Rendition

Rendition

Sunday, June 24, 2007

In war there are many paths to victory as well as defeat. War is a science and Military Science is an evolving discipline that compiles lessons-learned from previous wars to prepare for future wars. A nation-state must be willing to contribute a portion of its own to its own defense in this regard and must apply an adequate amount of material resources to that end. Those nation-states that are unwilling or unable to make such a contribution to national defense are defeated and absorbed by predator states and ideologies that do have the population energy to apply war and Military Science against competitors.

Humans that go to war collectively have in history used aspects of surprise to gain the advantage over competitor states. If a nation-state can be surprised by a sudden and violent attack by a hostile foreign military force, the targeted state is at a clear disadvantage as it seeks to mobilize in self-defense. The unexpected raid upon Pearl Harbor by Japan and the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, by al Qai’da are two examples of surprise military attacks upon unsuspecting populations of a nation-state, in those cases the United States of America.

In 1947, the Congress of the United States passed legislation to create and deploy a foreign intelligence service, the most elite intelligence service in the world. The legislation that Congress created which authorized the creation of a foreign intelligence service was called the National Security Act of 1947. Reflecting on the devastating sneak attack by the Japanese Navy on Pearl Harbor and the tremendous loss of life of US Navy personnel on naval vessels at port such as the USS Arizona, the US Congress wanted a foreign intelligence service that could provide advanced warning of any foreign threat that could endanger the United States. The attack upon Pearl Harbor by the Japanese Navy was so outrageous to the American people that no such attack should ever take place again, especially since the attack by Japan occurred without a formal declaration of war by Japan against the United States.

The National Security Act of 1947 authorized the President of the United States to create what is now known as CIA, The Central Intelligence Agency. The primary mission of The Central Intelligence Agency is simply to solicit information. Information that is solicited by The Central Intelligence Agency is then processed through a scientific method of evaluation known as an “intelligence cycle”. Within the scientific application of the intelligence cycle, the value of intelligence information that is solicited from foreign sources is derived. Gathering intelligence is a highly sensitive scientific field and is known by intelligence practitioners as “sources and methods”. Sources and methods to intelligence professionals are like the secret recipe used to make Coca Cola soft drinks by the Coca Cola Company—they are very coveted and well-kept secrets.

When intelligence services around the world try to solicit information for national security purposes, opposing intelligence services use what are known as “measures and countermeasures” to “interdict” such activities. This is known as “counterintelligence”. All countries have secrets to protect, and nation-states that do not have an effective measures and countermeasures capability do not keep secrets for very long. For example, if the Coca Cola Company didn’t deploy measures and countermeasures to protect its secret soft-drink recipe, competitor companies would steal it and replicate it to their own advantage in the soda markets.

The very nature of foreign intelligence services and their mission requires them to be “covert”. If intelligence organizations are not covert, hostile intelligence organizations of foreign nation-states could figure out how much money a country spends on intelligence activities, who is employed by the intelligence community, and the sources and methods used to solicit information for national security purposes derived by the intelligence cycle.

Prior to the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks upon the United States, the Congress of the United States instituted safeguards around all intelligence organizations used by this country to prevent them from acquiring too much power and threaten democracy. One of the safeguards that our Congress implemented was the separation of domestic intelligence organizations such as the Federal Bureau of Investigation from interacting with The Central Intelligence Agency which is a foreign intelligence service. Our system of checks and balances wanted to make sure there was no unification of a foreign intelligence service with a domestic intelligence service because that would put a lot of power into the hands of unelected officials that had access to the most sensitive national security secrets of the nation. The problem with such an arrangement was that on September 10, 2001, information that the FBI had gathered about al Qai’da terrorists operating in the United States was not being shared with the CIA and vice versa. This arrangement weakened the Intelligence Community’s ability to respond to domestic terrorism planned and executed by hostile foreign nationals. On September 11, 2001, we all witnessed together how our enemy was able to take advantage of the separation of intelligence capability that existed in the United States.

There are governments in European countries and elsewhere for that matter, as well as foreign and domestic special interest groups such as the media that believe that the al Qai’da attacks upon the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were a crime and nothing more. An example of crime is robbery, or kidnapping, or limited murder, or vandalism. Those are crimes. Flying fully loaded commercial passenger aircraft into the World Trade Center towers where thousands of American civilians were doing nothing more than unsuspectingly working to care for their families was not a crime, it was an act of war. The terrorist enemies that attacked the World Trade Center also attacked the Pentagon, the hub of our country’s very national defense. These events, again, were acts of war.

In a peaceful nation-state that is targeted for war, the generation that governs does not choose the time or the place when war comes upon them. On September 10, 2001, the United States was the largest contributor of humanitarian aid to Afghanistan, for example. The United States was also the key player in ending the ethnic cleansing of Muslims in Bosnia-Herzegovina. This country was mercilessly and undeservingly attacked by a political movement combined with a radical religious ideology on September 11, 2001.

