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NY Billing Dispute Reveals Details of Secret CIA Rendition Flights
On Aug. 12, 2003, a Gulfstream IV aircraft carrying six passengers took off from Dulles International Airport and flew to Bangkok with fueling stops in Cold Bay, Alaska, and Osaka, Japan. The Gulfstream IV’s itinerary, as well as the $339,228.05 price tag for the journey, are among the details about shadowy CIA flights that have emerged in a small Upstate New York courthouse in a billing dispute between contractors. The court documents offer a rare glimpse of the costs and operations of the… (www.washingtonpost.com) Mais...Sort type: [Top] [Newest]
Richard remembers the gray helicopters; I remember the unpainted 727's that ran all over SE Asia during late 60's. They actually performed a legitimate function up our way. They made the daily freedom bird flight taking all us USAF guys from down country bases in South Korea up to Osan to get on the NORTHWEST ORIENT across the big pond. Actually rode one in 72
Interesting Article. If you do a search on airliners.net, you will not find any photos or information about that aircraft. Its' almost as though, it never existed. The only photos you will find, are of its' re-registered number of N227SV.
exactly Richard... Reasonable people can disagree on rendition, but these days people watch too many movies, or something... Now everybody thinks spying is bad.
It was before my time, but Air America is exactly what I had in mind. I just don't buy the thought that relying uncontrolled, third-party brokers is better (or more secretive) than normal looking guys flying nondescript aircraft, even if one of them jumps out at every fourth stop and changes the tail number.
Since I'm a Viet Nam era guy, I'm old enough to remember Air America. We had guys just show up at landing sites in gray helicopters, get a load of fuel and leave. Anyone who flew helicopters back in those days must remember these guys. No one questioned them. It turned into Evergreen Airlines . These were the guys who flew the Shau(sp) of Iran out of Tehran in 1979. Why did the CIA get out of the organic aviation business? Wouldn't it be cheaper and easier to avoid the whacko leftest if they could change tail numbers like Kim Kardashian changes underwear? Comeon people, we will not survive as a nation without covert operatives doing our unsavory bidding. This whole "gotcha" mentality will not serve us well.
Just the tip of the iceberg when you are dealing with govt. stupidity.
When problems came up with the broker and the charter company, why not just step in and settle it? Or charter the jet directly? Or use a USAF G-IV, repaint it if you have to...
Or buy your own jet... "expense" is a very loose concept to the government, and the CIA probably spends more than $12m on coffee filters and inkpens every year. Once you have the jet, the FAA is only a ten minute drive away so it wouldn't be hard to register it in the name of Bob Smith who's a six-foot brown-haired white guy who must have had notoriously bad handwriting because the phone number is for an elementary school and there's no 7800 block of 16th Street in that city... Cops come up with stuff better than this every day of the week.
By now it doesn't matter... everybody knows this stuff was happening and it's a politically obsolete story already. It IS hilarious, though... Leave it up to the Keystone Intelligence Agency.
Or buy your own jet... "expense" is a very loose concept to the government, and the CIA probably spends more than $12m on coffee filters and inkpens every year. Once you have the jet, the FAA is only a ten minute drive away so it wouldn't be hard to register it in the name of Bob Smith who's a six-foot brown-haired white guy who must have had notoriously bad handwriting because the phone number is for an elementary school and there's no 7800 block of 16th Street in that city... Cops come up with stuff better than this every day of the week.
By now it doesn't matter... everybody knows this stuff was happening and it's a politically obsolete story already. It IS hilarious, though... Leave it up to the Keystone Intelligence Agency.