(CNSNews.com) - As both houses of Congress consider legislation aimed at ending the practice of detaining terrorism suspects in foreign countries -- commonly called "rendition" -- a former Central Intelligence Agency official who helped establish that process said its opponents are "woefully uninformed."

Michael Scheuer, who until last November was a senior official with the CIA, told Cybercast News Service he considers the bills introduced to outlaw rendition "nonsense" and said that the lawmakers sponsoring them were "either woefully uninformed, or they're horses' a****."

Massachusetts Democratic Congressman Ed Markey's effort to ban rendition advanced in the House last week when he was able to amend the bill earmarking an extra $82 billion for the military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. Markey's amendment prohibits the Bush administration from using any of the $82 billion for purposes involving rendition.

Markey said there are growing reports of the United States sending detainees to countries "where they are likely to face torture," including Syria, Uzbekistan, Egypt and other countries "notorious for human rights violations."

"Throughout United States history, we have been the world's moral and political leader," Markey added. "We cannot have Syria dictating what the standards are for our country. We cannot take prisoners within our control, put them on planes and have them flown to other countries, where whatever standards exist in that country dictate whether or not and what kind of torture will be engaged in."

Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and Human Rights First issued a joint statement supporting the Markey amendment, which was tacked on to the supplemental appropriations bill by an overwhelming vote -- 420-2 -- before the entire appropriations bill passed.

"Today, we moved one step closer to ending the U.S. practice of 'outsourcing torture,'" Markey said, adding that passage of his amendment "is just the beginning. We are not going to stop until we have closed the hypocritical chapter in American history where we participate in torture by proxy."

Markey is the author of the Torture Outsourcing Prevention Act, which would ban rendition by the entire U.S. government.

Vermont Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, later in the week introduced the Convention Against Torture Implementation Act. It would prohibit the transfer of individuals in United States custody or control to countries known to engage in torture and would also require the State Department to annually produce a list of countries where torture is known to occur.

While unveiling his measure, Leahy referred to the U.N. Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, which was signed by President Ronald Reagan and ratified by the U.S. Senate in 1994.

Article 3 of the Convention states that "no State Party shall expel, return or extradite a person to another State where there are substantial grounds for believing that he would be in danger of being subjected to torture."

"The bill that I introduce today will reaffirm our obligations under this convention and reassure the world that we are a nation committed to the rule of law," Leahy added.

'Nonsense'

However, Scheuer believes the legislative efforts by Markey and Leahy are misguided.

"I'd like those congressmen to call me up before their committees," Scheuer said, "and I'd testify under oath and ask them why they didn't care enough about protecting Americans to find a way" that would allow the CIA to take as many of America's enemies off the street as possible.

"That's my response to that kind of nonsense," he added. "I decided a long time ago that if I'm going to go to jail for defending America, I'll plead guilty. That's it."

Rep. John Hostettler (R- Ind.), chairman of the House Subcommittee on Immigration, Border Security and Claims, told Cybercast News Service that the Markey amendment was approved because it was "more of a policy statement than an indictment of this particular administration.

"If it had been an amendment that said the Bush administration has knowingly taken part in collusion to evade provisions of the Convention Against Torture," he added, "it probably would have been a very different vote.

"It's my understanding there's been no proof that our government, under the Bush administration, has knowingly taken part in trying to evade provisions of the Convention Against Torture," Hostettler said.

"Obviously, there are people who may see things differently for political purposes," he stated. "But unless there's some clear and convincing evidence to the contrary, then I would believe" President Bush and CIA Director Porter Goss, who have denied the U.S. is "outsourcing torture."

'Last resort'

Scheuer, who created the CIA's Osama bin Laden unit under the direction of the National Security Council in late 1995, said America currently finds itself in an unavoidable war with militant Islamists. It is a war, Scheuer said, in which the U.S. "cannot talk or appease its way out of; one in which our irreconcilable Islamist foes will have to be killed, an act that unavoidably will lead to innocent deaths."

While acknowledging that he has no first-hand knowledge of rendition activities since he left the bin Laden unit in June 1999, Scheuer told Cybercast News Service that he never saw any evidence that rendering a suspect to another country resulted in that person being tortured.

In fact, the program was "tremendously successful," he said. "The amount of information we received that helped us better understand al Qaeda and formulate additional operations against them was invaluable, and the simple fact that, for example, we put one of bin Laden's main procurers of weapons of mass destruction in prison is a good thing."

Scheuer, who was the "anonymous author" of the book "Imperial Hubris: Why the West Is Losing the War on Terror," added that he believes the main problem with rendition, which he called a "last resort" in the struggle against terrorism, lies with the government and not the intelligence community.

Rendition is "a government policy, not a CIA-dreamed-up mission or procedure," he said. "The CIA is a service provider. We do what we're told by the executive branch, and Congress is fully informed every step of the way through the intelligence committees."

Scheuer said the legislation to ban the procedure reminds him of the Claude Rains character in the movie "Casablanca."

"Congress is 'shocked' this is going on. They're only shocked because they're conveniently forgetting what they've been briefed about," he said.

However, he admitted that the news media is partially responsible for confusion over the issue, since it has been "widely reported, but I think not very well understood."

For example, Scheuer said he had never heard the term "extraordinary rendition" until it appeared in the press. "The lawyers called it 'rendition,' so that's what we used to say it was."

Torture and interrogation were not part of the procedure, which was created to accomplish two things, he said. "The first was to get someone off the street who was either going to plan or participate in an attack on the United States."

Second, "when that person was captured, we made sure we got anything that was with him or her in terms of documents they never expected anyone else to see -- either on paper like telephone directories, journals, diaries or memorandums; or electronic, whether it was a hard drive, a floppy disk or a palm pilot.

"Anything we got after that was gravy," Scheuer said.

"So much of this rendition pain that's going on is self-inflicted," he added. Along with what he called "whining" from human rights groups, "the whole issue was the NSC (National Security Council) trying to be too clever by half. Instead of using tools available to the American government, they went ahead and asked us to design a program that obviously was not absolutely consonant with American procedures.

Nevertheless, Scheuer said he believes "America is better protected because of renditions and the men and women of the CIA who risk their lives to arrange this procedure. Worrying about the tail number of the plane being used is kind of irrelevant, I think."

See Earlier Story:
'Outsourcing Torture' Condemned by Dems, Activists (March 11, 2005)

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