Air America lives... (and it can't be good...)

i flew on air america (the c.i.a.-run airline that operated during the vietnam era) several times from danang to hue... i remember it was a "stol" (short take-off and landing), single-engine aircraft with a stick rather than the more common handle-grip wheel... i also remember quite vividly that, on one of the flights, the pilot carried a hip flask full of whiskey...

When the Central Intelligence Agency wants to grab a suspected member of Al Qaeda overseas and deliver him to interrogators in another country, an Aero Contractors plane often does the job.

(more)

[...]

Behind a surprisingly thin cover of rural hideaways, front companies and shell corporations that share officers who appear to exist only on paper, the C.I.A. has rapidly expanded its air operations since 2001 as it has pursued and questioned terrorism suspects around the world.

An analysis of thousands of flight records, aircraft registrations and corporate documents, as well as interviews with former C.I.A. officers and pilots, show that the agency owns at least 26 planes, 10 of them purchased since 2001. The agency has concealed its ownership behind a web of seven shell corporations that appear to have no employees and no function apart from owning the aircraft.

[...]

[T]he C.I.A. planes have been used for carrying out renditions, the legal term for the agency's practice of seizing terrorism suspects in one foreign country and delivering them to be detained in another, including countries that routinely engage in torture. The resulting controversy has breached the secrecy of the agency's flights in the last two years, as plane-spotting hobbyists, activists and journalists in a dozen countries have tracked the mysterious planes' movements.

as something of a plane-spotter myself, all i have to say is, "you go, guys...! track them babies...! if the administration won't give us transparency (see previous post), we'll go for it ourselves...

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