The circumstances of yesterday's conviction in absentia of 23 CIA agents by an Italian court for the extraordinary rendition of Abu Omar, who was disappeared from Milan, were strange to me. The U.S. usually only uses rendition when the host country is either unfriendly or can't be seen cooperating with the U.S., and Italy is neither. Furthermore, five "high-ranking Italians" charged in the case were given immunity for reasons of "national security."
Peter Bergen reported on the extraordinary rendition of Abu Omar for Mother Jones in April of last year, and his reporting confirms my suspicion that the Italian government had been told in advance of the abduction:
[Milan CIA Station Chief] Robert Lady, who speaks fluent Italian and had good relations with his local counterparts, emerges from this tale as something of a tragic figure. He had opposed the snatch of Abu Omar on the grounds that it was counterproductive; he knew that Italy's counterterrorism police had been trying to build a case against the Egyptian militant and had even warned a top Italian counterterrorism official, Stefano D'Ambrosio, that the CIA was planning the Abu Omar operation. D'Ambrosio told Italian investigators that Lady considered the whole scheme "stupid." But Lady was forced to lead the operation by his bosses in Rome and Langley, who were under intense pressure from the White House to produce results in the war on terrorism. Lady told Pironi that he'd never have spent all his savings to buy a retirement house in the Italian countryside "unless he had been sure that no inquiry against him was under way."
Bergen's piece is also important for putting in context what extraordinary rendition, which began during the Clinton administration and increased during the Bush administration, is and is not supposed to do. For example, it's not for the purpose of getting intelligence:
The extraordinary rendition program was not primarily intended to yield information, according to Michael Scheuer, the CIA official whom the Clinton White House tasked with implementing it. "It came from an improvisation to dismantle these terrorist cells overseas. We wanted to get suspects off the streets and grab their papers," Scheuer explains. "The interrogation part wasn't important." He also claims that the program was overseen by congressional committees and "was lawyered to death." After 9/11, "The White House was desperate," Scheuer says. The rendition program quickly expanded because holding any but the most important Al Qaeda prisoners was a "burdensome proposition" for the Agency.
There's one word here that sticks out to me: "suspects." These people hadn't necessarily committed any crimes, and the government didn't even believe they had valuable intelligence information, but the U.S. sent them to countries to be tortured because dealing with them ourselves was a "burdensome proposition." The government simply suspected that these people were dangerous, and the Bush administration was desperate for "results" in the war on terror, even to the point of committing crimes in friendly countries.
The Obama administration claims to have ended the practice of "extraordinary rendition", or the deliberate rendering of suspects to countries where they will be tortured. The Department of Justice says they have developed better procedures for getting "assurances" from foreign countries that the individuals the U.S. renders to them will not be tortured--an experienced FBI interrogator in Bergen's piece said that "assurances" given during the Bush administration were "worthless."
Back in August, White House counterterrorism official John Brennan suggested that the Obama administration might be utilizing rendition more as a result of the administration's attempts to avoid instituting a preventive detention regime for the "hard cases" at Guantanamo.
-- A. Serwer
