The AFP is reporting that the CIA's "rendition" program was started under the Clinton Administration.
The US Central Intelligence Agency's (CIA) controversial "rendition" program was launched under US president Bill Clinton, a former US counter-terrorism agent has told a German newspaper.
Michael Scheuer, a 22-year veteran of the CIA who resigned from the agency in 2004, has told 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 adviser Sandy Berger and his terrorism adviser Richard Clark ordered the CIA in the autumn of 1995 to destroy Al Qaeda," 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 Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden from 1996 to 1999, says he developed and led the "renditions" program.
He says the program includes moving prisoners without due legal process to countries without strict human rights protections.
One wonders whether this will make a difference in the Democrats' attack on this program under the Bush administration, or whether they will do their best to ignore it.
Here is the article referenced by the AFP, on Die Zeit, translated by Google.
I'm not shocked WJC did this nor that the MSM ignores it. $5 says HRC never gets questioned about this.
Posted by: handy | December 31, 2005 at 04:58 PM