Renditions Started on Clinton's Watch

Oops - George W. Bush didn't start the renditions program that has got most of the German media working themselves up into a frothing frenzy over the decline of American democracy: it started on Bill Clinton's watch!

CIA prisoner 'rendition' program began under Clinton: ex-agent 

The CIA's controversial "rendition" program to have terror suspects captured and questioned on foreign soil was launched under US president Bill Clinton, a former US counterterrorism agent told a German newspaper.

Michael Scheuer, a 22-year veteran of the CIA who resigned from the agency in 2004, told Thursday's issue of the newsweekly Die Zeit that the US administration had been looking in the mid-1990s for a way to combat the terrorist threat and circumvent the cumbersome US legal system.

"President Clinton, his national security advisor Sandy Berger and his terrorism advisor Richard Clark ordered the CIA in the autumn of 1995 to destroy Al-Qaeda," Scheuer said, in comments published in German.

"We asked the president what we should do with the people we capture. Clinton said 'That's up to you'."

Scheuer, who headed the CIA unit that tracked Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden from 1996 to 1999, said that he developed and led the "renditions" program, which he said included moving prisoners without due legal process to countries without strict human rights protections.

"In Cairo, people are not treated like they are in Milwaukee. The Clinton administration asked us if we believed that the prisoners were being treated in accordance with local law. And we answered, yes, we're fairly sure."

At the time, he said, the CIA did not arrest or imprison anyone itself.

"That was done by the local police or secret services," he said, adding that the prisoners were never taken to US soil. "President Clinton did not want that."

He said the program changed under Clinton's successor, President George W. Bush, after the attacks of September 11, 2001.

"We started putting people in our own institutions -- in Afghanistan, Iraq and Guantanamo. The Bush administration wanted to capture people itself but made the same mistake as the Clinton administration by not treating these people as prisoners of war."

He accused Europeans of being hypocritical in criticizing the US administration for its anti-terror tactics while benefiting from them.

"All the information we received from interrogations and documents, everything that had to do with Spain, Italy, Germany, France, England was passed on," he said. (emphasis added)

(If you have a basic knowledge of German, read the highly interesting full interview in the weekly "ZEIT")

It is a safe bet that the whole hysteria over renditions will quickly subside now that the cuddle boy of the German media, Bill Clinton, has been named as the program's inventor...

Can we please move on to the Bush administration's next monumental scandal: eavesdropping on international calls of terrorist suspects without warrants? Such horrible things for sure didn't happen under Clinton's reign!

Except...

Comments

[Anondson]

So, technically, prisoners became better treated under Bush than under Clinton. Treated according to U.S. interrogation techniques compared to Moroccan or Egyptian secret police techniques. The U.S. could cease this new policy and return to the good ol' days of Clintonian terrorist treatment, surely then the excitable Mr. Sullivan would be pleased.

I wonder what Richard Clark has to say.

No wonder Hillary has had so little to say on the subject matter.

[Gabi]

Michael Scheuer said: "Die CIA hat ja das Recht, jedes Gesetz zu brechen, nur nicht amerikanisches – wie jeder Geheimdienst."

The headline of the article in ZEIT »Die CIA hat das Recht, jedes Gesetz zu brechen« is very misleading!

[Pamela]

Herr Scheuer, in my opinion, has an agenda. I just wish I knew what it was. He wrote a book, "Imperial Hubris" as 'anonymous' after he left the CIA. It was a slam against Bush policy. That in and of itself is ok - except it spilled a few beans - and the CIA somehow vetted it. So, I'm not saying I disbelieve this account, just that I'm not willing to take it at face value on his say so. Especially the part about Berger and Clark. I'm not so sure they had the authority to order the CIA to cross the street for a cup of coffee.

But there is something interesting here that. The Sandy Berger connection. German readers may not know that when he was preparing his testimony for the 9/11 commission, he stole classified papers from the National Archives. He was proscecuted and got a slap on the wrist. Quite a few people find that astonishing. No one outside the justice department knows what documents he took - and the Nat'l Archives people I guess.

