Extraordinary Hearing on Extraordinary Rendition
The House Foreign Affairs Committee held a hearing last April on the policy of “extraordinary rendition,” referring to the seizure of suspected terrorists and their transfer to a foreign country for detention and interrogation.
The record of the hearing, which has just been published (pdf), features the volatile Michael Scheuer, a former CIA official involved in the rendition program. It is exceptionally nasty and occasionally funny.
Mr. Scheuer, veering from outrageous to absurd and back again, attacked John McCain, the Washington Post’s Dana Priest and quite a few others in remarkably offensive terms.
See “Extraordinary Rendition in U.S. Counterterrorism Policy: The Impact on Transatlantic Relations,” House Foreign Affairs Committee, April 17, 2007.
“Oftentimes,” Rep. Ed Markey (D-MA) delicately observed, “people aspire to a higher percentage of their thoughts going unspoken than this hearing has demonstrated.”
Confirmation that the construction of the security perimeter and associated security infrastructure at RAF Lakenheath are still ongoing once again raises questions about whether U.S. nuclear weapons have already been deployed to the base.
Alaskans are sensibly pulling back from the vogue for bans and returning to a western tradition that has worked for more than half a century – one that welcomes innovation but also oversees it closely.
The strength of our nation’s data policy isn’t just in the rules we write, but in how effectively we translate those rules into a system that prioritizes the public good. Join us in this movement to design and build more resilient national data policies.
The human cost is measured in deaths. The financial cost is measured in the $52 billion taxpayers pay annually end stage renal disease – double NASA’s budget.