CIA official who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the subject.

The most valuable intelligence on al-Qaeda came from prisoners who were in CIA custody and questioned by agency experts, the official said. Once prisoners were turned over to other countries, such as Egypt or Jordan, the agency had limited ability to influence how much intelligence was shared, how prisoners were treated and whether they were later released.

iVillage Member
Registered: 01-04-2009
Mon, 02-02-2009 - 8:47pm

That may be in violation of his own executive order, so I think we'll have to follow further developments.

 

iVillage Member
Registered: 01-22-2009
Mon, 02-02-2009 - 9:15pm

Andrew Sullivan:


For some reason, many people on the right and a few within the CIA feel the need to minimize the difference between Obama and Bush on the terror war. And so we are greeted with whoops and hollers because the Obama administration will return

iVillage Member
Registered: 01-22-2009
Mon, 02-02-2009 - 9:21pm

As an aside, "rendition" isn't just stuff like what was happening before, nabbing people and shipping them off for torture and imprisonment, etc..