[Marxism] CIA Torture Transport

[Anthony Boynton <northbogota@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hi:

Regarding CIA torture routine

Mysterious jet tied to torture flights

Sat Jan 8, 9:40 AM ET   Top Stories - Chicago Tribune


By John Crewdson Tribune senior correspondent

The first question is: Where is Leonard T. Bayard? The
next question is: Who is Leonard T. Bayard? But the
most important question may be: Does Leonard T. Bayard
even exist?


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The questions arise because the signature of a Leonard
Thomas Bayard appears on the annual report of a
Portland-based company, Bayard Foreign Marketing LLC,
that was filed in August with the Oregon secretary of
state.


According to federal records, Bayard Foreign Marketing
is the newest owner of a U.S.-registered Gulfstream V
executive jet reportedly used since Sept. 11, 2001, to
transport suspected Al Qaeda operatives to countries
such as Egypt and Syria, where some of them claim to
have later been tortured.


The Central Intelligence Agency (news - web sites) has
declined to discuss the plane. But one retired CIA
(news - web sites) officer said that he understood the
Gulfstream had been operated by the Joint Special
Operations Command, an interagency unit that organizes
counterterrorist operations in conjunction with the
CIA and military special forces.


A search of commercial databases turned up no
information on Leonard Thomas Bayard: no residence
address, no telephone number, no Social Security (news
- web sites) number, no credit history, no automobile
or property ownership records--in short, none of the
information commonly associated with real people.


And yet, someone signed the name Leonard T. Bayard to
Bayard Foreign Marketing's annual report.


The report, which describes the company as an
"international marketing firm," lists Bayard's
principal place of business as a suite in a historic
downtown Portland office building known as the Pittock
Block. But a visitor to the suite who asked to see
Bayard was told by a receptionist only that "Mr.
Bayard doesn't work here."


The telephone number on Bayard's annual report is
listed to a private residence in a rundown section of
northeast Portland whose doorbell went unanswered
earlier this week. Calls to that number, however,
appear to be answered by a bank of operators.


An initial call was answered as "Baynard Foreign
Marketing" by an operator who insisted she never had
heard of Leonard Bayard. A second call two minutes
later was answered as "Bayard Foreign Marketing" by a
different operator, who said that "Mr. Bayard is away
from his desk."


A message left by a reporter went unanswered. The CIA
has long had a well-known practice of "backstopping"
local telephone numbers for its proprietary companies
around the world, whose calls are forwarded to
operators at CIA headquarters in Langley, Va.


Scott Caplan, an attorney whose offices occupy the
same Portland suite as the one listed by Bayard
Foreign Marketing, identified Bayard as "a client" but
declined to say more. Public documents show it was
Caplan who filed the incorporation papers for Bayard
Foreign Marketing when the company was created in
August 2003.


Ann Martens, a spokeswoman for Oregon Secretary of
State Bill Bradbury, said that knowingly filing a
false corporate document in Oregon is punishable by up
to 6 months in prison and a $1,000 fine.


November sale


Leonard T. Bayard--whoever he may or may not
be--became the sole owner of the mysterious Gulfstream
jet on Nov. 16, according to public records compiled
by the Federal Aviation Administration (news - web
sites).


The records show that Bayard Foreign Marketing
purchased the plane, for an undisclosed sum, from
Premier Executive Transport Services, whose address is
the same as that of a Dedham, Mass., law firm that
incorporated Premier Executive in January 1994.


The Massachusetts law firm's address is shared by a
second company, Crowell Aviation Technologies Inc.,
which according to Dun & Bradstreet claims to have
only a single employee and $65,000 in annual revenue.


Government records show, however, that Crowell is one
of only nine companies, along with Premier Executive,
that has Pentagon (news - web sites) permission to
land aircraft at military bases worldwide.





The same day it transferred ownership of the
Gulfstream to Bayard, Premier Executive sold an
unmarked, 3-year-old Boeing 737 to Keeler and Tate
Management LLC of Reno. That company's address is the
same as that of the Reno law firm that incorporated it
in October 2003, records show.

Like Leonard T. Bayard, the only named principal in
Keeler and Tate, one Tyler Edward Tate, also appears
not to exist in any public records accessible by the
Tribune.

Premier Executive's only listed executive is its
president, Bryan P. Dyess. A person with that name
does appear in commercial databases, but his only
addresses are two post office boxes in Arlington, Va.,
not far from CIA headquarters.

Premier Executive purchased or leased the new
Gulfstream V in 1999, FAA (news - web sites) records
show. The plane's original registration number,
N581GA, would later be changed by the FAA to N379P,
and again to 8068V.

The first public mention of the Gulfstream appeared
six weeks after Sept. 11, 2001, when a Pakistani
newspaper reported that Jamil Qasim Saeed Mohammed, a
27-year-old microbiology student at Karachi
University, had been spirited aboard the plane at
Karachi's airport by Pakistani security officers in
the early hours of Oct. 23, 2001.

There is no information about where Mohammed was
taken. But Pakistani officials said later that
Mohammed, a Yemeni national, was believed by the U.S.
to belong to Al Qaeda and to have information about
the October 2000 bombing of the USS Cole (news - web
sites).

Since Sept. 11, unnamed U.S. officials have been
quoted in several publications discussing the U.S.
practice of "rendition," which involves sending
suspected terrorists or Al Qaeda supporters captured
abroad for interrogation to countries where human
rights are not traditionally respected.

Well-documented case

One well-documented rendition occurred in December
2001, when two Egyptian nationals, Ahmed Agiza and
Muhammed al-Zery, were flown aboard the Gulfstream
from Sweden's Bromma airport to Cairo. A Swedish
television broadcaster, TV4, reported last year that a
check of the plane's registration number, N379P,
showed it belonged to Premier Executive.

The Swedish ambassador to Cairo later said Agiza and
al-Zery both told him they had been tortured by
Egyptian police. Al-Zery was released in October 2003
without charges. Agiza was sentenced to 25 years in
prison for his alleged membership in an Egyptian
terrorist group.

The Swedish government has called on Egypt to agree to
an international investigation into the torture
charges. The government has said it had been assured
by Egypt that the two men would not be mistreated.

Another widely reported rendition to Egypt occurred in
January 2002, when the Gulfstream arrived in Jakarta,
Indonesia, to pick up a 24-year-old Al Qaeda suspect
and dual Egyptian-Pakistani citizen, Muhammad Saad
Iqbal, and transport him to Cairo.

German intelligence sources later said Indonesia
refused to permit subsequent renditions to Cairo after
learning that Iqbal had been tortured.

An international network of "plane spotters,"
hobbyists who log the comings and goings of specific
aircraft around the world, have posted on the Internet
photographs of the Gulfstream in various locations.

The Sunday Times of London, which claimed to have
obtained the plane's flight logs, reported in November
that the plane was based at Dulles International
Airport outside Washington. The newspaper said it had
flown to at least 49 destinations outside the U.S.,
including Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, other U.S. military
bases, as well as airports in Egypt, Jordan, Iraq
(news - web sites), Morocco, Afghanistan (news - web
sites), Libya and Uzbekistan.

Two days after the Sunday Times report, Premier
Executive Transport sold the Gulfstream to Bayard
Foreign Marketing. On Dec. 1, records show, the FAA
assigned the plane yet another tail number, N44982.










                
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