TABLE OF CONTENTS TABLE OF CONTENTS 2 LIST OF COMMISSIONERS 4 FOREWORD Alberto Mora, Former General Counsel, Department of the Navy 6 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY A Summary of the investigation into North Carolina’s involvement in torture and rendition by the North Carolina Commission of Inquiry on Torture (NCCIT) 8 FINDINGS 12 RECOMMENDATIONS CHAPTER ONE 14 CHAPTER SIX 39 The U.S. Government’s Rendition, Detention, Ongoing Challenges for Survivors and Interrogation (RDI) Program CHAPTER SEVEN 44 CHAPTER TWO 21 Costs and Consequences of the North Carolina’s Role in Torture: CIA’s Torture and Rendition Program Hosting Aero Contractors, Ltd. CHAPTER EIGHT 50 CHAPTER THREE 26 North Carolina Public Opposition to Other North Carolina Connections the RDI Program, and Officials’ Responses to Post-9/11 U.S. Torture CHAPTER NINE 57 CHAPTER FOUR 28 North Carolina’s Obligations under Who Were Those Rendered Domestic and International Law, the Basis by Aero Contractors? for Federal and State Investigation, and the Need for Accountability CHAPTER FIVE 34 Rendition as Torture CONCLUSION 64 ENDNOTES 66 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 78 APPENDICES 80 1 WWW.NCTORTUREREPORT.ORG TORTURE FLIGHTS : NORTH CAROLINA’S ROLE IN THE CIA RENDITION AND TORTURE PROGRAM THE COMMISSION THE COMMISSION THE COMMISSION THE COMMISSION FRANK GOLDSMITH (CO-CHAIR) JAMES E. COLEMAN, JR. PATRICIA MCGAFFAGAN DR. ANNIE SPARROW MBBS, MRCP, FRACP, MPH, MD Frank Goldsmith is a mediator, arbitrator and former civil James E. Coleman, Jr. is the John S. Bradway Professor Patricia McGaffagan worked as a psychologist for twenty rights lawyer in the Asheville, NC area. Goldsmith has of the Practice of Law, Director of the Center for five years at the Johnston County, NC Mental Health Dr. Sparrow is an intensivist and global-health specialist represented detainees imprisoned at the U.S. Naval Base Criminal Justice and Professional Responsibility, and Center. She is currently employed by the Department who provides public-health expertise in many of the at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and is the author of a chapter Co-Director of the Wrongful Convictions Clinic at of Health and Human Services. McGaffagan has lived in world’s most devastating combat zones. She is Assistant in a book entitled “Obama’s Guantánamo,” a collection of Duke Law School. A native of Charlotte, North Carolina, Johnston County since 1981 and has worked to establish Professor at the Department of Population Health perspectives from 14 lawyers. Among other professional Professor Coleman’s experience includes private several non-profit organizations. These include Harbor, Sciences & Policy at the Icahn School of Medicine at honors, Goldsmith was inducted as a Fellow of the practice in Washington, D.C., a judicial clerkship for the Inc., serving victims of domestic violence and rape, Mount Sinai in New York City, where she teaches human American College of Trial Lawyers, and has served on the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan, a Habitat for Humanity, and the Johnston County Animal rights and humanitarian aid in complex emergencies. boards of directors of a number of legal organizations year as deputy general counsel for the U.S. Department Protection League. Sparrow worked with Human Rights Watch as its first and nonprofit groups. of Education, and service as chief counsel for an researcher with medical training in Darfur and Syria. She investigation of two members of Congress by the U.S. has testified before the International Criminal Court and House Ethics Committee. the House Foreign Affairs Committee. JOMANA QADDOUR ROBIN KIRK (CO-CHAIR) Jomana Qaddour is a doctoral student at Georgetown Robin Kirk is the Faculty Co-Chair of the Duke University DAVID M. CRANE University Law Center and the co-founder of Syria Relief COLONEL LAWRENCE WILKERSON (RET.) Human Rights Center at the Franklin Humanities & Development, a humanitarian organization that has Institute and is a founding member of the Pauli Murray David M. Crane was the founding Chief Prosecutor of distributed over $50 million worth of humanitarian and Lawrence Wilkerson’s last positions in government were Project, an initiative of the center that seeks to examine the Special Court for Sierra Leone, an international emergency relief to Syrians in the region. Previously, she as Secretary of State Colin Powell’s Chief of Staff (2002- the region’s past of slavery, segregation and continuing war crimes tribunal, appointed to that position by UN worked as a senior policy analyst at the U.S. Commission 05), and Associate Director of the State Department’s economic inequality. An author and human rights Secretary-General Kofi Annan. Crane’s mandate was to on International Religious Freedom, covering Syria, Iraq, Policy Planning staff under the directorship of advocate, Kirk directs Duke’s Human Rights Certificate. prosecute those who bore the greatest responsibility