Posted on 12/30/2005 2:46:27 PM PST by Perdogg
The US Central Intelligence Agency's (CIA) controversial "rendition" program was launched under US president Bill Clinton, a former US counter-terrorism agent has told a German newspaper.
Michael Scheuer, a 22-year veteran of the CIA who resigned from the agency in 2004, has told 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 adviser Sandy Berger and his terrorism adviser Richard Clark ordered the CIA in the autumn of 1995 to destroy Al Qaeda," Mr Scheuer said.
"We asked the president what we should do with the people we capture. Clinton said 'That's up to you'."
Mr Scheuer, who headed the CIA unit that tracked Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden from 1996 to 1999, says he developed and led the "renditions" program. He says the program includes moving prisoners without due legal process to countries without strict human rights protections.
"In Cairo, people are not treated like they are in Milwaukee," he said. "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'."
He says at the time the CIA did not arrest or imprison anyone itself.
"That was done by the local police or secret services," he said, adding the prisoners were never taken to US soil.
Changes under Bush He says the program changed under Mr Clinton's successor, President George W Bush, after the attacks of September 11, 2001.
He accused Europeans of being hypocritical in criticising the US administration for its anti-terrorism 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 the US does not condone torture.
Whoops!
Can't be true.
Crissy Matthews said it was Bush's fault!
All three in the same sentence. Now if we can get all three in the same cell.
Actually, this was one of the few times they managed to come up with a good idea. But like all things Clintonian, the execution simply didn't pan out.
Expect this to get front-page coverage in the Slimes and the Compost. And expect me to win Powerball on a Friday night while you're at it.
LOL!
Notice the Republicans on the intelligence committee did not stoop to leaking this in order to attack Clinton. On second thought, who knows..would the media have reported it?
I may be out on a limb here, and even prepared to get flamed. But I will postulate that I beleive that NO POTUS, not even Clintoon, would sacrifice bare bones National Security for any reason at all. The risks would be too high, the fallout devestating (politically and in real terms for the US) ... OK, some POTUS's may have been lax in their NS approaches, but I just find it hard to believe that 'spying' on US 'citizens' for national security purposes began only on Jan 21st 2000 (or on Sept 12th 2001)
Ooops .. check that .... Jan 21st 2001
LMAO!!
The scumbag New York Times just can't win. D'oh!
Exactly. Every President has done some sort of 'spying' on real or potential enemies of the state, and would expect every President to do so for national security purposes. This 'all of a sudden' nonesense by the Dims and their shills in the MSM is just a bunch of whining and moaning over something that has kept this republic free and strong for some 230 years
I won't even get into all of the Domestic matters he and his wife perpetrated.
That was my thought as well. I can see some disgruntled GOP staffer calling media outlet after media outlet and getting no one to return his calls becase, after all, it was the second coming of Camelot and no one was interested in anything remotely resembling the truth.
Plus, when you have folks working long, hard hours to downplay the myriad Clinton scandals that DID see the light of day, why would you want to bother with ones you could keep bottled up without much effort?
The Republicans should start dirty street fighting similar to the Democrat attacks. The Democrats are a large street gang group who hit from behind.
How about 900+ FBI files on political adversaries that somehow found their way into the WH, and its subsequent coverup? How about criminally framing non-political career workers in the WH Travel Office for the sole purpose of cronyism?
Nahhhh, no domestic spying here /sarc
Ver-r-r-r-r-y Interesting.
bump for publicity
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