Secret Prisons

On Wednesday, the Washington Post (free registration required) ran a lengthy and reasonably prominent story about a network of secret prisons set up by the CIA since 2001 to hold "terror suspects," and the unease within the agency about it. The Washington Post reported that the prison network has "at various times has included sites in eight countries, including Thailand, Afghanistan and several democracies in Eastern Europe." Of course, "The CIA and the White House, citing national security concerns and the value of the program, have dissuaded Congress from demanding that the agency answer questions in open testimony about the conditions under which captives are held."
"CIA interrogators in the overseas sites are permitted to use the CIA's approved "Enhanced Interrogation Techniques," some of which are prohibited by the U.N. convention and by U.S. military law. They include tactics such as "waterboarding," in which a prisoner is made to believe he or she is drowning."

Today, the FT reports that "Human Rights Watch, a US lobby group, on Wednesday said there was strong evidence - including the flight records of CIA aircraft transporting prisoners out of Afghanistan - that Poland and Romania were among countries allowing the agency to operate secret detention centres on their soil."

Reaction to this story appears to have been quite scarce. The New York Times have not got a staff writer to produce a story - the website carries wire reports from Reuters and Associated Press on the story, accessible only if you know what you're searching for; I havn't checked whether these appeared in today's print edition.

What all of this seems to make clear is that Guantanamo is a kind of side-show, somewhere public and international concern about the way detainees are treated can be directed, while the real "interrogation" can be done elsewhere, without scrutiny. I would guess that the CIA are a little reticent about having to carry out these operations themselves - perhaps high officials fear they will take the fall if there's a scandel about them - and would prefer to revert to the model of the first 'War against Terrorism' of the 1980s, during which these kinds of operations were outsourced to foreign clients, with the CIA providing some funding.

The likely destination of this particular story is the dustbin, but one must wonder how long this extreme neoconservative manner of dealing with things can continue before so much of the American establishment becomes so dissatisfied that co-operation ceases completely. Agencies like the CIA are in a bit of a quandry, because they know the Democrats won't maintain the kind of commitment to 'Defence' spending the Republicans have. But will the Bush 41 government push things too far, and leave the whole thing unravelling, handing the next 2 White House terms to the Democrats?? Predictions are generally rather unwise, but I'd say it's basically contingent on public scrutiny, and how much of a big deal is made of stories like this.