This Is Unacceptable
Now, all our regular readers know that I stand 100% behind the Constitution. I believe in maintaining the freedoms and rights enumerated within it. However, after reviewing this wonderful story from the NY Times today, I had a moment of pause. Why? Because the NY Times did what not other paper—that I can recall—has done yet in the GWOT: They revealed a clandestine operation directly related to the war.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/31/national/31planes.html?ex=1275192000&en=6007accb4801296c&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss
As we all know, there are terrorists that are captured by our forces, and others in their own countries. When we would like to interrogate them, or have them interrogated, we utilize the resources we possess. That, of course, comes from operatives that work in the shadows. Marcie may cover the troops—stands up, yells, shouts, and curses those that persecute them—but I get this field. Not because I am extremely knowledgeable, which, in some ways I am, compared to the average American, but because my research into the subjects of espionage and intelligence are wide and varied. The subject has always grabbed my attention. And, I have a personal connection to it, as well.
But what the NY Times printed today could be construed as borderline sedition. I’m not going to cite the entire piece. It takes up three pages on MS Word, and is over 2600 words long. If you want to read it in it’s entirety—and urge our readers to do so—the link is below. Make your own decision, but after reading twice, I’m pretty convinced that this was designed to do damge to the CIA, and overall, it tells a new tale to our enemies abroad. (TY NY Times Editors: We have unzipped our fly, once again, thanks to your ilk)
SMITHFIELD, N.C. - The airplanes of Aero Contractors Ltd. take off from Johnston County Airport here, then disappear over the scrub pines and fields of tobacco and sweet potatoes. Nothing about the sleepy Southern setting hints of foreign intrigue. Nothing gives away the fact that Aero's pilots are the discreet bus drivers of the battle against terrorism, routinely sent on secret missions to Baghdad, Cairo, Tashkent and Kabul.
When the Central Intelligence Agency wants to grab a suspected member of Al Qaeda overseas and deliver him to interrogators in another country, an Aero Contractors plane often does the job. If agency experts need to fly overseas in a hurry after the capture of a prized prisoner, a plane will depart Johnston County and stop at Dulles Airport outside Washington to pick up the C.I.A. team on the way.
Aero Contractors' planes dropped C.I.A. paramilitary officers into Afghanistan in 2001; carried an American team to Karachi, Pakistan, right after the United States Consulate there was bombed in 2002; and flew from Libya to Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, the day before an American-held prisoner said he was questioned by Libyan intelligence agents last year, according to flight data and other records.
While posing as a private charter outfit - "aircraft rental with pilot" is the listing in Dun and Bradstreet - Aero Contractors is in fact a major domestic hub of the Central Intelligence Agency's secret air service. The company was founded in 1979 by a legendary C.I.A. officer and chief pilot for Air America, the agency's Vietnam-era air company, and it appears to be controlled by the agency, according to former employees.
The planes, regularly supplemented by private charters, are operated by real companies controlled by or tied to the agency, including Aero Contractors and two Florida companies, Pegasus Technologies and Tepper Aviation.
The civilian planes can go places American military craft would not be welcome. They sometimes allow the agency to circumvent reporting requirements most countries impose on flights operated by other governments. But the cover can fail, as when two Austrian fighter jets were scrambled on Jan. 21, 2003, to intercept a C.I.A. Hercules transport plane, equipped with military communications, on its way from Germany to Azerbaijan.
Some of the C.I.A. planes have been used for carrying out renditions, the legal term for the agency's practice of seizing terrorism suspects in one foreign country and delivering them to be detained in another, including countries that routinely engage in torture. The resulting controversy has breached the secrecy of the agency's flights in the last two years, as plane-spotting hobbyists, activists and journalists in a dozen countries have tracked the mysterious planes' movements.
Is there seriously a problem with this. Who cares where these animals are being taken? I don’t. But then again, I guess I have a higher "intestinal fortitude" than those on the Left do. Get what you can from these people, and lock them away.
They have no rights. I don’t advocate torture, per se, but I do advocate using any and all means to gain information from these people. They’re not just going to start singing like canaries. Some measures are needed, and I don’t care if it’s the CIA or Mossad doing the interrogating. Memo to the Left: We’re at war with an enemy that has zero compunction about doing illicitly evil deeds to meet their goals, i.e., 11 September 2001.
