The Swiss senator, Dick Marty, whom the Council of Europe assigned to investigate allegations of CIA “extreme rendition” kidnappings in Europe is a highly qualified and experienced lawyer as well as being state prosecutor. This makes his strange behavior in recent days all the more puzzling. Marty is due to deliver a preliminary report on his findings to the Council of Europe on Jan. 23. By his own admission, however, it could take up to 12 months to gather all the necessary evidence for a full and fair report into these extremely serious allegations. The problem lies in the admission itself. Rather than conducting himself discreetly and waiting until the people who hired him to undertake the inquiry have had a chance to digest his preliminary findings, Marty has been talking freely to journalists. He has used these conversations to state that he has absolutely no doubt that illegal CIA detention centers have existed — and maybe still do. He has also been very strong in his criticism of European governments for “passivity” in the face of knowledge which he believes it inconceivable that they did not possess.
Such behavior is neither wise nor proper for a lawyer assigned such an important task. At the very least, he is going to need the cooperation of all European governments as he pursues his investigations into what are clearly extremely sensitive areas. Taking loosely to the media is hardly likely to ease his way into some of the more shadowy corridors of European power. What he has done will certainly alienate elements in the intelligence community whose cooperation, however grudging, will surely be a key element in a successful inquiry . The impression given so far is that of a politician-lawyer who is more interested in grandstanding to TV cameras than producing a rock-solid, revealing report.
Indeed, Marty’s conduct at the moment opens the way for Washington to dismiss his final and definitive report as prejudiced from the start. The impact of any findings confirming the worst fears of illegal CIA activities in Europe will quickly become diluted in a welter of recriminations.
The Marty report already looks doomed to fail in its task of presenting the truth. On the other hand, maybe this is what was supposed to happen. Most European governments may have been content to let American spooks kidnap Al-Qaeda suspects off their streets, incarcerate them in secret interrogation centers on the continent before flying them away to third countries where they may have been tortured. When the allegations broke, however, these same governments had to huff and puff denials because such conduct is against every tenet of freedom and legality which Europe says it holds dear.
So an inquiry there had to be but no one said it needed to be effective. Could it be that the Marty investigation was set up to fail?
Could it be that deliberately, or through bad advice or even personal shortcomings, the Marty iinquiry was supposed to look bigoted, biased and unreliable from the start?
