Romania Base Suspected CIA Prisoner Site

MIHAIL KOGALNICEANU AIR BASE, Romania (AP) -- It always happened at 1 a.m. In a secluded corner of this heavily guarded airfield, two snipers would creep across a rooftop and take their positions. Moments later, just below, a black minibus would arrive and wait.

Three times in 2004, and twice more in 2005, a jet landed and the black bus drove out to meet it. Large, mysterious parcels were exchanged that, according to a Romanian official who says he witnessed it, looked like bundled-up terror suspects.

The official, a high-ranking veteran with inside knowledge of operations at the base, said the planes then left for North Africa with their cargo and two CIA handlers aboard.

His descriptions, told on condition of anonymity to The Associated Press, add to suspicions surrounding Romania's involvement in "extraordinary rendition" - the beyond-the-law transfer of U.S. terror suspects from country to country by the CIA. Human rights advocates say renditions were the agency's way to outsource torture of prisoners to countries where it is permitted practice.

Romania's precise role is a little-reported part of the system that is being slowly revealed, often to the chagrin of U.S. allies. In an embarrassing reversal after years of denial, Britain admitted Thursday that its military outpost on the Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia had twice been used as a refueling stop for the secret transport of terrorism suspects.

The European Commission on Friday accused Poland and Romania of dodging its requests to clarify their involvement. Both countries deny accusations of wrongdoing, including a report by Dick Marty, a Swiss official working for the Council of Europe, the continent's top human rights watchdog, who accused the CIA of running secret prisons in the two countries.

Prisoners typically were shackled and kept naked and in isolation, he alleged, in violation of the European Convention on Human Rights. Such treatment also would run contrary to Romania's own laws and its commitment to human rights, a key condition to the Balkan nation's 2007 accession to the European Union.

According to the Romanian official:

- U.S. pilots routinely filed bogus flight plans - or none at all - and headed to undeclared destinations.

- C-130 Hercules cargo planes and other U.S. military aircraft arriving from Iraq regularly parked in a restricted area just off the runway, where they feigned technical trouble and sat under guard for days at a time - awaiting repairs that never occurred.

- Three buildings on the military portion of the air base were strictly off-limits to Romanians but were frequented and controlled by the Americans.

"It was all set up and simulated to look like normal activity. But believe me, it was very unusual," said the official, who said he needed anonymity to protect himself.

"If you are 50 yards away, you say they are 'parcels,'" he said. "But I think people were on (the plane) and I think they were bundled up." The entire scene was completely out of character with normal aircraft arrivals or standard cargo protocol, he said.

But top Romanian authorities deny the CIA ran so-called "black sites" on their territory. While the official described a pattern of highly unusual flight maneuvers and covert American activities, he says he never saw a prisoner.

Mihail Kogalniceanu Air Base, former presidential security adviser Ioan Talpes said in an interview with the AP, had an arrangement with the CIA that gave the agency the right to use the base as needed.

"There were official arrangements of a secret and confidential nature which gave CIA planes the right to land at Romanian airports," said Talpes, who worked at the time for ex-President Ion Iliescu. "They had actions there that we didn't know about," Talpes said. He said Iliescu signed an agreement guaranteeing that Romania would secure the perimeter and otherwise not interfere.

John Sifton, who conducts independent human rights investigations, said the dates and descriptions of the flights described by the base official match the timing and routes of known CIA rendition flights recorded in Eurocontrol flight databases.

Those included an April 2004 flight from Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, that went out of its way to stop at Mihail Kogalniceanu before heading on to Casablanca, Morocco.

"It was a time when they were moving people around," Sifton told the AP. The Romania stopovers, he added, "look pretty shady to me."

Marty's report concluded that the CIA secretly held al-Qaida operatives, Taliban leaders and other "high-value detainees" in Romania and Poland between 2002 and 2005.

The report, citing unnamed intelligence officials, said five people either authorized or were aware of the Romania operation: Iliescu, Talpes, former Defense Minister Ioan Mircea Pascu, Sergiu Medar, a former head of military intelligence, and current President Traian Basescu. Detainees were subjected "to interrogation techniques tantamount to torture" and underscored "a permissive attitude on the part of the Romanian authorities."

Basescu's office refused to discuss the allegations. "What business do we have with this?" it replied. Pascu called it "a closed subject," and Medar declined a request to be interviewed.

Beyond the midnight flights and the bus, the base official who spoke with the AP said he had questions about what went on aboard larger aircraft from Iraq that arrived at the base and then parked for several days, supposedly awaiting repairs.

"They misinformed. They lied," he said. "It happened many times and there was nothing anyone could do about it."

President Bush and other administration officials have confirmed the existence of the rendition program but have not named the countries involved. They say the U.S. does not engage in torture.

