Ghost Plane: The True Story of the CIA Torture Program

by Stephen Grey

Book Overview

On June 10th, 2002, Attorney General John Ashcroft announced that the US had captured a known terrorist who was exploring a plan to explode a "dirty bomb" on American soil. That alleged terrorist was... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0312360231
• ISBN13: 9780312360238
• Release Date: October 2006
• Publisher: St. Martin's Press
• Length: 372 Pages
• Weight: 1.55 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.2" x 6.4" x 9.5"

Customer Reviews

The best account of a counter-productive and immoral policy

Stephen Grey, a former editor of the Sunday Times’ Insight investigation team, broke many of the news stories about the CIA’s programme of secret renditions. In this extremely useful book, he gives us the fullest account yet of this programme. He exposes the CIA’s covert aircraft fleet, Aero Contractors, and also describes how CIA planes operated illegally in Venezuela to support the attempted coup against President Chavez in 2002. The CIA runs a system of clandestine prisons holding thousands of kidnapped prisoners, taken from Iraq, Afghanistan, Bosnia, Croatia, Macedonia, Albania, Germany, Italy, Sudan, Somalia, Kenya, Zambia, Gambia, Pakistan, Indonesia and Malaysia to be tortured in Afghanistan, Jordan, Uzbekistan, Thailand, Syria, Egypt and Morocco. Grey writes, "the foreign torture cells of Cairo and Damascus and the US jails at Guantanamo and Bagram were part of one interconnected gulag in which prisoners were swapped both between countries but also between the CIA and the US military." Grey asked Edward Walker, US Ambassador to Egypt, "When Condoleezza Rice and the president now stand in front of people and say we don’t send people to countries where they torture, are they telling the truth?" Walker replied, "No, they’re not telling the truth." A CIA official said, "nothing was done without approval from the White House – from Condoleezza Rice herself." The Bush and Blair governments talk democracy but support dictatorship. For example, in 2002, the State Department said Uzbekistan ‘routinely’ tortured prisoners, then gave it an extra $180 million aid. Grey points out that the Blair government connived in the renditions and in the use of torture, by using the ‘information’ gained from torturing prisoners. Nor has the Blair government defended British citizens from CIA rendition. Grey also notes that the illegal war on Iraq is a counter-productive diversion from the struggle against Al-Qaeda. As Britain’s Joint Intelligence Committee said in April 2005, "We judge that the conflict in Iraq has exacerbated the threat from international terrorism and will continue to have an impact in the long term. It has reinforced the determination of terrorists who were already committed to attacking the West and motivated others who were not." The JIC said that the war ‘provided an additional motivation for attacks’ on Britain and was ‘increasing Al Qaeda’s potential’. Similarly, the US government’s appalling treatment of prisoners has worsened the threat from Al-Qaeda. Grey concludes, "America’s programme of extraordinary rendition and its harsh treatment of prisoners have not, when considered strategically, been successful weapons against terrorism."

Truth, not "Truthiness"

A fabulous job of integrating detail with narrative into a web of our secret and not too righteous world of torture, kidnapping and disregard for human rights. Grey has made his case of detailing the flights, passengers, destinations, and outcomes of the "rendition" and extraordinary rendition by our own government. And how the details of delusion of the public were worked out by Gonzalez et al. This book is well worth reading if you have an interest in how a government can go overboard in trashing human rights--and still get poor results (from torture). What looks like a formidable read turns out to be riveting and is truly a worhtwhile addition to the support of a better, more open government that is above torture.

POSSIBLY THE MOST IMPORTANT BOOK ON THE WAR ON TERROR

Stephen Grey has written what could arguably be the most important book written about the war on terror. As a 100% disabled American veteran who grew up in a military environment and as a student of history who's gone through the "autumn of anger" after the 9/11 attacks I've honestly felt that the "enemy combatants" in the war on terror rightly deserved what they got. Infact, a bullet in the back of the head was the least they deserved, but I was wrong. Terribly so. Reading Grey's WELL RESEARCHED and BRILLIANTLY WRITTEN expose on our nation's "EXTRAORDINARY RENDITION" program gives one pause and forces one to reconsider his own personal beliefs and biases in light of how our nation is conducting the war on terror. In our nation's efforts to hunt down those responsible for 9/11 and to prevent further attacks on our soil our proxies have cast out a net far and wide and have used tactics that have brought shame upon our great country and ourselves. Like any fisherman who casts a wide net, we've not only caught those we've been looking for, but a lot of innocent people as well. Their only crime was they were Muslims. Yet, we've treated them the same as we've treated known Al Qaeda and Taliban members, by secretly snatching them from around the world and sending them to countries we know full well will torture them in order to get the confessions we're so desperately looking for in order to justify our actions. Now I know that there will be those who don't believe there are any innocents in this war. That those captured or rendered are well versed in the articles of "Interrogation and Investigation" in the Al Qaeda Training Manual, and will lie about their identities and treatment. There may be some truth in that, but I don't believe that applies to every individual. So, what are we to do? Stephen Grey quotes Senator John McCain, who said in an impassioned rejection of torture, what helped him and his fellow Americans through their captivity and torture in North Vietnam was that "every one of us - every single on of us - knew and took great strength from the belief that we were different from our enemies, that we were better than them, that we, if the roles were reversed, would not disgrace ourselves by committing or approving such mistreatment of them." That's a pretty remarkable statement from a man who was in captivity and brutally tortured for seven years. We must look to other methods if we are to come out ahead in what will mostly likely be our longest conflict. (For more information also see Chris Mackey's excellent book, THE INTERROGATORS: Inside the Secret War Against Al Qaeda.)

