The Moderate Voice applauds weblogs that do original blog reporting. Most weblogs are basically extended op-ed sites where writers comment on news stories written by the mainstream media, commentaries appearing in newspapers, or on other posts by other weblog writers. But some blog writers take advantage of the incredible potential of weblog technology by truly becoming “citizen journalists” (versus citizen op-ed writers or citizen cyberspace screaming talk show hosts).
Once again The Talking Dog has an original interview that needs to be read in full — yet another in TTD’s series of original interviews pegged to the war on terror. As usual, we’ll give you the intro and one key quote — and urge you to read it in full:
Stephen Grey is an award-winning investigative journalist, based in London, who has contributed to the New York Times, 60 Minutes, CNN, Newsweek, the BBC and many international publications. He is the author of “Ghost Plane: The True Story of the CIA Torture Program”. On January 19, 2006, I had the privilege of speaking to Mr. Grey by telephone. What follows are my interiew notes as corrected by Mr. Grey.
An excerpt 4 U:
The Talking Dog: Do you have an impression of something bigger than even the extraordinary rendition program (and places like Cairo, Bucharest, Amman, Rabat, Guantanamo Bay, Baghdad, Kabul and so forth, as well as Europe and the US) from your viewings of the flight logs (I note, for example, that the planes’ destinations included such places as Tel Aviv, New Delhi, Djibouti, Algiers, Nairobi, Mauritania, Libya, Brasilia, Moscow, Fiji, Ethiopia and Sudan). Some are presumably fuel stops, for example, and others involve flights that presumably have nothing to do with the rendition program; but is there anything more solid about any of the others (Libya and Sudan in particular)? Is the extraordinary rendition program bigger than any of us imagine?
Stephen Grey: These locations show us that the movement of these planes is a CIA operation. The planes visit places like Camp Peary, or “the farm”, the CIA’s training base. They also visit Guantanamo, Kabul, Cairo… even Iran… they fit a pattern. At other times when not involved in renditions, the planes ferried intelligence chiefs around, such as those from Sudan, not to mention taking interrogators TO Guantanamo, such as from Libya. At this point, there are clearly a lot of people who are missing and who have not yet been track down; some of them may well relate to still unknown renditions.As to the planes visiting Tel Aviv, you will notice that they always go via Cyprus, lest they offend the sensibilities of the Arab governments from countries they have just come from. But certainly, the logs of the planes’ movements gives us an overview of current action, and rendition is only a part of this. Many more details are yet to emerge. For example, these planes were observed in Venezuela at the time there was talk of a CIA led coup planned against Hugo Chavez. So we don’t necessarily know the full scope. I published the planes’ flight logs in the hope that others may dig in and uncover further details of this story.
Read this fascinating interview in full.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.