Private firms provided international flights for U.S. officials, including to Guantanamo Bay. CIA secrets revealed in N.Y. court

Secret details of the Central Intelligence Agency’s foreign rendition programs — airlifting terrorism suspects around the world via a network of private companies — were revealed in a small courtroom from a tiny county in upstate New York.

Closely guarded information on the CIA program was brought out in the sparsely populated Columbia County not far from Albany, where few people were likely to be in attendance.


The secrets were revealed during a case involving two aviation firms involved in the CIA’s extraordinary rendition program, the Associated Press reported. A New York-based charter flights company, Richmor Aviation Inc., is engaged in legal wrangling over fees with a private aviation broker, SportsFlight Air.

The international human rights group, Reprieve, discovered the court case in New York, and brought it to the attention of the media.

At issue is the $874,000 awarded to Richmor by a New York State appeals court to cover unpaid costs for the secret flights. Richmor claims that it has still not been paid in full and that SportsFlight owes more than $1.15 million for at least 55 flights chartered for government use.

In the process, airport invoices, contracts, cell phone logs, correspondence and other information became public information in an out-of-the-way courtroom.

According to records between 2002 and 2005, private firms provided flights for U.S. officials between Washington Dulles International Airport to a host of other international destinations, including Guantanamo Bay and other airports near where CIA “black sites” are known to be operated, such as Kabul, Bangkok and Bucharest. Those traveling on these flights carried State Department transit letters that provided diplomatic cover for those on board.

Billing records revealed during the case show that these flights involved a large number of people: baggage handlers, ramp officials, car providers, satellite and flight phone companies, hotel employees and caterers who were shown to have routinely serviced the flights at the cost of tens of thousands of dollars.

The Council of Europe estimated in 2007 that 1,245 CIA-operated flights passed over the continent, but the full number of extraordinary rendition flights is still unknown.