Obama Lets CIA Keep Renditions Tool
Chicago Tribune
February 02, 2009
WASHINGTON -- The CIA's secret prisons are being shuttered.
Harsh interrogation techniques are off-limits. And Guantanamo Bay
will eventually go back to being a wind-swept naval base on the
southeastern corner of Cuba.

But even while dismantling these discredited programs, President
Barack Obama left an equally controversial counterterrorism tool
intact.

Under executive orders issued by Obama last week, the CIA still
has authority to carry out what are known as renditions, or the
secret abductions and transfers of prisoners to countries that
cooperate with the U.S.

Current and former U.S. intelligence officials said the rendition
program is poised to play an expanded role because it is the main
remaining mechanism -- aside from Predator missile strikes -- for
taking suspected terrorists off the street.

The rendition program became a source of embarrassment for the
CIA, and a target of international scorn, as details emerged in
recent years of botched captures, mistaken identities and
allegations that prisoners were turned over to countries where
they were tortured.

The European Parliament condemned renditions as an "illegal
instrument used by the United States." Prisoners swept up in the
program have sued the CIA as well as a subsidiary of Boeing Corp.,
which is accused of working with the agency on dozens of
rendition flights.

But the Obama administration appears to have determined that the
rendition program was one component of the Bush administration's
war on terrorism that it could not afford to discard.

The decision underscores the fact that the battle with Al Qaeda
and other terrorist groups is far from over and that even if the U.S.
is shutting down the prisons, it is not done taking prisoners.

"Obviously you need to preserve some tools, you still have to go
after the bad guys," said an Obama administration official, speaking
on condition of anonymity when discussing legal reasoning behind
the decision. "The legal advisers working on this looked at
rendition. It is controversial in some circles and kicked up a big
storm in Europe. But if done within certain parameters, it is an
acceptable practice."

One provision in one of Obama's orders appears to preserve the
CIA's ability to detain and interrogate terrorism suspects as long as
they are not held long-term. The little-noticed provision states
that the instructions to close the CIA's secret prison sites "do not
refer to facilities used only to hold people on a short-term,
transitory basis."

Obama's decision to preserve the program did not draw major
protests, even among human-rights groups. Leaders of such
organizations said that reflects a sense, even among advocates,
that the United States and other nations need certain tools to
combat terrorism.

"Under limited circumstances, there is a legitimate place" for
renditions, said Tom Malinowski, the Washington advocacy director
for Human Rights Watch. "What I heard loud and clear from the
president's order was that they want to design a system that
doesn't result in people being sent to foreign dungeons to be
tortured."

In his executive order on lawful interrogations, Obama created a
task force to re-examine renditions to make sure that they "do not
result in the transfer of individuals to other nations to face torture"
or otherwise circumvent human-rights laws and treaties.

Rendition does make for good policy, when used to remove a known bad guy to another location. In cases where the bad guy can be gotten to, it is usually going to be the better option, with the alternative being sending a drone fired missile into the area and risking excessive innocent casualties.

President Obama is being a realist in the effectiveness of being able to snatch a terrorist from an area and remove him to where he can be questioned and held, versus the always negative impact of military operations and rocket attacks which inevitably involve civilian casualties.