Romanian officials said the U.S. military has invested about $18 million in Mihail Kogalniceanu Airport, including a $4 million perimeter fence, a new hangar and road improvements. Romania has supported and provided troops for the U.S.-led campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Talpes, the former presidential security adviser, said Romanian authorities did not intrude on the U.S. "respected zone" at Mihail Kogalniceanu, used mostly to ferry troops and supplies to Iraq and Afghanistan - because they did not want to make "an unfriendly gesture."

Pressed about whether prisoners were tortured, he said bluntly: "Even if I knew that one of my allies did something, I wouldn't tell you."

CIA chief spokesman Mark Mansfield said the agency had no comment about the black bus scenario, but he defended renditions as both legal and effective.

"They have disrupted potential attacks by taking terrorists off the streets, and they have allowed us, as well as our foreign partners, to gain invaluable intelligence on the terrorists who remain at large," Mansfield said.

Sen. Norica Nicolai, a former prosecutor who led a parliamentary investigation, said her probe found no evidence that the CIA operated a prison or conducted interrogations in Romania.

Nicolai said she was still waiting for Marty to respond to a September request to divulge his sources. "It's in our interests to try to see what happened. We are not a third-world country," she said.

But Cosmin Gusa, a leading opposition lawmaker, said a full accounting was unlikely. "Nobody wants to go deeper," he said. "They don't want to talk about this. This topic is a deadly one."

Secret draft of Iraq war dossier to be revealed

The secret first draft of the notorious Iraq dossier that helped to take Britain to war is expected to be released tomorrow, in a victory for freedom of information campaigners.

The early version written by John Williams, then director of communications at the Foreign Office, has been the subject of a three-year legal wrangle amid hopes that it could reveal whether the supposedly intelligence-led dossier was actually based on a press officer's script - and whether it was subsequently 'sexed up' by Alastair Campbell.

The draft is understood not to contain the infamous claim that Saddam Hussein could launch a strike with 'weapons of mass destruction' within 45 minutes, a claim that was central to the final 'dodgy dossier'.

Yesterday Williams attacked the decision to withhold the document for so long. 'If the government withholds a piece of paper, it immediately makes it significant; it almost doesn't matter what it says,' he argued. 'That's what I said at the time: why are we withholding it?'

A former journalist, who left Whitehall in May, Williams said the row was particularly frustrating as he had never wanted the government to produce a dossier. He had argued, he said, that rather than attempting to prove that Saddam did have weapons of mass destruction, the government should have challenged him to prove he did not: 'I was against the idea of a dossier because I thought it was wrong.'

The Hutton inquiry into the road to war on Iraq identified the existence of an early draft by Williams, but was told by Campbell that it had become 'redundant' when John Scarlett, then chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee linking Downing Street to the security services, took charge of the process. However, an information tribunal last month ruled that the Williams draft should be disclosed. Anti-war campaigners regard it as key evidence of who introduced the most contentious material into the final draft, and whether Scarlett was too heavily influenced by aides with an interest in making a case for war.

Williams said that critics of the war were likely to find significant similarities between his draft and Scarlett's version, but insisted that should not be surprising since both were working with 'the same assumptions, the same policy, with much of the same material'.

David Miliband, the Foreign Secretary, is expected to confirm in a statement to the Commons tomorrow that the government will bow to the information tribunal's ruling, rather than exercising ministerial powers to veto it or challenge it in court. Ministers had argued that the draft should not be disclosed because it jeopardised the confidentiality - and therefore candour - of advice given to them by civil servants.

The release is in response to pressure by Chris Ames, a former charity worker from Surrey, who began pursuing the document early in 2005.

The government will hope that the publication finally draws a line under the sorry saga of the dossier, which led indirectly to the suicide of scientist David Kelly after he was identified as the apparent source of BBC reports that the dossier had been 'overspun' by Campbell.

Jailed preacher faces US extradition

Lawyers for Abu Hamza were scrambling last night to appeal against a formal order by the home secretary for the radical preacher's extradition to the US.
Jacqui Smith signed the order yesterday afternoon, meaning Abu Hamza would be sent to the US to face a possible life sentence on terrorism charges within a month, unless his lawyers appeal within 14 days.

Abu Hamza and his supporters used threats and violence to take over a mosque in Finsbury Park, north London, which they turned into an academy for jihadi terrorism. He is serving a seven-year sentence in Britain for inciting hatred, but the government wants him sent to the US before his jail term is completed.

Abu Hamza's lawyer, Muddassar Arani, told the Guardian her client would appeal within the time limit set down in extradition law: "They've used evidence gained from torture to implicate him in terrorism," she said. She claimed that one person who implicated the preacher had been tortured in a US-run secret prison, and another alleged witness had been tortured in Guantánamo Bay.

