Obama preserves renditions as counter-terrorism tool
With the closing of Gitmo, harsh techniques off the table and the CIA secret prisons shuttered, Obama still needs to be able to question Al-qaeda terrorist, how will he do it? Simple, rendition.
Under executive orders issued by Obama recently, the CIA still has authority to carry out what are known as renditions, secret abductions and transfers of prisoners to countries that cooperate with the United States.
Current and former U.S. intelligence officials said that the rendition program might be poised to play an expanded role going forward because it was the main remaining mechanism—aside from Predator missile strikes—for taking suspected terrorists off the street.
This is bad. Aside from the hypocrisy, rendition does not deliver the needed information.
“The reason we did interrogations [ourselves] is because renditions for the most part weren’t very productive,” said a former senior CIA official who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the subject.
The most valuable intelligence on Al Qaeda came from prisoners who were in CIA custody and questioned by agency experts, the official said. Once prisoners were turned over to Egypt, Jordan or elsewhere, the agency had limited influence over how much intelligence was shared, how prisoners were treated and whether they were later released.
“In some ways, [rendition] is the worst option,” the former official said. “If they are in U.S. hands, you have a lot of checks and balances, medics and lawyers. Once you turn them over to another service, you lose control.”
In his defense, Obama created a task force to reexamine renditions to make sure that they “do not result in the transfer of individuals to other nations to face torture,” or otherwise circumvent human rights laws and treaties.
That sounds good, but has not always worked in the past.
Defenders of the rendition program point out that it has been an effective tool since the early 1990s and was often used to bring terrorism suspects to courts in the United States. Among them was Ramzi Ahmed Yousef, who was captured in Pakistan and was convicted of helping orchestrate the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.
What do you think?
