THERE seems little doubt that in the wake of the US-led invasion of Afghanistan, the CIA did mount some sort of operation in which captured Al-Qaeda suspects were spirited out of the country for interrogation. Most may have ended up in Guantanamo Bay where the Bush administration hoped that it could hold prisoners outside the jurisdiction of the often uncompromising US judicial system. There are now, however, strong suspicions that the CIA operated secret interrogation centers in former Soviet facilities in both Poland and Romania. Both Warsaw and Bucharest have angrily denied the stories. Indeed it may well be that if the CIA was running such a program, the last people they would have told would have been the local authorities.
What is spurring demands that the allegations be investigated properly is the uneasy feeling that away from the eyes of courts and public, in detention centers which few knew existed, terrible crimes may have been committed by those questioning the suspects. The Europeans are currently trying to track suspicious US aircraft movements and looking for satellite images of Romania and Poland which may show where the camps are or, as seems more likely since the hue and cry over them, where they used to be.
Just as important as the allegations is the way in which they are being handled, both by Washington and the Europeans. The EU yesterday formally demanded a full explanation of what may have happened, partly on EU territory. The irony was that the demand was lodged by UK Foreign Secretary Jack Straw because Britain currently holds the EU presidency. Straw has been second only to Prime Minister Tony Blair in his dedicated support for the Bush White House’s war on terror. Yet as the foreign policy representative of the skeptical EU, Straw has had to insist that Washington come clean over what has been going on. If the Americans continue to be uncooperative, he will be obliged to ask the question again, probably less diplomatically.
The way that Washington is dealing with questions is also informative. There have been no attempts at outright denial. The US administration has simply refused to confirm or deny anything about the secret prisons. This is a change of tack for a White House that, as with WMD allegations, has tended to stick doggedly to falsehoods and continued to shelter in their shadow in the bright light of truth. Could it be that the president’s people have finally learned their lesson or is there more to it? Could it be that CIA chiefs who were used by the White House as scapegoats for false WMD intelligence, are in no mood to cover up for the president again? If these camps did exist and they were established by the CIA on instructions from someone in the White House, then the president’s growing number of enemies will have been given a very big nail to hammer into his political coffin. Intriguingly, few have focused on the source of the leaked story to the Washington Post. Could it have been the CIA itself?
