Privatized torture
When you set up a worldwide campaign of kidnapping and torture, it's important to control costs:
The manner in which American firms flew terrorism suspects to locations around the world, where they were often tortured, has emerged after one of the companies sued another in a dispute over fees. As the 10th anniversary of 9/11 approaches, the mass of invoices, receipts, contracts and email correspondence – submitted as evidence to a court in upstate New York – provides a unique glimpse into a world in which the "war on terror" became just another charter opportunity for American businesses.
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The New York case concerns Sportsflight, an aircraft broker, and Richmor, an aircraft operator. Sportsflight entered into an arrangement to make a Gulfstream IV executive jet available at $4,900 an hour rather than the market rate of $5,450. A crew was available to fly at 12 hours' notice. The government wanted "the cheapest aircraft to fulfil a mission", Sportsflight's owner, Don Moss, told the court. But it was the early days of the rendition programme, and business was booming: the court heard that Sportsflight told Richmor: "The client says we're going to be very, very busy."
The client in this case is the US Government. The report also states that detainees, who 'were usually sedated through anal suppositories before being dressed in nappies and orange boiler suits, then hooded and muffled and trussed up in the back of the aircraft,' were described by the head of one of the charter companies as 'invitees.' Classy.
I modelled the torture business in The Rapture on what I had read about the near-complete privatization of the US security state. So much of the CIA, NSA and the rest of the alphabet soup have been contracted out that they are now effectively unable to do things on their own. It's bad enough that torture became a profit centre for these companies, but you also have to wonder how much lobbying went the other way. How much did companies compete for this 'business'? The firms involved don't sound big enough to increase the number of renditions on their own, but if you think big national security industry players like CACI International and Halliburton don't have an effect on US policy, then I have a Vice-President to sell you.
The flights are detailed in mind-numbing detail, down to the cost of the snacks being consumed by the crew. These logs are a gold mine of intelligence, as the charity Reprieve has proven. They used the expense claims to tie specific planes to those who were rendered, and then to probable locations of black sites. That's how intelligence works, not smacking someone until they say what they think you want to hear.
