Ex-CIA chief: Rendition flights put allies in difficult position

The former head of CIA covert operations in Europe admitted last night that "extraordinary rendition" -- the practice of transferring detainees to camps, including Guantánamo Bay, where they risked being tortured -- had caused serious problems for America's allies. Tyler Drumheller, who was in charge of the CIA's clandestine activities in Europe until 2005, said: "We have put our allies in a very difficult position." He said the way the issue of rendition flights was handled was one of the reasons he resigned. He told BBC2's Mystery Flights program last night that it affected "the willingness of other countries to work with us - the intelligence services and police forces of other countries we go to." He said: "It makes it difficult even if those countries do want to help us... because there's all this bad publicity and they're at risk of violating their own laws and that sort of thing." Asked where the buck stopped, Drumheller replied: "The president's the president.... I blame the administration for creating an atmosphere of... rage and vengeance." He continued: "The people up the line need to have responsibility for what happened ... They wanted to draw a line so that there was no direct line from what happened to their authority and that's not right." Asked if he was referring to "deniability," he replied: "Deniability, to put it in plain English, yeah." Sir Richard Dearlove, the former head of MI6, said in little-noted remarks at a conference in Aspen, Colorado, last year, that CIA rendition flights "would have been illegal under British common law." The British government has admitted that aircraft suspected of being used for "extraordinary rendition" have passed through British airports on 73 occasions since 2001. Andrew Tyrie, chairman of the Commons all-party group on extraordinary rendition, said yesterday: "The program raises important issues that need to be followed up. If the man who was in charge of renditions in Europe is saying the US put allies, including the UK, in a difficult position, why is the government not prepared to admit this too? Were it the case that the US has conducted renditions without the knowledge or consent of the British government, there would be cause for particularly grave concern."