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| Europe |
| Scheuer sez rendition began under Clinton administration |
| 2006-02-15 |
| 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. US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice defended renditions on a trip to Europe this month as a "vital tool" for fighting international terrorism but insisted that Washington does not condone torture. |
| Posted by:Dan Darling |
| #7 riiiight. Bush could raise the net worth of every American 10% and the MSM would scream about how the poor got screwed, What pisses me off is that traitors are no longer prosecuted. Al Gore and someone at the NYT should be in the slammer. Bush is letting this get out of control. |
| Posted by: Nimble Spemble 2006-02-15 17:32 |
| #6 If we had a rendition program under GWB, and nothing else, that wouldnt have troubled anyone but the eurucommies. The use of borderline interrogation techniques in Gitmo, the extension of those techniques to Iraq, the occasional use of techniques that seem to have gone well beyond the borderline techniques = well one thing feeds the perception of another thing. Thats what pisses me off - they took things so far that they messed up some things that didnt need to be messed up. (kinda like Hilary messed up healthcare reform by taking it too far, when the Cooper plan probably could have passed) |
| Posted by: liberalhawk 2006-02-15 17:22 |
| #5 most of the left doesn't dispute that clinton did it too They don't. What matters to them is that it's happening NOW, on GWB's watch. Somehow, the exact same program has more ominous and far-reaching ramifications when Republicans are in charge. |
| Posted by: Bomb-a-rama 2006-02-15 14:26 |
| #4 actually, this has probably been going on in one form or another since WWI most of the left doesn't dispute that clinton did it too |
| Posted by: mhw 2006-02-15 12:14 |
| #3 anything Scheuer says should be taken with appropriate salt. |
| Posted by: liberalhawk 2006-02-15 12:04 |
| #2 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. But it's an "issue" now because it's GWB doing it! Clintoon is the past! (sound familiar?) |
| Posted by: Bomb-a-rama 2006-02-15 09:31 |
| #1 Bet the leaks began from those in the Clinton Administration, too. |
| Posted by: Danielle 2006-02-15 09:15 |