WASHINGTON — A hidden network of U.S. companies, coordinated by a prominent defense contractor, played a key role in the covert airlift that transported terrorism suspects and their American minders, according to newly disclosed documents in a New York business dispute between two aviation companies.
The court files of more than 1,700 pages shed new light on the U.S. government’s reliance on private contractors for flights between Washington, foreign capitals, the U.S. military base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and, at times, landing points near once-secret CIA-run overseas prisons. The companies included DynCorp, a leading government contractor that secretly oversaw a fleet of luxury jets, and caterers that unwittingly stocked the planes with fruit platters and bottles of wine for the transoceanic routes, according to the court files and testimony.
Fighting over $874,000
The business dispute stems from an obscure four-year fight between a New York-based charter company, Richmor Aviation Inc., which supplied corporate jets and crews to the government, and a private aviation broker, SportsFlight Air, which organized flights for DynCorp. Both sides cited the government’s program of forced transport of detainees, or “extraordinary rendition,” in testimony, evidence and legal arguments. The companies are fighting over $874,000 awarded to Richmor by a New York state appeals court to cover unpaid costs for the secret flights.
The court files — they include contracts, flight invoices, cellphone logs and correspondence — paint a sweeping portrait of collusion between the government and the private contractors that did its bidding — some eagerly, some hesitantly. Others turned a blind eye.
Among the new disclosures:
• DynCorp, which was reorganized and split up between another major contractor and a separate firm now known as DynCorp International, functioned as the primary contractor over the airlift. The company had not been previously linked to the secret flights.
• Airport invoices and other commercial records provide a new paper trail for the movements of some high-value terrorism suspects who vanished into the CIA “black site” prisons, along with government operatives who rushed to the scenes of their capture. The records include flight itineraries closely coordinated with the arrest of accused 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed and the suspected transport of other captives.
• The private jets were furnished with State Department transit letters providing diplomatic cover for their flights. Former top State Department officials said similar arrangements aided other government-leased flights.
• The private business jets shuttled among as many as 10 landings over a single mission, costing the government as much as $300,000 per flight.
Lucrative business
Some flights landed at airports near where CIA black sites operated — Kabul, Bangkok and Bucharest, Romania. Others touched down at foreign outposts where obliging security services reportedly took in U.S. terror detainees for their own severe brand of persuasion — Cairo; Damascus, Syria; Amman, Jordan; and Rabat, Morocco. Billing records show scores of baggage handlers, ramp officials, van and car providers, satellite and flight phone firms, hotels and caterers routinely serviced the flights and crews and earned tens of thousands of dollars.
The court records do not specify who was aboard the planes beyond a count of crew and passengers. But in several cases, the flights dovetail with the arrests and transport of some of the most prominent accused terrorism suspects after 9/11: Mohammed, the purported mastermind, and Ramzi bin Alshib, his key logistics man; Abd al-Nashiri, who allegedly planned the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole; and Riduan Issamuddin, the Indonesian terrorist leader who is known as Hambali and is tied to the 2002 bombing of a Bali nightclub.
The detainees all vanished into the CIA’s now-shuttered “black site” prison network and all are now at Guantanamo awaiting military trials. The international human-rights group, Reprieve, which discovered the court case in New York, said the material provides “an unprecedented insight into the government’s outsourcing of torture.” A CIA spokeswoman said the agency does not comment on pending litigation.