The authorities in Italy and Sweden have opened investigations into the C.I.A.'s alleged role in the seizure of suspects in those countries who were then flown to Egypt for interrogation. According to Dr. Georg Nolte, a law professor at the University of Munich, under international law, nations are obligated to investigate any substantiated human rights violations committed on their territory or using their airspace.
International law doesn’t apply in this war towards these terrorists. These people don’t even have the basic protections under the Geneva Convention for a prisoner of war. And honestly, where does beheading fall into the "fair treatment" of a prisoner. Someone might want to ask Zarqawi about that one. I’m pretty sure that beheading was a no-no. So, quite honestly, Italy and Sweden can stick their inquiries where the sun doesn’t shine. Italy’s already on my s**t list for un-redacting the Sgrena Report, and putting all those names out in the open.
A C.I.A. spokeswoman declined to comment for this article. Representatives of Aero Contractors, Tepper Aviation and Pegasus Technologies, which operate the agency planes, said they could not discuss their clients' identities. "We've been doing business with the government for a long time, and one of the reasons is, we don't talk about it," said Robert W. Blowers, Aero's assistant manager.
Smart lady; she saved her job. There will be an internal investigation over this; I guarantee it. The reason they have lasted as long as they have is because of the necessity of secrecy. The last thing we’re going to broadcast is when and where we’re picking these people up. I’m sure the MSM would love to have that information; they’d splash it across the front pages. Oh wait, the Times just did, in a way. They ran a story acknowledging the existence of this sort of an operation. Thanks for tipping our enemies off.
Most of the shell companies that are the planes' nominal owners hold permits to land at American military bases worldwide, a clue to their global mission. Flight records show that at least 11 of the aircraft have landed at Camp Peary, the Virginia base where the C.I.A. operates its training facility, known as "the Farm." Several planes have also made regular trips to Guantánamo.
But the facility that turns up most often in records of the 26 planes is little Johnston County Airport, which mainly serves private pilots and a few local corporations. At one end of the 5,500-foot runway are the modest airport offices, a flight school and fuel tanks. At the other end are the hangars and offices of Aero Contractors, down a tree-lined driveway named for Charlie Day, an airplane mechanic who earned a reputation as an engine magician working on secret operations in Laos during the Vietnam War.
Again with revealing information about this operation! I’m pretty ticked at this point. It’s not bad enough that it’s in the open, but thus far the Times has given away plenty about this. Honestly, I don’t want to see our enemies conducting any sort of raid on an airport when they put two-and-two together, and connect the departure of one of their leaders to the Gulfstream V that just landed at Baghdad International airport. Our enemy may be a bit on the desperate side, but they’re not stupid.
Aero appears to be the direct descendant of Air America, a C.I.A.-operated air "proprietary," as agency-controlled companies are called.
Just three years after the big Asian air company was closed in 1976, one of its chief pilots, Jim Rhyne, was asked to open a new air company, according to a former Aero Contractors employee whose account is supported by corporate records.
"Jim is one of the great untold stories of heroic work for the U.S. government," said Bill Leary, a professor emeritus of history at the University of Georgia who has written about the C.I.A.'s air operations. Mr. Rhyne had a prosthetic leg - he had lost one leg to enemy antiaircraft fire in Laos - that was blamed for his death in a 2001 crash while testing a friend's new plane at Johnston County Airport.
Mr. Rhyne had chosen the rural airfield in part because it was handy to Fort Bragg and many Special Forces veterans, and in part because it had no tower from which Aero's operations could be spied on, a former pilot said.
Now we get the guy who is the brains behind the operation, and where his company operates from. Nothing like the Times painting a big red target on your base of operations, and on your head as the leader of the operation.
Aero's planes were sent to Fort Bragg to pick up Special Forces operatives for practice runs in the Uwharrie National Forest in North Carolina, dropping supplies or attempting emergency "exfiltrations" of agents, often at night, the former pilot said. He described flying with $50,000 in cash strapped to his legs to buy fuel and working under pseudonyms that changed from job to job.
He does not recall anyone using the word "rendition." "We used to call them 'snatches,' " he said, recalling half a dozen cases. Sometimes the goal was to take a suspect from one country to another. At other times, the C.I.A. team rescued allies, including five men believed to have been marked by Muammar el-Qaddafi, the Libyan leader, for assassination.
When Saddam Hussein was captured in Iraq the evening of Dec. 13, 2003, a Gulfstream V executive jet was already en route from Dulles Airport in Washington. It was joined in Baghdad the next day by the Boeing Business Jet, also flying from Washington.
