A CIA Man Speaks His Mind on Secret Abductions

Could saying “I’m sorry” save the CIA from a public perdition in the war on terror?

It was an idea that flitted through a revealing and sometimes even bizarre hearing last week on the Bush administration’s “extraordinary renditions” program, which uses “extra-judicial” means to sweep al Qaeda suspects off the street.

Along the way, the panel’s top Republican suggested that President Bush had “a personality problem”; a top former CIA officer said that renowned FBI agent John O’Neill deserved to die at the World Trade Center; and a one-time U.S. diplomat disrupted the proceedings by jumping up and saying, “I don’t have to stand for this.”

But the immediate focus of the April 17 joint hearing of two House Foreign Affairs committees was a report by the European Parliament that labeled the CIA’s abduction program illegal and alleged that torture was being applied inside an archipelago of secret prisons across the continent.

Not even John O’Neill, the late, legendary FBI counterterrorism agent who died in the World Trade Center inferno, escaped one of Scheuer’s shots.

Delahunt reminded Scheuer that the CIA man had once said O’Neill “was interested only in furthering his career and disguising the rank incompetence of senior FBI leaders.”

“Yes, sir,” said Scheuer, peering back through light-reflecting glasses.

“I think I also said that the only good thing that happened to America on 11 September,” he said, “is that the building fell on him, sir.”

And with that, the room for once fell silent.