Feb. 2, 2007 – 7:33 p.m.
Another 13 unlucky CIA operatives are going to have to revise any plans they had for European vacations anytime soon, on account of the warrants issued by a German prosecutor last week.
It’s the second batch of criminal complaints issued against CIA operatives on charges of kidnapping lately, with almost certainly more to come.
Almost completely overshadowed by the German warrants was the trial in absentia of 25 current and retired CIA operatives and a U.S. military officer in Milan that opened on Thursday, Feb. 1 .
None of the defendants was present to face charges in connection with the 2003 disappearance of an al Qaeda suspect known as Abu Omar.
Untold numbers of other CIA personnel may be chopping up their Lufthansa cards soon, too.
There are ongoing investigations of “illegal rendition or CIA flight cases involving Germany, Sweden, Spain, Ireland, Greece, Cyprus, Denmark, Turkey, the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM), Bosnia and Romania,” according to a study of a report from the European Parliament two weeks ago.
“At least 1,245 flights operated by the CIA flew into European airspace or stopped over at European airports between the end of 2001 and the end of 2005,” according to an analysis by Statewatch.org, which monitors global human rights developments.
The European Parliament report refers to at least 21 “well-documented cases of extraordinary rendition: rendition victims were transferred through a European country or were residents in a European State at the time of their kidnapping,” Statewatch said.
European public opinion, you might say, is not exactly flowing in the CIA’s favor right now.
And the adverse climate can only encourage local European prosecutors to set loose the dogs of justice.
Like polar bears on ice floes, the CIA’s room for maneuvering would seem to be shrinking.
But nobody should sweat it too much, least of all the CIA.
Nobody’s going to be arrested, much less see jail time, unless one of the sought-after operatives is stupid enough to land on European soil, where Interpol has papered police stations and ports of entry with arrest warrants, some including pictures.
Barring that, the prosecutors first have some high hurdles to leap before they can get any of the accused CIA operatives into court. They must first persuade their respective Justice Ministries to send formal requests for extradition to Washington.
None, so far, have agreed to do so.
So to date, the scandalous renditions program has given the Bush administration another black eye, but not much else.
The only defendant feeling heat so far is Robert Seldon Lady, identified in court papers as the chief of agency operations in Milan.
Italian authorities recently seized the house outside the city where Lady and his wife had planned to retire.
Now he’s broke and divorced in Florida.
Even the CIA official who the Milan prosecutor maintains oversaw the snatch operation has been promoted, according to a knowledgeable source.
Nobody in Washington thinks U.S.-German relations are going to go into a deep freeze over the CIA caper, either.
The public be damned.
“It’s bad p.r., but it will have no serious impact on U.S.-German-relations,” Georg Mascolo, Washington bureau chief for Der Spiegel, a Germany weekly magazine, says of last week’s charges by a Bavarian prosecutor.
Nor, evidently, have official U.S.-Italian relations been strained much by the relentless investigation of Milan magistrate Armando Spataro, a legend for his pursuit of mafia figures and Marxist Red Brigades terrorists as well.
The case has earned the CIA as much ridicule as it has scorn.
After Omar’s wife complained of his disappearance, Spataro was able to recreate the trail of the snatch team by tracing the open cell-phone calls of the CIA team, some of whom carried both false and real IDs during their Italian sojourn.
But Italian Justice Minister Clemente Mastella has been sitting on Spataro’s requests for extradition of the alleged culprits for many months now.
The same could happen in Germany.
“Bavarian prosecutors are very taff [stolid], so why shouldn’t they refuse to do what the Italians did?” says Mascolo.
“Taff” — originally British slang for heavy-set Welch workers —” means they are real prosecutors and don’t care that much about political implications,” Mascolo added.
Gene Poteat, a retired CIA officer who heads the Association of Former Intelligence Officers, maintains that European authorities are only “covering their ass” with their CIA investigations because of their large Muslim populations.
“They’re doing it for local consumption,” said Poteat, who calls the extra-legal abductions “reasonable measures, because we’re at war.”