Winning a war requires the proper application of Military Science. Wars in history have been won by countries either directly or indirectly engaging the military forces of opposing nation-states. If the decision is made to go to war using military means, Military Science comes into play immediately to secure victory over an adversary. The idea is to make war too costly for an opponent, and to outlast that opponent by five minutes. If you can outlast an opponent by five minutes in war, your country defeats that opponent. Wars are won through attrition, not of entire military structures, but simply damaging or destroying enough of them as to make the opposing army unable to carry on the fight.

In history, one key method of securing victory over an opponent in war is to capture prisoners of war and remove them from the battlefield so that those enemy combatants can no longer wage war against your army. In foreign wars that the United States has fought in history, prisoners that have been taken captive by the US military have been confined and well cared for in accordance with the Laws of War and the Geneva Conventions. This assures that the United States respects international treaties and the humane treatment of captured prisoners of war. The United States has such a great reputation in caring for prisoners of war that if you were to survey any foreign army personnel and ask them what country they would choose to be captured by during a war those foreign soldiers would choose the United States above any other country.

There are times when war activities create conditions whereby rendition is necessary. If large numbers of enemy soldiers are captured, for example, it is impractical to use military forces to guard them in the theatre of war where they are captured. Caring for prisoners of war takes a lot of resources such as food, clothing, shelter, guards, electricity for prison lighting and medical facilities, and to make sure that the safety of the captured personnel as well as US personnel is assured to greatest extent possible. In situations where such facilities and personnel are not available for the captured enemy combatants, the United States may choose to humanely relocate those combatants to locations prepared to house and care for them. During World War II for example, the United States shipped many thousands of German prisoners of war that the US military captured on the battlefields of Europe to facilities inside the United States such as Fort Devens, Massachusetts. This is known as “rendition”, or simply moving a captured enemy combatant from the battlefield to safety in another location outside of the war zone. The international community then knows that rendition has been an important method of Military Science for western allies since World War II and our engagement and defeat of Nazi Germany. When the United States rendered German prisoners, no one questioned it, nor did any nation go to the defense of the Nazis to prevent their internment as prisoners of war.

The terrorist enemy that the west faces today is different than the Nazis of World War II. Terrorist organizations and their hostile nation-state sponsors have studied democracies extensively and have been trying to perfect their own Military Science applications to defeat western powers. Terrorist cell members are supplied with military grade munitions by hostile nation-states to conduct military operations against unsuspecting civilian populations of western countries, but the terrorists themselves claim no nation-state alignment. This fact is confusing to westerners because traditional enemies of democracies have set upon the west composed of armies that were flagged and taking direct orders from a national leader such as Adolf Hitler, for example. Western nations were able to easily understand and identify with their enemies in decades past because the enemy was explained correctly by the media, pictures were shown of the hostile leader and the explanations given of the type of government and system of the hostile state. When this information reached the western masses, the free citizen was able to decide quickly for themselves that stopping Nazi Germany was not only in the national interest, but in the interest of all citizens that wished to remain free. Failure was not an option because the western citizen had enough information available to them to understand that life under National Socialism would be a great evil compared to life in the democratic state. The use of unflagged terrorist armies against western powers confuses the people because they cannot identify that with an external enemy of substance, and yet the danger posed to democracies around the world from Caliphate Jihadism may be more dangerous than Nazism.

The hostile states that support terrorism have also applied the Military Science technique of pure terrorism from their unflagged armies. Terrorism is simply any act that creates terror. Western democracies have a hard time defining terrorism, and the United Nations itself has never defined it and codified it. This means that while terrorism is the most dangerous application of unjust and unrestricted warfare that the west has ever experienced, not even the United Nations can gather a consensus about what to do about it. The United States has decided that it will not wait for the United Nations to define terrorism because the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks upon our country demanded immediate action. If the United States did not act right away after the terrorist attacks upon the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, that would have demonstrated to our enemies that we were not willing to contribute a portion of our own to our national defense, and as I explained, a nation-state that is unwilling or unable to do that is absorbed by states that are. Hostile nation-states that support terrorism have combined these two very dangerous and powerful Military Science applications in unflagged armies and terrorism to declare war against the west, in this case, Jihad, or a holy war against western democracies.

