[Dialogue] Boeing: Accused of Running Torture Travel Agency

Sat Dec 2 20:29:01 EST 2006

AlterNet

Boeing: Accused of Running Torture Travel Agency

By Rick Anderson, Seattle Weekly
Posted on December 2, 2006, Printed on December 2, 2006
http://www.alternet.org/story/44965/

Since 2003, human-rights investigators and news media reports have described
a Boeing Business Jet as one of the most-dreaded planes in the Central
Intelligence Agency's clandestine air force. The modified 737 -- a model
rolled out in Renton in 2001 -- was built for executive fun and comfort. But
it is alleged to be the flagship of the CIA's "extreme rendition" squadron,
ferrying suspected terrorists to secret agency prisons or countries where
the U.S. is said to outsource torture.

The use of this jet, with a 6,000-mile flying range and plush customized
cabin, has until now been Boeing's only connection to the prison airlifts.
But a British author and an ex-prisoner's attorney say that records
uncovered by Spanish investigators show Boeing has a more direct role --
planning and organizing the flights through a unit of its Seattle commercial
airplane division.

Boeing won't confirm or deny the claim. But the Spanish documents, and an
investigation by Amnesty International and the Council of Europe, indicate
Boeing was making arrangements for as many as 1,000 rendition flights
through 14 countries by four CIA planes, including that notorious Boeing
Business Jet.

"Travel agent for the CIA seems the right words," Stephen Grey says of
Boeing's role. A British author, he has written about prisoner rendition and
the CIA's global torture program in his new book, Ghost Plane, in which he
has documented about 90 rendition flights. 

The Bush administration has acknowledged transfers of Al Qaeda suspects to
Guantánamo Bay but has denied the U.S. engages in torture-transfer flights.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said in 2005 that the United States
"does not use the airspace or the airports of any county" for such purposes.
Senate Democrats, who take control in January, are promising a full
investigation.

According to Grey and others, a wholly owned Boeing subsidiary called
Jeppesen Inc. cleared the airways and runways for the CIA, providing landing
and navigation assistance, scheduling flight crews, and booking hotels for
them. Jeppesen is a unit of Boeing's Seattle-based Commercial Aviation
Division.

The cargo of prisoners includes many who say they were tortured and others
who claim to have been mistakenly abducted and abused. One detainee, Khaled
el-Masri, a German of Lebanese decent who is suing the CIA and aviation
companies under the Alien Tort Statute for alleged Fifth Amendment (due
process) violations, says he now plans to add Boeing to his lawsuit.

Masri "was injected with a drug and chained to the floor of the plane," says
his attorney, Ben Wizner of the New York ACLU. "I don't think anybody would
hold Boeing responsible for manufacturing the plane. However, the emergence
of [Boeing's flight-assistance role] changes all that."

The prisoner flights, launched by the Clinton administration to transfer
foreign suspects to trial in the United States, became a darker undertaking
following 9/11. George W. Bush approved what critics say amounts to the
kidnapping of foreign nationals, some flown to countries such as Morocco or
Egypt, known for abusive interrogation techniques. Others were taken to a
system of CIA prisons in Afghanistan and Europe, or the U.S. compound in
Guantánamo, rights groups say.

In his book, Grey cites documents showing Boeing made travel arrangements
for the CIA flights. He does not specifically name Boeing, but in a phone
conversation last week with Seattle Weekly, Grey confirmed that Spanish
government documents he obtained name Jeppesen's International Trip Planning
unit as rendition flights planner.

Boeing bought the Denver-based company, then called Jeppesen Sanderson, in
2000 for $1.5 billion from the (Chicago) Tribune Co., whose mixed portfolio
includes the Los Angeles Times and the Chicago Cubs. John Hayhurst, then a
Boeing vice president here, hailed Jeppesen as "another enduring global
brand" for Boeing's business roster. Boeing later bought two related
companies and expanded the Jeppesen unit, offering electronic mapping and
navigation services to airline, general aviation, and government customers
along with flight and trip planning.

Spain's largest newspaper, El Pais, last year reported that Jeppesen was
named the CIA's flight arranger in investigative documents compiled by
Spanish police. More recently, The New Yorker magazine noted the connection,
reporting "it is not widely known that the [CIA] has turned to a division of
Boeing, the publicly traded blue-chip behemoth, to handle many of the
logistical and navigational details for these [rendition] trips."

On its Web site, Boeing boasts: "From Aachen to Zhengzhou, King Airs to
747s, Jeppesen has done it all."

But what, exactly, has it done? How deep is Boeing's involvement in the
rendition flights? The company won't specifically say. From Chicago
headquarters, Boeing spokesperson Tim Neale points out that flight planning
is done for "thousands and thousands of customers each year. It's done on a
confidential basis, and unless a customer authorizes us to comment, we
can't."

He adds: "Jeppesen's flight planning process is to provide the route that is
going to be followed, how much fuel is needed on board, where they will
stop, and how many people will be on board, for weight reasons.

"We don't necessarily know very much about the purpose of a flight because
that information isn't necessary to create a flight plan. What somebody's
going to do when they get off is not part of that plan."

It's not publicly known how much Boeing, the nation's No. 2 defense
contractor, earned from the flights. The CIA, a stand-alone agency, does not
reveal its contracts and agency work can be billed through other government
departments, including the Pentagon. Jeppesen has done $7.7 million in
defense contracting since Boeing bought it in 2000, based on a review of
Pentagon records. 

Grey says he plans to soon post on the Internet "assorted aviation documents
including Jeppesen planning data" that confirm Boeing's role (Update: Grey
posted the flight logs recently at www.ghostplane.net
<http://www.ghostplane.net/> .). The documents include, he says, a 2004
Boeing-arranged flight on the Boeing jet from Morocco through Spain and on
to Afghanistan, which coincides with the Masri case.

Masri was mistaken as an Al Qaeda suspect and arrested by Macedonia
officials on New Year's Eve 2003. In a Virginia federal lawsuit filed
against ex-CIA Director George Tenet and others, Masri says he was "forcibly
abducted" in Macedonia and handed over to U.S. officials. He was beaten,
drugged, and eventually flown to a CIA prison in Afghanistan, he says. Five
months after his abduction, the suit notes, "Mr. El-Masri was deposited at
night, without explanation, on a hill in Albania" -- and that was two months
after U.S. officials realized they made a mistake, the suit says.

The lawsuit was thrown out earlier this year, not because it lacked merit
but because it could lead to disclosure of state secrets, a federal judge
ruled. Masri is appealing and Wizner, his attorney, was scheduled to make
his arguments this week before a Virginia appeals court.

"Obviously," says Wizner, "before we can add Boeing to the suit, we have to
get it reinstated. It's a real hurdle -- the CIA is, in effect, claiming
immunity, that they're never liable in such cases." He's buoyed by three
federal court rulings in recent months that rejected similar
government-secrets argument -- all of them cases involving challenges to
warrantless eavesdropping authorized by President Bush.

"If the el-Masri suit can continue, we would try to develop evidence that
people within Jeppesen were aware that detainees were being subjected to
human rights abuses on these flights," Wizner says. "If we can show that,
Boeing should by all rights be a defendant." 

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