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Clinton started rendition plan { December 30 2005 } Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,17689086%255E2703,00.htmlhttp://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,17689086%255E2703,00.html
Clinton 'set up rendition plan'
December 30, 2005
BERLIN: The CIA's controversial "rendition" program to capture suspects and have them interrogated on foreign soil was launched under former US president Bill Clinton, a former US counter-terrorism agent says.
Michael Scheuer, a 22-year veteran of the CIA who resigned from the agency last year, told the German news weekly Die Zeit the US government had been looking in the mid-1990s for a way to combat the threat of terrorism and circumvent the 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-Qa'ida," 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-Qa'ida leader Osama bin Laden from 1996 to 1999, said he developed and led the "rendition" program, which included moving prisoners without due legal process to countries without human rights protections.
"In Cairo, people are not treated like they are in Milwaukee," he said. "The Clinton administration asked us if we believed the prisoners were being treated in accordance with local law. And we answered, 'Yes, we're fairly sure'."
At the time, Mr Scheuer said, the CIA did not arrest or imprison anyone itself.
"That was done by the local police or secret services," he said, adding that the captured prisoners were never taken to US soil. "President Clinton did not want that."
He said the program changed under Mr Clinton's successor, President George W. Bush, after the attacks of September 11, 2001.
"We started putting people in our own institutions -- in Afghanistan, Iraq and Guantanamo," he said. "The Bush administration wanted to capture people itself, but made the same mistake as the Clinton administration by not treating these people as prisoners of war."
He accused Europeans of being hypocritical in criticising the US for its anti-terror 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."
The Bush administration's policy of rendition -- seizing terror suspects in other countries and flying them to the US or other countries without extradition procedures -- has prompted an outcry in Europe.
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice defended the renditions program as a "vital tool" for fighting international terrorism, and offered the most comprehensive defence yet of US policy on the interrogation of terror suspects.
"Very often these are not plots that are heading for the United States, they are headed for places in Europe," Dr Rice said.
"Some governments choose to co-operate ... in intelligence, law-enforcement and military matters. That co-operation is a two-way street. We share intelligence that has helped protect European countries from attack, helping save European lives."
AFP
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