OK. No offense, but if the Times can connect the dots, so can our enemies. And if that’s the case, then someone is flapping their yaps a bit too much. This hole had better be plugged. The lives of the people participating in these operations are now at risk. And maybe this is why I entertained the idea of treason this afternoon against the times. We’re at war, and the NY Times is running a story like this, which gives plenty of details into this operation.
The above isn’t the whole story. Follow the link, and read it for yourself. I know enough about the intelligence field to know that this report that the Times ran is one of two things. It is either true—wouldn’t surprise me as this will only cause commotion on the Hill—or it is patently false, and is meant to be so from the CIA itself. I’m not a conspiracy nut, and based on the research I’ve done on this story alone, it smells like it’s authentic.
The reality of this being revealed is shocking to me; as I stated above, I’m unaware of any MSM source that has done this before. It has always been supposition. That’s not the case with the Times’ reporting of this. There are allusions to "circumstantial" evidence, but they are reporting this as true and authentic. If this is true—and I’m 99.9% sure it is—then this goes beyond "egregious". It goes to treasonous. And I don’t use that word loosely.
Can anyone imagine if the Times had run an expose like this about the lead-up to Normandy? How about our campaigns in the Pacific. The MSM has been nothing if not a detriment to our war efforts. And it’s time it should come to a close. Between trumped-up charges and media-driven scandals, it’s hard for the average Americans to discern what should really grab their attention. I’m not saying America is stupid, but for those that still trust the likes of CBS and CNN, there has to be a question as to what is real, and what ends up being simply trumped-up for reaction, and discarded soon after the accusations are issued.
Publius II
Now, all our regular readers know that I stand 100% behind the Constitution. I believe in maintaining the freedoms and rights enumerated within it. However, after reviewing this wonderful story from the NY Times today, I had a moment of pause. Why? Because the NY Times did what not other paper—that I can recall—has done yet in the GWOT: They revealed a clandestine operation directly related to the war.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/31/national/31planes.html?ex=1275192000&en=6007accb4801296c&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss
As we all know, there are terrorists that are captured by our forces, and others in their own countries. When we would like to interrogate them, or have them interrogated, we utilize the resources we possess. That, of course, comes from operatives that work in the shadows. Marcie may cover the troops—stands up, yells, shouts, and curses those that persecute them—but I get this field. Not because I am extremely knowledgeable, which, in some ways I am, compared to the average American, but because my research into the subjects of espionage and intelligence are wide and varied. The subject has always grabbed my attention. And, I have a personal connection to it, as well.
But what the NY Times printed today could be construed as borderline sedition. I’m not going to cite the entire piece. It takes up three pages on MS Word, and is over 2600 words long. If you want to read it in it’s entirety—and urge our readers to do so—the link is below. Make your own decision, but after reading twice, I’m pretty convinced that this was designed to do damge to the CIA, and overall, it tells a new tale to our enemies abroad. (TY NY Times Editors: We have unzipped our fly, once again, thanks to your ilk)
SMITHFIELD, N.C. - The airplanes of Aero Contractors Ltd. take off from Johnston County Airport here, then disappear over the scrub pines and fields of tobacco and sweet potatoes. Nothing about the sleepy Southern setting hints of foreign intrigue. Nothing gives away the fact that Aero's pilots are the discreet bus drivers of the battle against terrorism, routinely sent on secret missions to Baghdad, Cairo, Tashkent and Kabul.
When the Central Intelligence Agency wants to grab a suspected member of Al Qaeda overseas and deliver him to interrogators in another country, an Aero Contractors plane often does the job. If agency experts need to fly overseas in a hurry after the capture of a prized prisoner, a plane will depart Johnston County and stop at Dulles Airport outside Washington to pick up the C.I.A. team on the way.
Aero Contractors' planes dropped C.I.A. paramilitary officers into Afghanistan in 2001; carried an American team to Karachi, Pakistan, right after the United States Consulate there was bombed in 2002; and flew from Libya to Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, the day before an American-held prisoner said he was questioned by Libyan intelligence agents last year, according to flight data and other records.
While posing as a private charter outfit - "aircraft rental with pilot" is the listing in Dun and Bradstreet - Aero Contractors is in fact a major domestic hub of the Central Intelligence Agency's secret air service. The company was founded in 1979 by a legendary C.I.A. officer and chief pilot for Air America, the agency's Vietnam-era air company, and it appears to be controlled by the agency, according to former employees.
