[CitizensTruth] CIA continues renditions under Obama orders

[Jay Becker]

www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-renditions_31jan31,0,2998929.story
chicagotribune.com
Obama lets CIA keep controversial renditions tool
By Greg Miller
Washington Bureau
 January 31, 2009




 


 
 

 
 

 







 







 
WASHINGTON — The CIA's secret prisons are being shuttered. Harsh
interrogation techniques are off-limits. And Guantanamo Bay will
eventually go back to being a wind-swept naval base on the southeastern
corner of Cuba.



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



Under
executive orders issued by Obama last week, the CIA still has authority
to carry out what are known as renditions, or the secret abductions and
transfers of prisoners to countries that cooperate with the U.S.



Current
and former U.S. intelligence officials said the rendition program is
poised to 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 became a source
of embarrassment for the CIA, and a target of 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
subsidiary of Boeing Corp., which is accused of working with the agency
on dozens of rendition flights.



But the Obama administration
appears to have determined that the rendition program was one component
of the Bush administration's war on terrorism that it could not afford
to discard.



The decision underscores the fact 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 legal reasoning
behind the decision. "The legal advisers working on this looked at
rendition. It is controversial in some circles and kicked up a big
storm in Europe. But if done within certain parameters, it is an
acceptable practice."



One provision in one of Obama's orders
appears to preserve the CIA's ability to detain and interrogate
terrorism suspects as long as they are not held long-term. The
little-noticed provision 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."



Obama's decision to
preserve the program did not draw major protests, even among
human-rights groups. Leaders of such organizations said that reflects a
sense, even among advocates, that the United States 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."



In his executive order on
lawful interrogations, Obama created a task force to re-examine
renditions to make sure that they "do not result in the transfer of
individuals to other nations to face torture" or otherwise circumvent
human-rights laws and treaties.



gpmiller at tribune.com





Copyright © 2009, Chicago Tribune

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