Secretary of State Rice and the CIA Secret Prisons

An interesting story in the Washington Post about Rice defending the CIA's secret detention and transport of suspected terrorists on European soil. What's interesting is that Rice is hinting at the fact that many European governments knew what was going on. From the article:

Rice did not confirm or deny the existence of the prisons, saying, "We cannot discuss information that would compromise the success of intelligence, law enforcement and military operations." But she implied that governments in Europe were aware of U.S. intelligence operations there, including assistance in a practice known as "rendition," in which suspects are secretly transferred from countries without formal extradition proceedings.
At one point, Rice appeared to acknowledge that top detainees directly connected to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks have been held outside the United States. U.S. intelligence agencies, she said, have gathered information from a "very small number of extremely dangerous detainees," including planners of the Sept. 11 hijackings and the attack on the USS Cole in Yemen in 2000. The United States "has fully respected the sovereignty of other countries that cooperate in these matters," she said.



Click here to read the full article.

To learn more about the CIA holding suspected terrorists in prisons outside the U.S. click here.

For more on what European leaders knew, read ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ from Newsweek

--Tom Hayes