Turkey, and Egypt. Prior to that, she served as a senior Ambassador Richard N. Haass. Previously, Wilkerson She served as co-chair of the Durham City-County for war crimes during Sierra Leone’s civil war in the research assistant for the Project on U.S. Relations with served 31 years in the U.S. Army. He is Distinguished Committee on Confederate Monuments and Memorials 1990s. He served more than 30 years in the U.S. federal the Islamic World in the Center for Middle East Policy at Adjunct Professor of Government and Public Policy at and as a consultant to the Greensboro Truth and government as a senior intelligence officer and special the Brookings Institution, where she focused on Syria, the College of William & Mary. Reconciliation Commission operations officer, and is a retired Professor at Syracuse Egypt, Palestinian politics, and Islamist movements. University College of Law. He lives in western NC. Qaddour holds a J.D. from the University of Kansas School of Law and an LLM from the Georgetown University Law Center. Advisor REV. BEN BOSWELL JONATHAN FREEMAN JENNIFER DASKAL Rev. W. Benjamin Boswell serves as the Senior Minister of Myers Park Baptist Church in Charlotte, NC. Previously, Jonathan Freeman is a fellow at the Truman National Ms. Daskal is an Associate Professor of Law at American he served as an Infantry Officer in the North Carolina Security Project and an international consultant University Washington College of Law in Washington, Army National Guard and as Adjunct Professor of specializing on operations, strategy and political DC, where she teaches and writes in the fields of Political Theology and Ethics at the John Leland Center intelligence. He is a decorated combat veteran of Iraq criminal, national security, and constitutional law. From for Theological Studies in Arlington, VA. and Afghanistan. Freeman has held appointments as 2009-2011, Daskal was counsel to the Assistant Attorney the Deputy White House Liaison at the Department General for National Security at the Department of of Defense, and at USAID as the Senior Advisor in the Justice. Office of Civil Military Cooperation. 2 3 TORTURE FLIGHTS : NORTH CAROLINA’S ROLE IN THE CIA RENDITION AND TORTURE PROGRAM WWW.NCTORTUREREPORT.ORG WWW.NCTORTUREREPORT.ORG TORTURE FLIGHTS : NORTH CAROLINA’S ROLE IN THE CIA RENDITION AND TORTURE PROGRAM NCCIT FOREWORD NCCIT FOREWORD NCCIT FOREWORD NCCIT FOREWORD September 1, 2018 But as important as the contents of Torture Flights are, an equally important story is to be found in the story behind the story, that is, the character, grit, and persistence of the North Carolina citizens whose tenacity to uncover how their state was used As I write this, our nation’s flags fly at half-mast and the late Senator John McCain is being honored at a memorial service in the RDI program led to the formation of the NCCIT. When concerned citizens first learned that rendition flights involved attended by three former presidents at Washington’s National Cathedral. His relationship with torture was intimate, not only in the RDI program operated out of North Carolina, these individuals acted and have not stopped acting: they investigated, because he was a torture survivor, but also because in the experience of being tortured he came to realize the importance of the protested, cajoled, disrupted, rallied others to their cause, called on local and state authorities to perform their duties, organized, prohibition against cruelty to our nation’s character and global role. In his last book, The Restless Wave, written in contemplation fundraised, and helped launch the NCCIT. of his own death, he addressed the reasons that impelled him so implacably and consistently to oppose the use of torture by the United States. He wrote: Theodore Roosevelt, that most energetic of American presidents, admired courage, action, and the pursuit of justice, and he expected every citizen to embody these values. This is how he put it: “The first duty of an American citizen, then, is that he shall The moral values and integrity of our nation, and the long, difficult, fraught history of our efforts to uphold them at work in politics; his second duty is that he shall do that work in a practical manner; and his third is that it shall be done in accord home and abroad, are the test of every American generation. Will we act in this world with respect for our founding with the highest principles of honor and justice.”2 Torture Flights and the NCCIT are many things, but they also represent citizen conviction that all people have equal dignity in the eyes of God and should be accorded the same respect by the laws behavior at the highest pitch of civic responsibility, models of grass-roots citizen engagement and action, and an inspiration to and governments of men? That is the most important question history ever asks of us. Answering in the affirmative by all Americans to fulfill their non-delegable public duties. our action is the highest form of patriotism….