Rendition, and the CIA's Italian Job

What could leaked State Department cables tell us about a CIA kidnapping in Milan and other extraordinary renditions?

Dec. 13, 2010 - Among the hundreds of diplomatic cables released by Wikileaks in recent weeks were a number pertaining to extraordinary rendition—the practice of effectively kinapping a suspected terrorist in one country and transporting him to another, usually Arab, nation for interrogation that almost invariably invovles torture. Most of the time, renditions happen quietly; CIA operatives swoop in and out and no one's the wiser. Then came the February 2003 kidnapping of a cleric named Abu Omar in Milan, Italy. The operation was bungled (the American operatives used unencrypted, trackable cell phones, for starters), and, in a major embarassment to the US, the 23 CIA agents involved were eventually tried by an Italian court. In 2009, they were convicted in absentia of violating Italian law. (Peter Bergen wrote about the case, and interviewed Abu Omar himself, for the March/April 2008 issue of Mother Jones.) Recently, I spoke to Steve Hendricks, a freelance journalist and author whose most recent work is the just-released A Kidnapping in Milan: The CIA on Trial, about Abu Omar, renditions, and the impact of the Wikileaks disclosures. Here's an edited transcript of our conversation. (In some cases, I've expanded my original questions to provide additional context): {continued}