Arani said one ground of appeal would be the threat that Abu Hamza would be held in a US supermax prison where he would be denied human contact: "It will be inhuman and degrading treatment, he will be in total isolation, he will have no human contact with anyone." The US alleges Hamza was in contact with Taliban and al-Qaida terrorists and aided the hostage-taking of 16 western tourists in Yemen in December 1998 that ended in the deaths of three Britons. He is also charged with attempting to set up a training camp for "violent jihad" in Oregon in 1999

Media bidding war starts for Guantanamo ex-detainee

SYDNEY (Reuters) - Australian David Hicks, the only Guantanamo Bay detainee convicted of terrorism charges, is at the centre of a worldwide media bidding war for his story, with a possible price tag of A$1 million (US$892,000), local media said.

Hicks, 32, has had 30 offers from television and publishing firms in Australia, the United States and Italy, his lawyer told The Australian newspaper.

Media analysts say Hicks' story could fetch A$1 million, the newspaper said on Friday, but Australian laws preventing people profiting from their crimes may deny Hicks any money.

Hicks' father, Terry, told The Australian that most of the money paid for his son's story would be donated to charity, but that he should keep some to compensate for his six years in prison.

Hicks is currently prevented from talking to the media until a U.S.-gag order expires on March 26.

Hicks, who is now free and living in his hometown of Adelaide, was released from an Australian prison in December after spending over six years behind bars, the majority in solitary confinement in Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.

He was captured in Afghanistan in late 2001 and spent over five years in Guantanamo before becoming the first person to be sentenced under the alternate war crimes tribunals created by President George W. Bush's administration to try non-American captives.

The former kangaroo skinner admitted training with al Qaeda and meeting its leader Osama bin Laden, whom he described as "lovely", according to police evidence given to the court.

935 False Statements Preceded War

WASHINGTON - A study by two nonprofit journalism organizations found that President Bush and top administration officials issued hundreds of false statements about the national security threat from Iraq in the two years following the 2001 terrorist attacks.

The study concluded that the statements "were part of an orchestrated campaign that effectively galvanized public opinion and, in the process, led the nation to war under decidedly false pretenses."

The study was posted Jan. 22 on the Web site of the Center for Public Integrity, which worked with the Fund For Independence in Journalism.

White House spokesman Scott Stanzel did not comment on the merits of the study Tuesday night but reiterated the administration's position that the world community viewed Iraq's leader, Saddam Hussein, as a threat.

"The actions taken in 2003 were based on the collective judgment of intelligence agencies around the world," Stanzel said.

The study counted 935 false statements in the two-year period. It found that in speeches, briefings, interviews and other venues, Bush and administration officials stated unequivocally on at least 532 occasions that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction or was trying to produce or obtain them or had links to al-Qaida or both.

"It is now beyond dispute that Iraq did not possess any weapons of mass destruction or have meaningful ties to al-Qaida," according to Charles Lewis and Mark Reading-Smith of the Fund for Independence in Journalism staff members, writing an overview of the study. "In short, the Bush administration led the nation to war on the basis of erroneous information that it methodically propagated and that culminated in military action against Iraq on March 19, 2003."

Named in the study along with Bush were top officials of the administration during the period studied: Vice President Dick Cheney, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, Secretary of State Colin Powell, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and White House press secretaries Ari Fleischer and Scott McClellan.

Bush led with 259 false statements, 231 about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and 28 about Iraq's links to al-Qaida, the study found. That was second only to Powell's 244 false statements about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and 10 about Iraq and al-Qaida.

The center said the study was based on a database created with public statements over the two years beginning on Sept. 11, 2001, and information from more than 25 government reports, books, articles, speeches and interviews.

"The cumulative effect of these false statements - amplified by thousands of news stories and broadcasts - was massive, with the media coverage creating an almost impenetrable din for several critical months in the run-up to war," the study concluded.

"Some journalists - indeed, even some entire news organizations - have since acknowledged that their coverage during those prewar months was far too deferential and uncritical. These mea culpas notwithstanding, much of the wall-to-wall media coverage provided additional, 'independent' validation of the Bush administration's false statements about Iraq," it said.

Fox News refuses to run pro-Constitution ad

Fox News has refused to air an ad produced by the Center for Constitutional Rights that criticizes the Bush administration for "destroying the Constitution" by the use of renditions, torture, and other tactics. The ad, "Rescue the Constitution," which is narrated by actor Danny Glover.

In an email provided to Media Matters for America by the Center, Fox News account executive Erin Kelly told Owen Henkel, the Center's e-communications manager, that Fox would not run the ad:

Hi Owen --

We cannot approve the spot with it being Danny Glover's opinion that the Bush Administration is destroying the Constitution. If you have documentation that it is indeed being destroyed, we can look at that.