However, the speculation is that they refer to Able Danger. That's the data mining project that the 9/11 Commission pooh-poohed as 'not historically significant' (rhetorical question: is it required that one be a moron in order to achieve public office?). Well, Able Danger was apparently part of that whole NSA telecomm spying operation.

I need my morning coffee. Badly.

[LC Mamapajamas]

Pamela, I'd be suspicious of Michael Scheuer as well, except that the fact that the rendition program began under Clinton has been known for some time now. Someone else has been talking about it for more than a year.

I was astounded when this story broke and everyone was acting all shocked and disbelieving that the US would actually do something so uncivilized because the anti-war people have been griping about rendition for more than a year now. This recent leak was just the first time it was given from a source better than rumor. The fact that rendition was originated by the Clinton Administration was almost immediately pointed out.

Frankly, I thought it was the best idea Clinton ever had.

[Pamela]

LC Mama:
>>except that the fact that the rendition program began under Clinton has been known for some time now. Someone else has been talking about it for more than a year.

Oh absolutely. I didn't make that clear in my post, because, as I noted, I was caffeine-free. Not a good thing.

No. The point I (ineptly) wanted to emphasize is that Scheuer's contention that Richard Clark and Sandy Berger gave such orders to the CIA doesn't pass my smell test.

Clark was a counter-terrorism policy advisor with the NSC and Berger was the head of that agency. But the CIA doesn't report to the NSC. I'm not sure who headed up the CIA at the time Scheuer alleges these orders came down.

Non-American readers may not be aware of just what LC Mamapajamas is referring to when she talks about the anti-war people bitching about rendition. For well over a year, there have been unsubstantiated rumors that for years the U.S. has been handing people over to Egypt and Jordan specifically where they will be tortured for information. That has been given play in the U.S. media on and off but there was nothing to substantiate the allegations. However, I don't think the anti-Bush, anti-war people were clear that it began with Clinton. I think they got some partial leaks and made of them what they would.

And I'm beginning to think the CIA is a fifth column.

[grlzjustwant2havefun]

It is, Pamela. They're trying to take down a sitting president.

I don't care whether the pres is dem or pubbie, we can't have that.

And MSNBC reports the gov is going to investigate the NSA leak.

They've had it, good.

[Doug]

There's an easy fix for the hypocritical appearance of benefitting from "dirty" interrogation; stipulate that you don't want any information whose retreival doesn't conform to standards X, Y, and Z. If dozens of your citizens are mutilated and slaughtered in a cloud of heat, force, and shrapnel, you can sleep soundly with a clear conscience knowing that no one was treated poorly in an effort to prevent it on your behalf.

@Pamela -
rhetorical question: is it required that one be a moron in order to achieve public office?

Not required, but I think it can be beneficial depending on the manner and degree of moronitude. If you are a moron in a way that resonates with a significant number of voters, it certainly seems to help. See also: Schroeder, Gerhard

[Scout]

Actually, resonating with voters isn't even a requirement. Let's take Der Brandenburger Tor as an example, otherwise known as Manfred Stolpe. As head of gov't in Brandenburg, he squandered untold millions of taxpayer DM to build unnecessary capital-destroying projects (for example, an Airship Factory), and having failed there, he was promoted to Minister of Transportation where he oversaw the Toll Collect fiasco, losing once again untold millions in road use fees, whilst pouring more money into industry to fix a problem that didn't exist in the first place until he created it, and all because of flawed contracts and flawed leadership. I swear, the man has the reverse-Midas touch. And no one elected him to be Transportation Minister.
Just one of many examples of how Red-Green did so well running this country.

[FranzisM]

This rogue agent wallows in secretiveness over how many cases of renditions of European Muslims there have been, while he tries to convince us that the CIA (which he explains is denied its "autonomy" by the "cowardly" Bush administration) was a better friend of Germany than the White House. Ouch. Der Bescheuerte Micha seems to think that Angela Merkel hated Bush so much that she would grant the CIA the moral high ground after the CIA vomited at her feet and the media blamed it on Bush... a fifth columnist indeed.