"Not For the Squeamish"

Grey's "Ghost Plane" provides credible documentation of America's involvement in secret renditions and torture - often on the flimsiest of "evidence" (eg. suspect was a friend of someone believed to be a terrorist). He begins by telling of our recently sending prisoners to Syria for interrogation and torture - despite Bush and the State Department condemning Syria for torture and supporting terrorism. ("The enemy of my enemy is my friend" - both Syria and Egypt are anti-Al Qaeda.) Grey also asserts that the U.S. has outsourced "questioning" since at least 1965 (South American Communists); in addition similar activities took place in Central America and Vietnam. President Carter then ceased all such activities, and directed the CIA to promote human rights. However, 9/11 ended that - first came Guantanamo, then stories began to leak out of the CIA working with some of the most repressive secret police in the world (eg. Egypt and Uzbekistan) that also opposed Islamic extremism. Renditions are described as typically utilizing about 8 men dressed in black and wearing masks; when going to Egypt they would also bring two Egyptian officers - thus, technically the prisoners were never in U.S. custody. The U.S. only provided "taxi service" via small unmarked civilian "ghost planes." Grey documents 89 renditions, and suspects hundreds more took place. Substantiation is provided by public flight logs, released prisoners' site descriptions matching actual known foreign country secret police settings, scars (on some), and reports from a British ambassador. Techniques included beatings, cuts, drug injections, food and water adulteration, threats made regarding a suspect's relatives, incessant and loud music, 18-hour interrogations, near drownings (eg. confined in a small room while water rose to one's chin), "water-boarding," chaining one's hands over the head - becoming unable to stand any longer caused great pain, etc. Grey's "Ghost Plane" is a service to America - we need to know what is going on; it also puts torture allegations about Abu Ghraib into a new light.

Disturbing But Yet A Riveting Read!

Any citizen concerned about the manifest threats to our constitutionally guaranteed liberties emanating from the Bush administration in its approach to the "War On Terror" will do well to read and appreciate the frightening story contained in these pages. Author Stephen Grey takes great pains to carefully document the astonishing ways in which the Executive Branch has unleashed the least principled elements within the Central Intelligence Agency and fully endorsed the crypto-fascistic policy of "extraordinary rendition", which is a clever euphemism for the unlawful abduction and illegal international transportation of certain designated "terrorist" suspects to avoid domestic legal complications. In other words, when the CIA and Executive branch determine that a specific suspected terrorist might have critical time-sensitive information, it employs this technique to deliver the suspected terrorist into the hands of foreign governments that sanction and practice torture. Thus, the fundamental purpose of this policy is to do an end run around the constitutional guarantees which everyone within the borders of the USA enjoys by situating the suspect in countries in which brutal torture is both tolerated and practiced. In many cases there is an almost comical ironic twist to the politics involved in the sense that the Executive Branch and the CIA seem to blatently ignore and deliberately subvert existing foreign policy in acts that are most accurately described as being cynically pragmatic, which also employ outlaw states such as Syria to use extreme torture methods to ply sensitive information from known or suspected terrorist suspects. What Grey reveals is a well-established network of secret international prisons not only sanctioned by the United States Government, but which also rewards host countries who are aided and abetted in their own civil rights violations through immoral and unethical manipulation of Presidential influence on other countries to "take it easy" on human rights violator states like Morocco, Syria, and the Sudan. The picture that eventually comes into sharp focus is one in which both American and European leaders intentionally subvert both civil and criminal laws as well as well established international policies to keep such outlawed practices of illegal imprisonment and extreme torture secret as they attempt to mine the depths of human intelligence without worrying about either the morality or legality of such actions. This story is not only shocking in terms of the craven practices it shows our elected and appointed leaders to be guilty of, but is also a stunning indictment of the whole notion of the "War On Terror" by illustrating that we as a country are apparently just as willing to inflict pain and suffering on potential innocents to achieve our political means as are the terrorists, meaning that in that regard we are no better than they. It should be an outrage for Americans to recognize that our elected and appoin