“We need to remind these so-called allies we’re at war,” he said.
But Stefano Dambruoso, who handled anti-terrorism cases as a Milan magistrate until 2005, calls Spataro — a long distance runner who has competed in several Chicago marathons — “completely honest.”
“We’re not political,” Dambruoso told the Chicago Tribune last year. “When we have a case, we have to investigate. We go against left and right in the same way.”
And it doesn’t help the CIA’s cause when it turns out the suspects they’ve dropped off for torture in dark holes like Casablanca are released without charges years without so much as a “never mind.”
Despite the mounting outrage in Europe, however, nothing much is likely to happen here.
In the unlikely event that European governments demand the rendition of CIA officials, their quests won’t get much farther than the Justice Department’s mail room.
Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has refused the Bavarian prosecutor’s pleas for cooperation, as has the FBI.
It’s unimaginable that the Bush administration, or its successors, would allow CIA personnel to stand trial in foreign courts for carrying out orders.
Unless they’re caught red-handed, of course.
The majority of Americans may be disgusted by the Bush administration’s handling of Iraq, Afghanistan, and a counterterror war that seems built on a foundation of kidnapping and torture.
But for now, they are content to “hate the war,” as the slogan goes, “and not the warrior.”
It might not be that way forever.
Overtime for Spooks: Following a CIA spokesman’s heated protest last week about my Jan. 21 column depicting hundreds of CIA people in Baghdad kept indoors “playing cards and watching DVDs” because of Iraq’s chaotic violence, a former senior intelligence official wrote to say, “Ask him why CIA officers get paid overtime in Iraq?”
Much to my surprise, it’s true: Spies get overtime, just like any government employee. They also get extra hazardous duty pay and bonuses for speaking Arabic (which can’t be costing taxpayers much, according to the Iraq Study Group’s withering critique of our language deficit).
“The pay our officers receive depends, logically enough, on their skills and experience, the specific job they are doing, the hours they work, and their place of assignment, among other factors,” says CIA spokesman Paul Gimigliano.
“Like other parts of our government, CIA recognizes the additional sacrifices of those who serve in hazardous areas. But, no matter where our officers are posted, their service is about far more than dollars and cents.”
State Department and other federal employees have the same deal.
By statute, the maximum a government civilians can be paid per year is $183,500.
The grunts braving snipers and IEDs, of course, don’t get overtime.
A specialist with four years in the Army has a base of a little over $21,000, according to published reports, with a 2.2 percent pay raise due to kick in in April. Housing, subsistence and uniform allowances and combat pay can bring the package up to about $37,600. A major makes about $85,000.
Extra bonus: There’s no place to spend it in Iraq.
Contractors are making the real dough, of course.
L3 Communication, for example, is recruiting former special ops personnel “to take on Site Manager positions throughout Iraq in support of the Intelligence Support and Services contract.”
The “total compensation,” L3 says, “comes to $200,356.34.”
Shia Delight: Massachusetts Democratic Rep.
I report, you decide:
REP. TIERNEY: Given that Prime Minister al-Maliki is a member of the Supreme Council of Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) — hardly a democracy group, and that was a party formed in Iran in the early ’80s — if we want to talk about our support for his being in office right now, and what intelligence leads us to believe that he’ll be acting more in our interest than in the Shi’ite militias or Iran’s interest? Better discussed in classified?
AMB. NEGROPONTE: Well, except for the record to make a small correction there, which is that he’s actually a member of the Da’wa party —
REP. TIERNEY: Da’wa party, you’re right.
AMB. NEGROPONTE: — he’s not a member of SCIRI.
REP. TIERNEY: You’re right. I’m sorry on that.
AMB. NEGROPONTE: And also I would add, lest we leave the wrong impression, these people who run the government of Iraq were popularly elected. I mean, this Shi’a —
REP. TIERNEY: Right.
AMB. NEGROPONTE: He emerges from this Shi’a majority that was—
REP. TIERNEY: But if we want to explore that in depth, we’d best do it in classified?
AMB. NEGROPONTE: Yes.
REP TIERNEY: Thank you.