Rendition began under President Bill Clinton and energetically continued under the direction of President George W. Bush. Since the terrorist enemies that America faces are transnational and unflagged military forces that use military weapons against unsuspecting civilians, the only real capability that the United States possesses to go after these enemy combatants is The Central Intelligence Agency. The CIA has the capability to go into foreign nation-states and secure enemy terrorist combatants, but there have been many misconceptions about the CIA’s mission to do so due to bad press from the media and special interest groups. Since the CIA is a covert intelligence organization as I explained above, they cannot publicly talk about the rendition mission that they have been assigned by both President Clinton and President Bush. This gives opponents of the intelligence mission the ability to write anything they want to about the CIA without having to entertain things like “facts” and “truth” along the way. It is important for readers to understand that rendition is merely one of a host of reasons why the media is hostile to intelligence operations. The United States has the most professional and capable intelligence organizations in the world and our many enemies would only wish of seeing that capability go away. Our nation’s enemies do not hate us because we do wrong to them, they hate us because we live in a system of government that allows all citizens guaranteed constitutional rights.

Caliphate Jihadism is a political movement and religious ideology of hate and intolerance. When humans hate something very strongly, the thing that they hate the most has the tendency to come their way. Caliphate Jihadism came to the United States to attack this country and kill thousands of our civilians because this Jihadism hated America that strongly. The United States is now headed in their direction, as we did against Nazi Germany. Responding to hate and intolerance does have a measurable and visible predictability.

CIA rendition operations are a critical component of our response to transnational terrorism. Our enemies know this, and competitors of US intelligence also are keenly aware that the CIA cannot come out publicly to refute any publicly made charges against the organization. For example, a journalist won the Pulitzer Prize for reporting a story that claimed that the CIA was kidnapping persons in Europe and flying them from European nation-states that belong to the European Union. The so-called evidence that this journalist used was derived from conducting active surveillance on airports in Europe and waiting for CIA chartered flights to arrive and depart. The story grabbed international headlines overnight. Why? Competitors of US intelligence were looking for any such story to go after US rendition efforts in the War on Terrorism. It didn’t matter to the media that the story was not factual—it was exactly what the consumers of the information were looking for. The folks looking for rendition information wanted to be told what they wanted to hear, and they were, and the information, although false, was so valuable to them that the reporter was given a Pulitzer Prize for it.

Having traveled the world in defense of the United States and the American people, I will explain what the reporter was reporting. The reporter was reporting intelligence personnel transfers that occurred in stopovers in Europe on their way to the Middle East and other areas of the world. The CIA was not rendering any enemy combatant on those flights that the reporter was reporting in the story that won the Pulitzer Prize. When I flew to Somalia for example, we first landed in England to refuel, and then we flew to Cairo, Egypt, to refuel, and then we flew to Ethiopia for an unexpected stop because there was a surface to air missile threat in Somalia. After that threat passed we then proceeded to Mogadishu airport. Moving personnel and equipment around the world in the War on Terrorism is very costly and time consuming. The reporter that reported the rendition information suspected that rendition was occurring but reported information that was simply not factual.

Another very troubling media story appeared out of Italy where there were claims that over two dozen CIA officers were involved in a plot to kidnap an Italian national. The story went international within hours with claims that included bylines that these CIA personnel even used cell phones that were traceable, the hotels that the personnel supposedly stayed at, and the flights that they took. There is just one problem with the story. It is a fabrication. The CIA never had over two dozen officers in Italy to kidnap an Italian citizen. It simply never happened. The CIA does not have the manpower to put its valuable personnel in every country and the truth is that the CIA simply does not kidnap people. Kidnapping foreign nationals is the activity of the perverse nation-state and the CIA doesn’t do that. The fabricated news article, like the article that won the reporter the Pulitzer Prize, was but another example of how creative and activist special interests will go to any length and effort to bring bad publicity to efforts by the United States to protect and defend the American people.

Rendition in the War on Terrorism is a tightly controlled and disciplined process. I will now explain how it works. Since terrorism is transnational, terrorist suspects may be living in any country in the world. Terrorists have been more frequently gravitating to the European Union because the EU has very relaxed immigration standards and it is difficult to extradite individuals from those states to stand trial for crimes against humanity involving terrorist acts. That said, the United States enjoys a very good relationship with European states, and when US intelligence identifies a terrorist suspect that may be living in Europe, intelligence organizations of those European states are contacted to be given the information about the suspect. The European states then look to see if the suspect is living in their country, and if they are, the suspect is apprehended and taken into custody. Then the suspect is given a hearing to see if the claims made against the suspect are agreeable to the country that secured the suspect. If the charges are accurate, the country may choose to release the suspect into the custody of the United States, and if so, America then renders the suspect to prison facilities such as Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, for example. US intelligence performs this mission because it is a foreign intelligence operation that involves highly classified information and sources and methods. US intelligence is the only chartered American organization that can perform it.

