Nov. 2, 2005 — The CIA has operated a secret prison system where more than 100 terror suspects have been locked up since Sept. 11.
The so-called "black sites" — which were so covert that only a handful of government officials even knew about them until today — operated over the past four years in eight different countries, including Thailand, Afghanistan and several Eastern European states, according to a story first reported today in The Washington Post.
Former officials say that of the 100 suspected terrorists sent into this secret prison system, 30 are considered major al Qaeda operatives.
Sources say some of the prisoners include Abu Zabaida, who was the head of Osama bin Laden's operations network, and Ramzi Binalshibh, a key planner in the 9/11 attacks. Both men were captured in Pakistan and taken to a black site in Thailand, then later moved to another location.
Think back to 9/11. Setting all of the rhetoric and finger-pointing aside, what really led to the disastorous events of that day? If you're honest with yourself you will say that a lack of good intelligence from the middle-east led to the events of that day. And why didn't we have any good intelligence? Because we weren't paying attention. We weren't taking Osama bin Laden and extremists like him seriously.
But now we are. Now we have our intelligence agents over in the middle east keeping tabs on these scum bags. We've even got a network of covert agents and bases dedicated to detaining these monsters and extracting information from them. And, of course, secrecy is key. Because without secrecy what good is the intelligence we get?
If our agents detain Abu and get some good information from him about a terror cell in San Diego how long do you think that information is going to be good if all of Abu's friends know he was taken to the "black" prison system and interrogated by the CIA?
Not very good, obviously.
Frankly, I find it heartening that our intelligence agencies are out there working hard to get the information that keeps us safe.