The planes, regularly supplemented by private charters, are operated by real companies controlled by or tied to the agency, including Aero Contractors and two Florida companies, Pegasus Technologies and Tepper Aviation.
The civilian planes can go places American military craft would not be welcome. They sometimes allow the agency to circumvent reporting requirements most countries impose on flights operated by other governments. But the cover can fail, as when two Austrian fighter jets were scrambled on Jan. 21, 2003, to intercept a C.I.A. Hercules transport plane, equipped with military communications, on its way from Germany to Azerbaijan.
Some of the C.I.A. planes have been used for carrying out renditions, the legal term for the agency's practice of seizing terrorism suspects in one foreign country and delivering them to be detained in another, including countries that routinely engage in torture. The resulting controversy has breached the secrecy of the agency's flights in the last two years, as plane-spotting hobbyists, activists and journalists in a dozen countries have tracked the mysterious planes' movements.
Is there seriously a problem with this. Who cares where these animals are being taken? I don’t. But then again, I guess I have a higher "intestinal fortitude" than those on the Left do. Get what you can from these people, and lock them away.
They have no rights. I don’t advocate torture, per se, but I do advocate using any and all means to gain information from these people. They’re not just going to start singing like canaries. Some measures are needed, and I don’t care if it’s the CIA or Mossad doing the interrogating. Memo to the Left: We’re at war with an enemy that has zero compunction about doing illicitly evil deeds to meet their goals, i.e., 11 September 2001.
The authorities in Italy and Sweden have opened investigations into the C.I.A.'s alleged role in the seizure of suspects in those countries who were then flown to Egypt for interrogation. According to Dr. Georg Nolte, a law professor at the University of Munich, under international law, nations are obligated to investigate any substantiated human rights violations committed on their territory or using their airspace.
International law doesn’t apply in this war towards these terrorists. These people don’t even have the basic protections under the Geneva Convention for a prisoner of war. And honestly, where does beheading fall into the "fair treatment" of a prisoner. Someone might want to ask Zarqawi about that one. I’m pretty sure that beheading was a no-no. So, quite honestly, Italy and Sweden can stick their inquiries where the sun doesn’t shine. Italy’s already on my s**t list for un-redacting the Sgrena Report, and putting all those names out in the open.
A C.I.A. spokeswoman declined to comment for this article. Representatives of Aero Contractors, Tepper Aviation and Pegasus Technologies, which operate the agency planes, said they could not discuss their clients' identities. "We've been doing business with the government for a long time, and one of the reasons is, we don't talk about it," said Robert W. Blowers, Aero's assistant manager.
Smart lady; she saved her job. There will be an internal investigation over this; I guarantee it. The reason they have lasted as long as they have is because of the necessity of secrecy. The last thing we’re going to broadcast is when and where we’re picking these people up. I’m sure the MSM would love to have that information; they’d splash it across the front pages. Oh wait, the Times just did, in a way. They ran a story acknowledging the existence of this sort of an operation. Thanks for tipping our enemies off.
Most of the shell companies that are the planes' nominal owners hold permits to land at American military bases worldwide, a clue to their global mission. Flight records show that at least 11 of the aircraft have landed at Camp Peary, the Virginia base where the C.I.A. operates its training facility, known as "the Farm." Several planes have also made regular trips to Guantánamo.
But the facility that turns up most often in records of the 26 planes is little Johnston County Airport, which mainly serves private pilots and a few local corporations. At one end of the 5,500-foot runway are the modest airport offices, a flight school and fuel tanks. At the other end are the hangars and offices of Aero Contractors, down a tree-lined driveway named for Charlie Day, an airplane mechanic who earned a reputation as an engine magician working on secret operations in Laos during the Vietnam War.
Again with revealing information about this operation! I’m pretty ticked at this point. It’s not bad enough that it’s in the open, but thus far the Times has given away plenty about this. Honestly, I don’t want to see our enemies conducting any sort of raid on an airport when they put two-and-two together, and connect the departure of one of their leaders to the Gulfstream V that just landed at Baghdad International airport. Our enemy may be a bit on the desperate side, but they’re not stupid.
Aero appears to be the direct descendant of Air America, a C.I.A.-operated air "proprietary," as agency-controlled companies are called.
