Spiegel documents a power grab by the CIA in the days following the 9/11 terror attacks–a remaking of “America’s Gestapo.”
Cofer Black, the coordinator for counter-terrorism, demanded the head of the al-Qaida boss [Osama bin Laden] and meant it quite literally. The gruesome trophy should be sent express — and ‘on ice’ — to Washington, he said.”
The article seems to sum up Spiegel’s investigation of CIA uses of European territory in extraordinary rendition, describing airports and European government complicity — possibly what an anonymous State Department official referred to when he said European nations “need to look at [them]selves as much as us” and that “[p]eople in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones.” Spiegel quotes “[f]ormer CIA officer Robert Baer, one of the most successful secret service Middle East experts, [who] described the arrangement with disarming openness: ‘There is a rule inside the CIA that if you want a good interrogation and you want good information you send the suspect to Jordan, if you want them to be killed or tortured to death you send them either to Egypt or Syria, and you never see them again.'”