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Six days after 9/11, President Bush signed a secret Memorandum of Notification (MON) informing Tenet that his CIA was now authorized to apprehend terror suspects anywhere in the world and interrogate them, indefinitely, in off-the-books prisons. The memo was a triumph of arrogance over values. The administration empowered itself to violate any border, friend or foe, and ignore the rule of law. A top secret report described the Memorandum of Notification as “one of the most sensitive activities ever undertaken by the CIA...” The president’s notification specified that suspects to be abducted “must pose a continuing, serious threat of violence or death to US persons and interests” or “must be planning terrorist activities.”1 No independent judge was making that determination. No suspect was allowed to ask a court to examine the facts and legality of his detention. Since “abduction” carried an unfortunate connotation, this procedure was named “rendition.” People who might have information about terrorism were snatched off streets, shackled to the floor of a CIA plane and “rendered” to black site prisons. The Salt Pit in Afghanistan was one such prison. Another was set up in Poland, another in Thailand. It’s likely there were others.
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Scott Pelley (Truth Worth Telling: A Reporter's Search for Meaning in the Stories of Our Times)