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<a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A27826-2004Dec26.html" eudora="autourl">http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A27826-2004Dec26.html<br><br>
</a>Jet Is an Open Secret in Terror War<br><br>
By Dana Priest<br>
Washington Post Staff Writer<br><br>
The airplane is a Gulfstream V turbojet, the sort favored by CEOs and
<br>
celebrities. But since 2001 it has been seen at military airports from
<br>
Pakistan to Indonesia to Jordan, sometimes being boarded by hooded and
<br>
handcuffed passengers.<br><br>
[photo caption: This Gulfstream V turbojet is believed to be used to
<br>
transport suspected terrorists to other countries for interrogation -- a
<br>
practice called rendition. (Special To The Washington Post)]<br><br>
The plane's owner of record, Premier Executive Transport Services Inc.,
<br>
lists directors and officers who appear to exist only on paper. And each
one <br>
of those directors and officers has a recently issued Social Security
number <br>
and an address consisting only of a post office box, according to an
<br>
extensive search of state, federal and commercial records.<br><br>
Bryan P. Dyess, Steven E. Kent, Timothy R. Sperling and Audrey M. Tailor
are <br>
names without residential, work, telephone or corporate histories -- just
<br>
the kind of "sterile identities," said current and former
intelligence <br>
officials, that the CIA uses to conceal involvement in clandestine <br>
operations. In this case, the agency is flying captured terrorist
suspects <br>
from one country to another for detention and interrogation.<br><br>
The CIA calls this activity "rendition." Premier Executive's
Gulfstream <br>
helps make it possible. According to civilian aircraft landing permits,
the <br>
jet has permission to use U.S. military airfields worldwide.<br><br>
Since Sept. 11, 2001, secret renditions have become a principal weapon in
<br>
the CIA's arsenal against suspected al Qaeda terrorists, according to
<br>
congressional testimony by CIA officials. But as the practice has grown,
the <br>
agency has had significantly more difficulty keeping it secret.<br><br>
According to airport officials, public documents and hobbyist plane
<br>
spotters, the Gulfstream V, with tail number N379P, has been used to
whisk <br>
detainees into or out of Jakarta, Indonesia; Pakistan; Egypt; and Sweden,
<br>
usually at night, and has landed at well-known U.S. government refueling
<br>
stops.<br><br>
As the outlines of the rendition system have been revealed, criticism of
the <br>
practice has grown. Human rights groups are working on legal challenges
to <br>
renditions, said Morton Sklar, executive director of the World
Organization <br>
for Human Rights USA, because one of their purposes is to transfer
captives <br>
to countries that use harsh interrogation methods outlawed in the United
<br>
States. That, he said, is prohibited by the U.N. Convention on
Torture.<br><br>
The CIA has the authority to carry out renditions under a presidential
<br>
directive dating to the Clinton administration, which the Bush <br>
administration has reviewed and renewed. The CIA declined to comment for
<br>
this article.<br><br>
"Our policymakers would never confront the issue," said Michael
Scheuer, a <br>
former CIA counterterrorism officer who has been involved with renditions
<br>
and supports the practice. "We would say, 'Where do you want us to
take <br>
these people?' The mind-set of the bureaucracy was, 'Let someone else do
the <br>
dirty work.' "<br><br>
The story of the Gulfstream V offers a rare glimpse into the CIA's secret
<br>
operations, a world that current and former CIA officers said should not
<br>
have been so easy to document.<br><br>
Not only have the plane's movements been tracked around the world, but
the <br>
on-paper officers of Premier Executive Transport Services are also
connected <br>
to a larger roster of false identities.<br><br>
Each of the officers of Premier Executive is linked in public records to
one <br>
of five post office box numbers in Arlington, Oakton, Chevy Chase and the
<br>
District. A total of 325 names are registered to the five post office
boxes.<br><br>
An extensive database search of a sample of 44 of those names turned up
none <br>
of the information that usually emerges in such a search: no previous
<br>
addresses, no past or current telephone numbers, no business or corporate
<br>
records. In addition, although most names were attached to dates of birth
in <br>
the 1940s, '50s or '60s, all were given Social Security numbers between
1998 <br>
and 2003.<br><br>
The Washington Post showed its research to the CIA, including a chart
<br>
connecting Premier Executive's officers, the post office boxes, the 325
<br>
names, the recent Social Security numbers and an entity called Executive
<br>
Support OFC. A CIA spokesman declined to comment.<br><br>
According to former CIA operatives experienced in using
"proprietary," or <br>
front, companies, the CIA likely used, or intended to use, some of the
325 <br>
names to hide other activities, the nature of which could not be learned.