Sorry about that,

Erin

In 2005, Fox refused to run an ad critical of then-Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito Jr., who had been nominated by President Bush to succeed retiring Justice Sandra Day O'Connor.

Gay rumours eclipse Condi’s glory moment

IT SHOULD have been Condoleezza Rice’s finest hour as US secretary of state: at last President George W Bush was hosting a Middle East peace conference that she had been struggling to organise for months.

Yet when Rice’s photograph appeared on the front page of America’s bestselling weekly newspaper last week, it had nothing to do with her peacemaking efforts. She had been dragged into a National Enquirer article headlined “Who’s Gay and Who’s Not”.

The article revived long-standing Washington gossip about Rice’s sexuality and sparked off the usual flurry of internet chatter about her high-profile role in a Republican administration widely regarded as hostile to gays.

It also underlined the increasing friction in American politics between a high-minded media establishment disdainful of bedroom gossip and the no-holds-barred, consumer-driven world of instant internet scandal. A Google search of the words “Condoleezza” and “lesbian” last week yielded 146,000 hits.

Condoleezza Rice returns home empty-handed
Rice was not alone in falling victim to what the US media elite invariably decries as corrupted journalistic standards but what the rest of America seems to regard as the real story in Washington: who is sleeping with whom?

While most leading US newspapers were preoccupied with serious policy issues such as Iraq and illegal immigration, New York tabloids were feasting on startling new details about Rudolph Giuliani, the city’s former mayor, who is alleged to have concealed the cost of the security protection he needed while on secret trysts with his then mistress.

Giuliani dismissed the allegations as a “political hit job” and “dirty trick” that just happened to pop up hours before a key televised debate between Republican presidential candidates. Although it appeared that Giuliani had done nothing illegal, the fuss refocused attention on his colourful private life and may damage his appeal to conservative voters.

Political insiders also noted that the detailed allegations, including documented evidence of the accounts used to hide Giuliani’s potentially embarrassing expenses, were published not by a newspaper but by Politico.com, an increasingly influential website.

The mainstream US media also managed to ignore one of the most read political stories on the internet last week, an account in The Times about a dirty-tricks campaign in South Carolina, including anonymous allegations that Senator Hillary Clinton is having an affair with Huma Abedin, a female member of her campaign staff. Democrat officials dismissed the allegations as an obvious attempt to smear the frontrunning presidential candidate.

The former senator John Edwards, Clinton’s Democratic rival, felt the tabloid lash when the Enquirer claimed he too was having an affair with a campaign aide while his cancer-stricken wife campaigned on his behalf elsewhere. Edwards denounced the story as “false, completely untrue, ridiculous” and said the Enquirer had failed to produce evidence “because it’s made up”.

The steady flow of salacious and often thinly sourced sex-related stories is causing headaches for US newspaper editors, who have been bludgeoned by shrinking circulations and internet competition yet are still clinging to values described by one blogger last week as “snoozy, prissy and haughty”.

The drift towards internet-fuelled sensationalism was deemed to be so serious earlier this year that the Columbia Journalism Review, a bastion of US media elitism, convened a panel of top editors to consider whether the government should step in to subsidise serious newspapers as a valuable public service, along the lines of the BBC.

The Enquirer described its article as “the ultimate guessing game among Hollywood fans - trying to figure out which big-name stars are gay”. The report went on: “According to the buzz among political insiders, it’s an open secret that . . . Rice is gay.”

The piece quoted an unnamed “in-the-know” blogger as saying that during her years as provost of Stanford University in California, Rice was “completely out as a lesbian and it was not a scandal, just a reality”. The paper referred to reports that in 1998 Rice bought a house with a “special friend”, another unmarried woman, a film-maker named Randy Bean.

It was far from the first time that she had been linked to lesbian rumours. In a recent biography of Rice, Glenn Kessler, the Washington Post’s diplomatic correspondent, noted that Bean, described as a “liberal progressive”, was her “closest female friend”. It was Kessler who discovered from a search of property records that Rice and Bean owned a house together.

Rice does not comment on her private life, and she is not an elected official, so her sexuality has never been a campaign issue. But the gay community has long been troubled by her association with conservative Republicans opposed to gay marriage, and with evangelical Christians who regard homosexuality as a sin.

At one point last year Rice was regarded as a possible Republican candidate in the 2008 White House race. Yet most commentators agreed that she was reluctant to run, and a Washington Post columnist concluded that she was “the longest of long shots”, as it indeed turned out.

The columnist Chris Cillizza made no mention of Rice’s sexuality, and it took an internet reader named Anne Roifes to remind the Post that high journalistic standards sometimes miss the point.

“It is widely believed in gay circles that Condi is a lesbian,” Roifes commented. “That could be one reason she will not run.”