Posted on 11/02/2005 11:07:47 AM PST by NormsRevenge
NEW YORK - The CIA has been hiding and interrogating some of its most important al-Qaida captives at a Soviet-era compound in Eastern Europe, according to U.S. and foreign officials familiar with the arrangement, the Washington Post reported.
The secret facility is part of a covert prison system set up by the CIA nearly four years ago that at various times has included sites in eight countries, including Thailand, Afghanistan and several democracies in Eastern Europe, as well as a small center at the Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba, according to current and former intelligence officials and diplomats from three continents, the paper said Tuesday on its Web site.
The hidden global internment network is a central element in the CIA's unconventional war on terrorism, the Post said. It depends on the cooperation of foreign intelligence services, and on keeping even basic information about the system secret from the public, foreign officials and nearly all members of Congress charged with overseeing the CIA's covert actions.
The existence and locations of the facilities — referred to as "black sites" in classified White House, CIA, Justice Department and congressional documents — are known to only a handful of officials in the United States and, usually, only to the president and a few top intelligence officers in each host country, it said.
The CIA and the White House, citing national security concerns and the value of the program, have dissuaded Congress from demanding that the agency answer questions in open testimony about the conditions under which captives are held. Virtually nothing is known about who is kept in the facilities, what interrogation methods are employed with them, or how decisions are made about whether they should be detained or for how long.
While the Defense Department has produced volumes of public reports and testimony about its detention practices and rules after the abuse scandals at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison and at Guantanamo Bay, the CIA has not even acknowledged the existence of its black sites. To do so, officials familiar with the program told the Post, could open the U.S. government to legal challenges, particularly in foreign courts, and increase the risk of political condemnation at home and abroad.
But the revelations of widespread prisoner abuse in Afghanistan and Iraq by the U.S. military — which operates under published rules and transparent oversight of Congress — have increased concern among lawmakers, foreign governments and human rights groups about the opaque CIA system. Those concerns escalated last month, when Vice President Cheney and CIA Director Porter J. Goss asked Congress to exempt CIA employees from legislation already endorsed by 90 senators that would bar cruel and degrading treatment of any prisoner in U.S. custody.
Although the CIA will not acknowledge details of its system, intelligence officials defend the agency's approach, arguing that the successful defense of the country requires that the agency be empowered to hold and interrogate suspected terrorists for as long as necessary and without restrictions imposed by the U.S. legal system or even by the military tribunals established for prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay.
The Washington Post said it is not publishing the names of the Eastern European countries involved in the covert program, at the request of senior U.S. officials. They argued that the disclosure might disrupt counterterrorism efforts in those countries and elsewhere and could make them targets of possible terrorist retaliation.
The secret detention system was conceived in the chaotic and anxious first months after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, when the working assumption was that a second strike was imminent.
Since then, the arrangement has been increasingly debated within the CIA, where considerable concern lingers about the legality, morality and practicality of holding even unrepentant terrorists in such isolation and secrecy, perhaps for the duration of their lives. Mid-level and senior CIA officers began arguing two years ago that the system was unsustainable and diverted the agency from its unique espionage mission, the Post said.
1) Who leaked this classified information?
2) Why would this be considered bad news?
The media love affair with the CIA (Valerie Plame) is over?
What morons leaked this and are now having their security clearances revoked pending further action?
Good, and I hope they are serving them bacon every morning...with panties on their heads....
Scooter Libby leaked this information as well.
...and the problem is???...
The Today Show jumped all over this story this morning. They opened the show by displaying one of the Abu Ghraib photos in such a way as to make it look it was taken at one of the secret CIA prisons. For more:
http://newsbusters.org/node/2635
I'm asking the same thing. I think the Senate needs to go into a closed-door session over this...
Widespread? I don't think so.
My first reaction to this article was "Good. We are actually fighting this war."
However, after reading the whole thing, I suspect that this will be spun as a repentant CIA wanting to end this "injustice" but Bush won't let them.
Was this supposed to be bad news? Its not.
Are we shocked that with the bright lights on Gitmo, the CIA would go elsewhere to hold prisoners? No.
Is this another attempt by the Defeatist media to stir the pot and get Americans killed? You can bet on it.
It wouldn't surprise me if people in the CIA itself leaked this information to further harass the Bush Administration. DC is full of Valerie Plames.
To which I say, big whoop. Like there's something wrong with that?
is the secret prison the same place karl rove keeps his weather machine?
So, the CIA has a few 'secrets' eh? For news that ranks right up there with 'Scientists discover Sun to be very hot'.
DoD should have control of these prisoners, there are forces within the CIA that will leak like crazy to undermine the US on this.
"according to U.S. and foreign officials familiar with the arrangement, the Washington Post reported. "
I demand a Special Prosecutor be appointed to investigate this serious breach of National Security.
The USA will not be a paper tiger. HeHe.
People are often baffled to hear this...
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.