Originally published February 8 2006
Ex-CIA agent explains history of, defends government's controversial "renditions" program
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
Former CIA agent Michael Scheuer says President Bill Clinton charged the agency to "destroy Al-Qaeda" in 1995, which lead to the formation of the controversial "renditions" program, which included moving prisoners without due legal process to countries without strict human rights protections, and although the program has changed under the Bush administration, Scheuer says they are making the same mistake of not treating the captured as prisoners of war.
The CIA's controversial "rendition" program to have terror suspects captured and questioned on foreign soil was launched under US president Bill Clinton, a former US counterterrorism agent told a German newspaper.
Michael Scheuer, a 22-year veteran of the CIA who resigned from the agency in 2004, told Thursday's issue of the newsweekly Die Zeit that the US administration had been looking in the mid-1990s for a way to combat the terrorist threat and circumvent the cumbersome US legal system.
"President Clinton, his national security advisor Sandy Berger and his terrorism advisor Richard Clark ordered the CIA in the autumn of 1995 to destroy Al-Qaeda," Scheuer said, in comments published in German.
"We asked the president what we should do with the people we capture.
Scheuer, who headed the CIA unit that tracked Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden from 1996 to 1999, said that he developed and led the "renditions" program, which he said included moving prisoners without due legal process to countries without strict human rights protections.
"That was done by the local police or secret services," he said, adding that the prisoners were never taken to US soil.
He said the program changed under Clinton's successor, President George W. Bush, after the attacks of September 11, 2001.
He accused Europeans of being hypocritical in criticizing the US administration for its anti-terror tactics while benefiting from them.
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice defended renditions on a trip to Europe this month as a "vital tool" for fighting international terrorism but insisted that Washington does not condone torture.
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