Europe Turns a Blind Eye to the CIA - by Tony Wesolowsky
Thirteen members of an E.U. Parliament probe arrived in Washington on May 10, seeking answers to allegations of CIA-operated secret flights and prisons in Europe. A reported 1,000 CIA flights have secretly crisscrossed Europe since 9/11, often transporting “terror suspects” to be interrogated in other countries, such as Egypt, where prisoners are routinely tortured.
But when the Europeans came calling at the nation’s capital, only low-level administration officials and four members of Congress (all Democrats) met with them face-to-face. Stonewalling from the Bush administration should be no surprise, but European government officials haven’t been any more forthcoming. Javier Solana, the E.U.’s foreign policy chief, told the E.U. Parliament, “I have no information whatsoever that tells me with certainty that any of the accusations, allegations, rumors that have taken place in the last year’s time are true.”
Daniele Ganser, author of NATO’s Secret Armies: Operation Gladio and Terrorism in Western Europe, says European leaders are silent for a reason. “The European and the U.S. intelligence communities are mutually dependent on each other. The rendition programs of the CIA are not being openly criticized by the E.U. intelligence community because the E.U. countries fear that the U.S. will cease to share information.” Just what type of “cooperation” European intelligence agencies are providing to the CIA at the CTICs is, like everything with the spy agency, murky.
“The history of what the CIA did in Europe since its creation in 1947 is almost completely unknown,” says Ganser. “It’s a black spot in people’s memory.”
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