CIA-EU: Frustrations of an investigator

On January 22nd, a second report (PDF-file at the CoE website) on the CIA violations of international and national jurisdictions in Europe, was published by Council of Europe investigator and rapporteur Dick Marty. The German weekly Der Spiegel (in its online-edition dated January 25, 2006) provided a good summary of the findings. It explains the frustrations of the Swiss Liberal Democrat investigator, who, at first formally encouraged by all governments concerned, soon found himself to be rebuffed by the same, as soon as it came to handing over information (CIA-Affäre: Notizen eines frustrierten Ermittlers - SPIEGEL ONLINE).
In spite of all this, nongovernmental persons and institutions came spontaneously up with new information, confirming existing suspicions. In this second report, Marty uses a very candid idiom. Here are two of the more than hundred paragraphs:

a. Awareness of Council of Europe member states?

66. "Rendition" affecting Europe seems to have concerned more than a hundred persons in recent years13. Hundreds of CIA-chartered flights have passed through numerous European countries14. It is highly unlikely that European governments, or at least their intelligence services, were unaware. And a number of revelations have already been published by the press, especially in America, over the past few years. It is, to say the least, curious that media interest, especially in Europe, suddenly surged after the article in The Washington Post in early November 2005.

67. The statements made by Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, during and before her European visit of December 2005, and by her predecessor, Colin Powell, who said that the US had always respected the national sovereignty of its allies, are taken by some as both a reprimand and a warning: “stop being hypocritical”, and “do you really want us to say what happened?”.

In my latest comment on this affair in this Blog ("The embarrassment of Stitches", Jan. 17, 2006), I denounced what I think the American tactics are in this affair. In a way of exit-strategy and/or damage control, American Services "leak" intentionally facts and indications, that European Governments knew, even cooperated actively, so as to warn them what would happen, if they condone further attacking of American antiterrorist policies and practices.

That explains a good deal of the door-closing that is now going on. Another apparently intended effect is getting the governments to quarrel among each other and with the international European institutions that push forward the inquiries. From the US point of view, this is a welcome side-effect, for it may well generate new obstacles to European cooperation in the fields of foreign policy, military, justice and police.

I'm unable to see, how this might help to strengthen the international struggle against terrorism, the often declared "absolute priority" of the Bush policies.

There is a great risk, that the CoE investigation and the new European Parliament (a special 46-member commission) initiative will get stuck in a quagmire of unproven denunciations, manipulations from all sides, resulting in another proof of their irrelevance and impotency.