Via Jurist, legal news from U. Pittsburgh:

Monday, November 21, 2005

Canada investigates report of CIA prisoner flights  
Tom Henry at 3:03 PM ET

[JURIST] The Canadian Department of Foreign Affairs [official website] revealed Monday that it is investigating reports that a plane allegedly used by the CIA to transport terror detainees landed at a Canadian airport last week. Montreal newspaper La Presse [media website; in French] said the plane departed from Iceland heading towards Canada, landed in St. John's in Newfoundland on Friday, then returned to a military base in North Carolina. The US embassy in Ottawa would not comment. Speaking in the Canadian House of Commons Monday, Canadian Public Security Minister Anne McClellan nonetheless told MPs that "We have no absolutely no information nor any reason to believe that such an aircraft was involved in such a matter." In recent weeks Sweden [JURIST report], Spain [JURIST report] and Romania and the UK [JURIST report] have begun their own investigated incidents of alleged CIA plane landings that involved detainee transfers to alleged secret US prisons [JURIST report] in Europe or other facilities. Reuters has more.

Links in the original.  Worth a quick click.

Via Jurist, legal news from U. Pittsburgh:

Monday, November 21, 2005

Canada investigates report of CIA prisoner flights  
Tom Henry at 3:03 PM ET

[JURIST] The Canadian Department of Foreign Affairs [official website] revealed Monday that it is investigating reports that a plane allegedly used by the CIA to transport terror detainees landed at a Canadian airport last week. Montreal newspaper La Presse [media website; in French] said the plane departed from Iceland heading towards Canada, landed in St. John's in Newfoundland on Friday, then returned to a military base in North Carolina. The US embassy in Ottawa would not comment. Speaking in the Canadian House of Commons Monday, Canadian Public Security Minister Anne McClellan nonetheless told MPs that "We have no absolutely no information nor any reason to believe that such an aircraft was involved in such a matter." In recent weeks Sweden [JURIST report], Spain [JURIST report] and Romania and the UK [JURIST report] have begun their own investigated incidents of alleged CIA plane landings that involved detainee transfers to alleged secret US prisons [JURIST report] in Europe or other facilities. Reuters has more.

Links in the original.  Worth a quick click.

Bob Graham, the former Senator from Florida and Chair of the Select Senate Intelligence Committee,  wrote this article What I Knew Before the Invasion in Sundays WaPo

CNN is reporting on the White House effort to restore President Bush's sagging poll numbers, which are holding at levels only slightly above bird flu popularity. Their hit back plan aims...

to reverse President Bush's poor poll showings on the topics of Iraq and honesty and trustworthiness by repeatedly making the point that the pre-war intelligence was faulty, it was not manipulated and everyone was working off the same intelligence.

The good news is the plan does not require the spread of democracy or liberty to a Middle Eastern country.  But neither does the plan introduce honesty and trustworthiness into the White House. Instead, the country will come under extensive Republican kool-aid type memes to help us realize that we are all the victims of faulty national intelligence, the White House included.

Now is the time to pull out the latest in British imports, the Downing Street Memo.  The memo has yet to fail in pointing out where Bush facts and intelligence wrap around a policy.  The Senate's Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI) 2004 report did find the pre-war intelligence faulty.  However, whether that intelligence was manipulated is more easily determined if the last allegation that everyone was working off the same intelligence is false.

They can't fulfill their promise to complete the investigation into the White House's intelligence manipulation, but they are Johnny-on-the-spot to who told the Post about the secret prisons overseas.

Senior Republicans are pushing for an investigation into who revealed the existence of secret CIA prisons overseas for "high-value" al Qaeda suspects to the Washington Post

Text of letter below:

The Washington Post is now reporting that the United States has established and maintained a set of secret prisons located around the world, including in former Soviet republics.  

The CIA has been hiding and interrogating some of its most important al Qaeda captives at a Soviet-era compound in Eastern Europe, according to U.S. and foreign officials familiar with the arrangement.