Fly the unfriendly skies

Washington DC Pajamas Media editor Richard Miniter reviews “Ghost Plane: The True Story of the CIA Torture Program by Stephen Grey, a London-based journalist for the New York Times.

What is not in Grey’s book is even more explosive – and may damage Hillary Clinton more than George Bush. It is revealed here for the first time.

I spoke with Grey this weekend. He revealed that the CIA’s ability to covertly transport terrorists – a process known as rendition – has been hobbled by boneheaded legal restrictions and laughably poor spycraft. These legal restrictions were imposed during the Clinton era but never lifted by President Bush.

“One CIA pilot told me that in the mid 1990s, when Clinton was president, that the lawyers began to take over. Previously, they used to take CIA planes into hangars all the time, re-spray them, and come out with a different tail number. That way none of the tracing of CIA planes I’ve been doing since 9/11 would have been possible. The idea of flying around with one tail number for three years would have been thought completely nuts,” Grey told me. “But [Clinton-era] lawyers said they needed to stay legal. They even insisted that, to comply with FAA regulations, they needed stewardesses.”

Yes, stewardesses on CIA planes.

As they say, read the whole thing.