It’s no longer a secret: Since 9/11, the CIA has quietly kidnapped
more than a hundred people and detained them at prisons throughout
the world. It is called “extraordinary rendition,” and it is part
of the largest U.S. clandestine operation since the end of the Cold
War.
Some detainees have
been taken to Egypt and Morocco to be tortured and interrogated.
Others have been transported to secret CIA-run facilities in Eastern
Europe and Afghanistan, where they, too, have been tortured. Many of
the kidnapped detainees have ended up at the U.S. detention camp at
Guantánamo, but others have been disappeared entirely.
In this first book
to systematically investigate extraordinary rendition, an
award-winning investigative journalist and a “military geographer”
explore the CIA program in a series of journeys that takes them
around the world. They travel to suburban Massachusetts to profile a
CIA front company that supplies the agency with airplanes; to
Smithfield, North Carolina, to meet pilots who fly CIA aircraft; to
the San Francisco suburbs to study with a “planespotter” who
tracks the CIA’s movements; and to Afghanistan, where the authors
visit the notorious “Salt Pit” prison and meet released Afghan
detainees.
They find that
nearly five years after 9/11, the kidnappings have not stopped. On
the contrary, the rendition program has been formalized, colluding
with the military when necessary, and constantly changing its cover
to remain hidden from sight.