<br>
The former operatives also noted that the agency devotes more effort to
<br>
producing cover identities for its operatives in the field, which are
<br>
supposed to stand up under scrutiny, than to hiding its ownership of a
<br>
plane.<br><br>
The CIA's plane secret began to unravel less than six weeks after the
Sept. <br>
11, 2001, attacks.<br><br>
On Oct. 26, 2001, Masood Anwar, a Pakistani journalist with the News in
<br>
Islamabad, broke a story asserting that Pakistani intelligence officers
had <br>
handed over to U.S. authorities a Yemeni microbiologist, Jamil Qasim
Saeed <br>
Mohammed, who was wanted in connection with the October 2000 bombing of
the <br>
USS Cole.<br><br>
The report noted that an aircraft bearing tail number N379P, and parked
in a <br>
remote area of a little-used terminal at the Karachi airport, had whisked
<br>
Mohammed away about 2:40 a.m. Oct. 23. The tail number was also obtained
by <br>
The Post's correspondent in Pakistan but not published.<br><br>
The News article ricocheted among spy-hunters and Web bloggers as a
<br>
curiosity for those interested in divining the mechanics of the new
<br>
U.S.-declared war on terrorism.<br><br>
At 7:54:04 p.m. Oct. 26, the News article was posted on FreeRepublic.com,
<br>
which bills itself as "a conservative news forum."<br>
Thirteen minutes later, a chat-room participant posted the plane's <br>
registered owners: Premier Executive Transport Services Inc., of 339
<br>
Washington St., Dedham, Mass.<br><br>
"Sounds like a nice generic name," one blogger wrote in
response. "Kind of <br>
like Air America" -- a reference to the CIA's secret civilian
airlines that <br>
flew supplies, food and personnel into Southeast Asia, including Laos,
<br>
during the Vietnam War.<br><br>
Eight weeks later, on Dec. 18, 2001, American-accented men wearing hoods
and <br>
working with special Swedish security police brought two Egyptian
nationals <br>
onto a Gulfstream V that was parked at night at Stockholm's Bromma
Airport, <br>
according to Swedish officials and airport personnel interviewed by
Swedish <br>
television's "Cold Facts" program. The account was confirmed
independently <br>
by The Post. The plane's tail number: N379P.<br><br>
Wearing red overalls and bound with handcuffs and leg irons, the men, who
<br>
had applied for political asylum in Sweden, were flown to Cairo,
according <br>
to Swedish officials and documents. Ahmed Agiza was convicted by Egypt's
<br>
Supreme Military Court of terrorism-related charges; Muhammad Zery was
set <br>
free. Both say they were tortured while in Egyptian custody. Sweden has
<br>
opened an investigation into the decision to allow them to be
rendered.<br><br>
A month later, in January 2002, a U.S.-registered Gulfstream V landed at
<br>
Jakarta's military airport. According to Indonesian officials, the plane
<br>
carried away Muhammad Saad Iqbal Madni, an Egyptian traveling on a
Pakistani <br>
passport and suspected of being an al Qaeda operative who had worked with
<br>
shoe bomber suspect Richard C. Reid. Without a hearing, he was flown to
<br>
Egypt. His status and whereabouts are unknown. The plane's tail number
was <br>
not noted, but the CIA is believed to have only one of the expensive
jets.<br><br>
Over the past year, the Gulfstream V's flights have been tracked by plane
<br>
spotters standing at the end of runways with high-powered binoculars and
<br>
cameras to record the flights of military and private aircraft.<br><br>
These hobbyists list their findings on specialized Web pages. According
to <br>
them, since October 2001 the plane has landed in Islamabad; Karachi;
Riyadh, <br>
Saudi Arabia; Dubai; Tashkent, Uzbekistan; Baghdad; Kuwait City; Baku,
<br>
Azerbaijan; and Rabat, Morocco. It has stopped frequently at Dulles
<br>
International Airport, at Jordan's military airport in Amman and at
airports <br>
in Frankfurt, Germany; Glasglow, Scotland, and Larnaca, Cyprus.<br><br>
Premier Executive Transport Services was incorporated in Delaware by the
<br>
Prentice-Hall Corporation System Inc. on Jan. 10, 1994. On Jan. 23, 1996,
<br>
Dean Plakias, a lawyer with Hill & Plakias in Dedham, filed
incorporation <br>
papers with the Commonwealth of Massachusetts listing the company's
<br>
president as Bryan P. Dyess.<br><br>
According to public documents, Premier Executive ordered a new Gulfstream
V <br>
in 1998. It was delivered in November 1999 with tail number N581GA, and
<br>
reregistered for unknown reasons on March 2000 with a new tail number,
<br>
N379P. It began flights in June 2000, and changed the tail number again
in <br>
December 2003.<br><br>
Plakias did not return several telephone messages seeking comment. He
told <br>
the Boston Globe recently that he simply filed the required paperwork.
"I'm <br>
not at liberty to discuss the affairs of the client business, mainly for
<br>
reasons I don't know," he told the Globe. Asked whether the company
exists, <br>
Plakias responded: "Millions of companies are set up in
Massachusetts that <br>
are just paper companies."<br><br>
A lawyer in Washington, whose name is listed on a 1996 IRS form on record
at <br>
the Secretary of the Commonwealth's office in Massachusetts -- and whose
<br>
name is whited out on some copies of the forms -- hung up the phone last
<br>
week when asked about the company.<br><br>
Three weeks ago, on Dec. 1, the plane, complete with a new tail number,
was <br>
transferred to a new owner, Bayard Foreign Marketing of Portland, Ore.,
<br>
according to FAA records. Its registered agent in Portland, Scott Caplan,
<br>
did not return phone calls.<br><br>
Like the officers at Premier Executive, Bayard's sole listed corporate
<br>
officer, Leonard T. Bayard, has no residential or telephone history.
Unlike <br>
Premier's officers, Bayard's name does not appear in any other public
<br>
records.<br><br>
[Researchers Margot Williams and Julie Tate contributed to this report.
<br>
Williams has since left The Washington Post. ]<br><br>
<br>
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