Just three years after the big Asian air company was closed in 1976, one of its chief pilots, Jim Rhyne, was asked to open a new air company, according to a former Aero Contractors employee whose account is supported by corporate records.
"Jim is one of the great untold stories of heroic work for the U.S. government," said Bill Leary, a professor emeritus of history at the University of Georgia who has written about the C.I.A.'s air operations. Mr. Rhyne had a prosthetic leg - he had lost one leg to enemy antiaircraft fire in Laos - that was blamed for his death in a 2001 crash while testing a friend's new plane at Johnston County Airport.
Mr. Rhyne had chosen the rural airfield in part because it was handy to Fort Bragg and many Special Forces veterans, and in part because it had no tower from which Aero's operations could be spied on, a former pilot said.
Now we get the guy who is the brains behind the operation, and where his company operates from. Nothing like the Times painting a big red target on your base of operations, and on your head as the leader of the operation.
Aero's planes were sent to Fort Bragg to pick up Special Forces operatives for practice runs in the Uwharrie National Forest in North Carolina, dropping supplies or attempting emergency "exfiltrations" of agents, often at night, the former pilot said. He described flying with $50,000 in cash strapped to his legs to buy fuel and working under pseudonyms that changed from job to job.
He does not recall anyone using the word "rendition." "We used to call them 'snatches,' " he said, recalling half a dozen cases. Sometimes the goal was to take a suspect from one country to another. At other times, the C.I.A. team rescued allies, including five men believed to have been marked by Muammar el-Qaddafi, the Libyan leader, for assassination.
When Saddam Hussein was captured in Iraq the evening of Dec. 13, 2003, a Gulfstream V executive jet was already en route from Dulles Airport in Washington. It was joined in Baghdad the next day by the Boeing Business Jet, also flying from Washington.
OK. No offense, but if the Times can connect the dots, so can our enemies. And if that’s the case, then someone is flapping their yaps a bit too much. This hole had better be plugged. The lives of the people participating in these operations are now at risk. And maybe this is why I entertained the idea of treason this afternoon against the times. We’re at war, and the NY Times is running a story like this, which gives plenty of details into this operation.
The above isn’t the whole story. Follow the link, and read it for yourself. I know enough about the intelligence field to know that this report that the Times ran is one of two things. It is either true—wouldn’t surprise me as this will only cause commotion on the Hill—or it is patently false, and is meant to be so from the CIA itself. I’m not a conspiracy nut, and based on the research I’ve done on this story alone, it smells like it’s authentic.
The reality of this being revealed is shocking to me; as I stated above, I’m unaware of any MSM source that has done this before. It has always been supposition. That’s not the case with the Times’ reporting of this. There are allusions to "circumstantial" evidence, but they are reporting this as true and authentic. If this is true—and I’m 99.9% sure it is—then this goes beyond "egregious". It goes to treasonous. And I don’t use that word loosely.
Can anyone imagine if the Times had run an expose like this about the lead-up to Normandy? How about our campaigns in the Pacific. The MSM has been nothing if not a detriment to our war efforts. And it’s time it should come to a close. Between trumped-up charges and media-driven scandals, it’s hard for the average Americans to discern what should really grab their attention. I’m not saying America is stupid, but for those that still trust the likes of CBS and CNN, there has to be a question as to what is real, and what ends up being simply trumped-up for reaction, and discarded soon after the accusations are issued.
Publius II
posted by Syd And Vaughn | 6:56 PM
3 Comments:
Very interesting.
Amen, Publius! Loose lips sinks ships!
Jen,
It goes beyond that. It goes to completely undermining a clandestine operation that our country is conducting during warfare.
Middle,
It is quite interesting, to say the least. The more interewsting thing would be to ask who yapped their flaps at this newspaper, and to silence that leak.
We are at war. When 9/11 happened Thomas said he knew we would be using the best of the best in the Special Operation and Intelligence fields to fight this war. These men and women cannot do thier jobs if the press is constantly on their backs, and knowing every move they make.
If they know, they will print it. This has been evident for quite some time.
CNN was on the beaches, with cameras and lights, exposing our landing troops to Aidid in Somalia. Geraldo showed where our troops were in Kuwait in a live broadcast. The NY Times and LA Times have had innumerable offenses in revealing what our troops are doing, include this recent SNAFU by the NY Times.
It is unacceptable for the press to be doing this, and despite their protections under the First Amendment, there must be a line drawn to prevent such foolishness on the part of the partisan press.
Marcie
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