The identification process used to locate terrorists is time consuming and involves a great deal of limited resources by US intelligence. When a terrorism suspect is identified, the information about the suspect is passed along to lawyers that work for the CIA. The CIA legal department carefully and meticulously goes over all the accumulated information about the terrorist suspect and if there is proof beyond a reasonable doubt that the individual is involved in terrorist activities, the same legal department approves the suspect’s capture. US intelligence then uses its liaison officers to make contact with the foreign intelligence service in the country where the suspect lives and provides those folks with the information gathered about the suspect. The foreign intelligence service then performs its own investigation of the suspect and makes a recommendation to the host government whether or not the suspect should be taken into custody. Even if the suspect is taken into custody, that is no guarantee that the suspect will be handed over to US control for rendition.

This special activity is necessary to defend the United States from further terrorist attacks. Since the terrorists deliberately do not claim any nation-state alignment, but receive material support from hostile nation-states, the United States has no choice but to render these suspects into American control, as the US rendered Nazis to Fort Devens, Massachusetts, during World War II. If the United States didn’t render terrorists under our control, we would be ignoring the importance of what is known as “battlefield preparation”. Since terrorism is transnational, efforts to combat terrorism and transnational battlefield preparation are also transnational. Taking prisoners of war transnationally is an important part of force protection and saving the lives of our young men and women on the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as civilians at home. If we didn’t take these terrorists prisoner, the terrorists would simply be reconstituted back into the unflagged armies of Caliphate Jihadism to kill Americans. A country that doesn’t take combatant prisoners during wartime will find it much more difficult to win the war. Could you imagine for a moment if the United States didn’t take German prisoners of war during World War II? That wouldn’t make sense to the American people, and neither does allowing transnational terrorists a free pass make sense when they are planning terrorist attacks in the countries they live in to be performed upon other unsuspecting countries and their people.

Keep in mind that the same special interests that criticize US intelligence and the United States specifically for our rendition efforts against transnational Caliphate Jihadism ignore stunning human rights abuses in places such as Sudan and the North Korean gulag archipelago. Also recognize that every citizen of America should know the truth about rendition, and the fact that US intelligence is not kidnapping foreign nationals as the media claims, but is working in cooperation with our allies around the world to ensure the safety of people everywhere from terrorist acts. These truths do not stop opponents of US rendition efforts from attempting to dismantle this valuable national security tool. There have been many calls from special interest groups and a great deal of diplomatic and public pressure to close US prisons such as Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The United States has always been sensitive to such pressure because it does affect national prestige and our standing in the world, even though the evidence proves that the US is obeying international law in regards to prisoners that it detains and captures in the War on Terrorism. To some, there may be more of a benefit to closing Guantanamo Bay for US national security purposes than the bad publicity the US endures to its international prestige by conducting rendition. That is a question that policymakers will have to address.

I view this from the point of view of a former professional soldier that served in times of war for the United States Army. If the United States does not secure prisoners of war in the War on Terrorism, those enemy combatants will reappear on the battlefields where our soldiers are deployed to wage war against American troops. In the worst case scenario, these transnational Caliphate Jihadists will appear in the United States or other western countries to conduct terrorist operations against unsuspecting civilians as they did on September 11, 2001. Capturing enemy combatants in war is an integral part of Military Science and a key component of gathering intelligence on enemy operations directed at the United States, the American military and its people. Removing that capability, to me, breaks the tradition of warfighting and international law that requires humane treatment of captured prisoners of war and the expectation that enemy combatants will be captured on the battlefield. If we do not capture enemy combatants on the transnational battlefield space, this will cause breakdowns in discipline in the US combat forces that may become frustrated by such activity and pressured to create more casualties on the battlefield than is required to secure victory over the enemy. It will also cause US forces to question who the enemy is, since the foundation of war must contain the concept of “know your enemy” in order to wage a successful war against that enemy. Again, this is a question that policymakers must consider.

The international policy weaknesses that are competitors to rendition are derived from the lack of defining what terrorism is, the erroneous belief that terrorism is a crime and not a war activity, and the European mindset that Caliphate Jihadists should be entertained with some level of rehabilitative treatment in western prisons instead of absolute containment and isolation due to their proven hostility to the very foundations of western law and governance. Caliphate Jihadists are not criminals—they are agents in the reshaping of the international global order in favor of theocratic totalitarianism using theocratic Trotskyism as the venue.

This Caliphate Jihadist terrorist video demonstrates what will come to the United States should US intelligence capability be removed from the transnational rendition effort. Such attacks could occur anywhere in the United States at schools where American children attend, or government facilities and places of commerce.

I ask the reader to judge for themselves whether or not rendition is important in the War on Terrorism, and to join me in providing full support to US intelligence in its national security efforts to protect and defend the United States and the American people.

Christopher Farmer

MS, National Security

The United States wants to improve its image around the world in the War on Terrorism by questioning rendition activity. Is emptying prisons full of terrorists a smart policy?

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