The CIA’s Enhanced Interrogation Techniques (EIT) program

In doing research for my new spy novel The Shadow War, I looked up the CIA’s ownership of aircraft and airlines. I found out that CIA operatives fly on commercial, military, and private aircraft, depending on the circumstances. The Agency owns at least twenty-six airplanes, and 10 of them were purchased since 9/11. What was amazing to me was how it concealed its ownership of planes and airlines behind a web of seven shell corporations that appear to have no employees and no function apart from owning the aircraft.

The CIA maintains airlines under the following front organizations: Aero Contractors (United States), Air America (We’ve all heard of this one!), Air Asia (Taiwan), American Committee for Cultural Freedom, American Committee for the Liberation of the Peoples of Russia, American Committee on United Europe, and Arizona Helicopters.

In the first episode of The Shadow War, entitled Invisible Killer, CIA spymaster Corey Pearson flies privately instead of commercial (explained in the story) on a CIA plane that was previously used as a rendition plane.

I found some interesting info on the CIA’s torture program, called the “Enhanced Interrogation Techniques” (EIT) program. For example, since 2001 until the program ended, Jeppesen Dataplan, Inc., a subsidiary of Boeing, the world’s largest aerospace company, provided direct flight assistance for the EIT program for undisclosed fees.

During one clandestine assignment, Jeppesen flew Binyam Mohamed, Abou Elkassim Britel and Ahmed Agiza, to secret overseas locations where they were subjected to torture. It also assisted in the transport of German citizen Khaled El-Masri.

Jeppesen is based in San Jose, CA, and facilitated in over 70 secret rendition flights over a four-year period to countries where it knew that detainees are routinely tortured. A senior Jeppesen official had stated during a board meeting: “We do all of the extraordinary rendition flights — you know, the torture flights. Let’s face it, some of these flights end up that way.”

Robert Morton is a member of the Association of Former Intelligence Officers (AFIO) and enjoys writing about the U.S. Intelligence Community in his Corey Pearson- CIA Spymaster series. Read his newest spy thriller The Shadow War, episode by episode, as he writes it in the new Kindle Vella program.