Jaunted

Tags: Travel Media / The New Yorker / Crime / → All Tags

C.I.A. Flight Crews Party in Majorca

...and on your dime, Americans. The New Yorker reports that Jeppesen International Trip Planning, a Boeing subsidiary listed on the Boeing website, plays travel agent to the C.I.A. And we're not talking standard, quaint business trips here. Jeppesen organizes terrorist extradition flights for the Agency, ones on which suspects are supposedly tortured. According to Khaled el-Masri, a German who was mistaken for a terrorist on that infamous watchlist, he was stripped naked and shackled on a Boeing jet suspected to be operated by Jeppesen.

A former Jeppesen worker tells The New Yorker that the company's managing director once announced at a meeting, "We do all of the extraordinary rendition flights--you know, the torture flights." The employee goes on to say how higher-ups at Jeppesen explained to him the C.I.A.'s policy on lavish clandestine travel: they spare no expense on "the torture flights" and drop dollars like it's going out of style.

Of course, while prisoners languish in jails in Kabul, their American flight crews have got to rest somewhere on the way home. They take lavish stopovers in Majorca, where the crew from Masri's flight rested for two days at a luxury resort thanks to taxpayers' money. That means in theory, telling check-in agents that you have a terrorist in your custody should totally get you a seat upgrade, and perhaps a hotel voucher. In practice, we still wouldn't recommend that, however.

[Photo: Sarah <3]

Related Stories:
· The C.I.A.'s Travel Agent [New Yorker]