CIA uses secret jet to transport detainees

Bryan P. Dyess, Steven E. Kent, Timothy R. Sperling and Audrey M. Tailor are names without residential, work, telephone or corporate histories — the kind of ‘‘sterile identities’’, said current and former intelligence officials, that the CIA uses to conceal involvement in clandestine operations.

In this case, the agency is flying captured terrorist suspects from one country to another for detention and interrogation. The CIA calls this ‘‘rendition’’.

Premier Executive’s Gulfstream helps make it possible. According to civilian aircraft landing permits, the jet has permission to use US military airfields worldwide. Since 9/11, secret renditions have become a principal weapon in the CIA’s arsenal against suspected Al Qaeda terrorists, according to Congressional testimony by CIA officials. But as the practice has grown, the agency has had significantly more difficulty keeping it secret.

According to airport officials, public documents and hobbyist plane spotters, the Gulfstream V has been used to whisk detainees into or out of Jakarta, Indonesia; Pakistan; Egypt and Sweden, usually at night, and has landed at well-known US government refuelling stops.

As the outlines of the rendition system have been revealed, criticism of the practice has grown. Human rights groups are working on legal challenges to renditions, said Morton Sklar, executive director of the World Organization for Human Rights USA, because one of their purposes is to transfer captives to countries that use harsh interrogation methods outlawed in the US. That, he said, is prohibited by the UN Convention on Torture. The CIA has the authority to carry out renditions under a presidential directive dating to the Clinton administration, which the Bush administration has reviewed and renewed.

According to former CIA operatives experienced in using ‘‘proprietary,’’ or front, companies, the CIA likely used, or intended to use, some of the 325 names to hide other activities, the nature of which could not be learned. Three weeks ago, the plane, complete with a new tail number, was transferred to Bayard Foreign Marketing of Portland. A CIA spokesman declined to comment. —LAT-WP