US Fears Backlash Over Terror Flights

WASHINGTON (AP) - The Bush administration is bracing for a diplomatic backlash after conceding it used British territory to transport suspected terrorists on secret rendition flights despite repeated earlier assurances the U.S. had not.

U.S. officials have sought to quell the fallout by apologizing to Britain for what they said was an "administrative error." The admission, however, may reopen a bitter debate between the United States and its allies over how the fight against terrorism should be conducted and compromise future cooperation.

"Mistakes were made in the reporting of the information," said Gordon Johndroe, National Security Council spokesman for President Bush. Johndroe insisted that cooperation between the U.S. and Britain would not be affected.

But as a sign of its concern, the State Department sent its top lawyer, John Bellinger, to London on Thursday on a two-day mission. Bellinger will try to defuse what many expect will be widespread anger that the U.S., when asked in 2004, incorrectly assured its closest ally that neither British soil nor airspace had been used in moving suspected terrorists, officials said.

The CIA used a U.S. military airstrip on the British territory of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean to refuel planes carrying two suspects in 2002. That fact was not uncovered until a "self-generated" review by the CIA in late 2007 after persistent media reports, the department said.

"We regret that there was an error in initially providing inaccurate information to a good friend and ally," State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said. "Unfortunately, even with the best intentions, unfortunately, even with the most rigorous searches and unfortunately with good technology, sometimes administrative errors occur and this was the case."

He took pains to note that the United States had not violated any obligation it had toward Britain in using Diego Garcia for the flights at the time they occurred. Not until 2003 did the two countries start to work out a "final mutual understanding" that now requires the U.S. to seek and get British permission to use the base for renditions, he said.

Still, the disclosure risks replaying the debate over tactics that came to light in 2005 with the revelation that the CIA had operated secret prisons to interrogate prisoners. Until Thursday, the administration had managed to diminish down the furor through intensive diplomacy.

The British government appears to have accepted the "administrative error" explanation. But London has made it clear that it wanted to review logs related to U.S. operations at Diego Garcia.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown said he "shared the disappointment that everybody has" about the use of Diego Garcia for the refueling stops and that it was important to ensure it would not happen again.

McCormack said he was not aware of any other countries seeking explanations through diplomatic channels. But State Department officials said U.S. diplomats are prepared to answer questions from foreign governments about the situation.

Governments that ask will be told roughly what CIA Director Michael Hayden acknowledged Thursday: that two rendition flights carrying suspected terrorists did refuel at a U.S. naval base on Diego Garcia, despite what the agency had earlier maintained.

Hayden said in a message to CIA staff that the information previously given to the British "turned out to be wrong."

"The refueling, conducted more than five years ago, lasted just a short time," he said. "But it happened. That we found this mistake ourselves, and that we brought it to the attention of the British government, in no way changes or excuses the reality that we were in the wrong."

Hayden said neither man was tortured. He denied there has ever been a holding facility for CIA prisoners on Diego Garcia. Both men remained on their respective planes during the brief stops, according to a U.S. intelligence official who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter.

One of the two prisoners is now jailed at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base and the other was released to his home country, where he has since been freed, the official said. Neither man was part of the CIA's interrogation and detention program, according to the official, who said the CIA only moved them from one country to another through Diego Garcia.

Rights groups demanded a full accounting of the CIA's rendition program, under which suspects are transported from one country to another, usually in secrecy, without the benefit of open legal proceedings.

"It's high time the agency is held accountable," said Julia Hall of Human Rights Watch. She also sought an investigation into the British role in the program. "The U.S. flew hundreds of flights across Europe so the only way to have full accountability is for (Britain) to launch a thorough, national investigation."

Hayden delivered the news to the British government last weekend on a previously scheduled trip to London. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice spoke to British Foreign Secretary David Miliband on Wednesday and was told he would announce the discovery in Parliament.

Amid the uproar over the detention program, Rice told reporters in December 2005 that the United States respects the sovereignty of foreign countries when conducting intelligence operations within their borders, suggesting the CIA conducts rendition flights with the permission of the governments involved.

But Rice sidestepped a specific question about the role of Britain in such flights in an interview on Dec. 6, 2005, with British television.

"We have obligations under our international conventions and we are respecting the sovereignty of our allies," she told Sky News. "We are not using the airspace or the airports of any of our partners for activities that would lead renditions to torture. We don't send people to be tortured."

What a crock! Bush and his cronies have just played midwife to the birth of a Mohammedan terror state in the middle of the Balkanbs s and have pledged hundreds of billions of our dollars to make sure those terrorists can wipe out the Serbs, destroy Orthodox Monasteries and assure the creation of a terrorist Greater Albania and now they claim they are worried because a bunch of British limp wrists are whining?

Is it too much to ask that secret missions be secret, and that CIA not conduct its business on the front pages of the New York Times?

He took pains to note that the United States had not violated any obligation it had toward Britain in using Diego Garcia for the flights at the time they occurred.

So what's the beef? There is no beef, just another opportunity to discuss classified operations in public, without a single solitary soul being prosecuted for exposing wartime operations.

Surely someone in counterintel must have figured out that this is the way things are done now. If you use spy-craft to pass information to the enemy, you may get caught, it might take 20 years for anyone to notice you've gone over to the enemy, this is CIA we're talking about, not the sharpest tools in the shed. But you may eventually get caught and spend the rest of your life in jail.

Or, you can let the newspaper do the work for you, they print it on page one, your handlers in Tehran read it with their morning coffee, and you get to live your double life right out in the open. If Aldrich Ames had been half as smart as he thought he was, he'd be retired and working as an international affairs consultant on the OBama campaign now, instead of doing life behind bars.

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