Ghost Plane: Unmasking the CIA's Torture Program

Ghost Plane: the true story of the CIA torture program by Stephen Grey is very
informative of the various ways the CIA and other countries tortured terrorist suspects.
This book was published in New York in 2006 by St. Martin’s Press. The author,
Stephen Grey, is a British investigative journalist who has reported for several
publications. He was born in Rotterdam, Netherlands in 1968. Grey studied
philosophy, economics, and politics at Oxford University. He started his career with
Eastern Daily Press in England. At the Sunday Times, Stephen Grey was a South Asia
correspondent and a Europe correspondent. The New York Times, The Guardian, BBC
Television’s “Newsnight,” PBS, and ABC News are a few of the publications he has
contributed to. He has written two books, Ghost Plane

and Operation Snakebite.
Stephen Grey mainly reports on the CIA’s rendition program. Grey has received the
Overseas Press Club Award for human rights reporting and the Kurt Shork Award for
International Reporting.
Ghost Plane describes the tactics used by the government to obtain information
from terrorist suspects. Stephen Grey uses interviews from both former prisoners and
former government officials to help reveal the rendition program used by the CIA. The
term rendition is defined as the government sending prisoners, especially those being
accused of terrorism, to other countries, like Egypt and Syria, for interrogation. The
anti-torture statute is a law that prohibited torture and conspiracy of torture by U.S.
officers including the CIA. Torture is “an act specifically intended to inflict severe
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physical and mental pain or suffering upon another person within his custody or physical
control.” This statute is the reason for sending the prisoners to other countries where
the CIA knew they would be interrogated by the use of torture. Some of the tactics used
were waterboarding, or the simulation of drowning or suffocating, making them stand for
long periods of time, sleep deprivation, and taking pictures of them naked. They also
threatened them with a 9mm pistols, poured phosphoric liquid on them, and used
military dogs for intimidation.
Grey references the book 1984 by George Orwell several times throughout
Ghost Plane. He compared the way Big Brother tortured people in Room 101 to the
way the detainees were tortured in the prisons they were sent to by the CIA. Just like
Big Brother, the CIA used the suspect’s worst fear to get confessions. Government
officials in different countries made people “disappear” for several months like the
Thought Police did in 1984. The prison cells were a key part in both books. In 1984,
the cells were so dark that they were unable to determine what time of day it was, which
caused them to become sleep deprived.

In Ghost Plane, the cells also caused sleep
deprivation because they were extremely small. The cells were only three feet wide,
seven feet tall, and six feet long and this made it very hard to lie down to sleep.
Another book Stephen Grey used as a comparison was Alice and Wonderland.
He said that walking into one of the prisons was like going into a different world just like
Alice falling down the rabbit hole and ending up in a strange new world that no one
knows existed. Sometimes the torture would take place in houses that people would
think are just normal homes, but in reality it is far from a home. It is a completely
different world behind that front door.
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With the rendition program, some mistakes were made. One man named Khaled
el-Masri was taken from Macedonia because government officials thought they seen his
name on the terror watch list. El-Masri’s family did not see or hear from him for eight
months while he was in a prison in Egypt to be “interrogated.” When they finally
released him, the United States admitted the reason he was kidnapped was

because
his name was similar to Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, whose name was on the watch list
for plotting 9/11. Another reason why they arrested him was because he attended a
radical mosque where the leader had anti-Western sermons and one of his best friends
was a huge supporter of Islamic jihad. When he returned to Germany, the guard at the
boarder checked his passport and at first, thought the picture wasn’t him because his
hair had grown and he had lost so much weight that he did not look like himself. While
he was imprisoned, he went on a hunger strike. Khaled had to take a promise of
silence so people would not find out about this huge mistake.
Stephen Grey uses excellent descriptions of the how the prisoners were
transported to the prisons in foreign countries. The Gulfstream V and Boeing 737 are
just two types of planes used by the CIA for extraordinary renditions. These planes are
considered luxury executive jets. Most of the planes were from a small airport in
Smithfield, North Carolina which is a small town in Johnston County. He researched
several flight logs to determine the planes that were used for the CIA’s secret program.
Grey found out that the same planes were making many trips to and from cities such as
Kabul, Cairo, Afghanistan, and Damascus where prisoners were being held. When the
terrorist suspects arrived to the various prisons, the CIA did not tell the foreign
interrogators how to treat them. This allowed for the interrogators and guards to use
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methods of torture against the prisoners to obtain information about Islamic extremist
groups such as Al Qaeda.
Most people will confess to anything when they are being torture which can lead
to an innocent person being prosecuted if the information they give is false. Illegally
obtain evidence is not allowed to be used against a person in court therefore the
confessions that actual terrorists, like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, make cannot be used
against them. Khalid’s confession could not be used because he claimed to be tortured
by the use of simulated drowning. Also causing false information is other countries
interrogating the suspects allowing them to change the information they actually give
the United States.
The book fits into the real world because it is about how terrorist suspects are
treated by the United States government after September 11, 2001. Since George W.
Bush declared a war on terrorism, the nation has been solely focused on ending
something that probably does not have an end. The West believed the best strategy to
use against terrorism was isolation. After ten years of fighting Al Qaeda, there have
been debates on whether or not the West’s decision of isolation was the best idea.
There have been several terrorist attacks in the United States and its Allies after 9/11,
such as the Boston Marathon, San Bernardino, and the attack at the concert in France.
Stephen Grey believes that extraordinary rendition plays an important role in the
war on terror. He also believes that the CIA’s actions had positive intentions. Even
though some suspects may be tortured, the CIA’s rendition program has put many
terrorists away for life. I agree that the rendition program helped to capture many
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terrorists, but I also think that the government should be careful in what they do, so they
don’t make mistakes like getting Khaled el-Masri instead of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.
There are many different ways to torture someone. Some ways are more subtle than
others. I believe that extreme measures of torture should never be allowed because
most of the time it will not accomplish much. In other cases, I think interrogators need
to have some way to make people talk. The United States government still has a lot of
secrets about the way they fight the war on terror that they do not tell the American
Citizens about. Everyone has a different opinion on how the government should handle
terrorists, especially if they have lost a loved one to a terror attack.