THE CIA IN EUROPE

Secrets Flights Investigation Raises the Veil

Europe wants answers, and an ongoing investigation into secret CIA flights provided some on Wednesday. Fully 1,000 clandestine flights criss-crossed the continent a new report says. In response, EU parliamentarians headed are off to Macedonia.

German citizen Khaled el-Masri has sued the CIA for allegedly kidnapping him. The European Union has become interested in his case.

German citizen Khaled el-Masri has sued the CIA for allegedly kidnapping him. The European Union has become interested in his case.

The uproar took Europe by storm last autumn. Suddenly, everyone wanted to know just how the CIA was using European airstrips and airspace. The suspicion was that Europe had become an unwitting accomplice to the US practice of "extraordinary rendition" -- ferrying terror suspects to third countries for torture.

Now, the first fruits of a comprehensive European Union investigation into the flights have been borne. On Thursday, members of the European Parliament flew to Macedonia to learn more about a German citizen's claim that he was abducted there by the CIA in early 2004 -- one day after EU lawmaker Claudio Fava presented an interim report on the EU investigation. More than 1,000 CIA flights, he said, have criss-crossed Europe since 2001.

The Fava report -- based on data from Eurocontrol, the EU's air safety agency, and more than 50 hours of testimony by EU officials and people who claimed to be victims of American kidnapping and torture -- accused not just the CIA of coordinating the flights, but also EU member governments of cooperating. "After 9/11," he said Wednesday, "within the framework of the fight against terrorism, the violation of human and fundamental rights was not isolated or an excessive measure confined to a short period of time, but rather a widespread regular practice in which the majority of European countries were involved."

Gerhard Schröder's government had detailed information on how the CIA operated in Europe -- and said nothing. The lower echelons of the administration even co-operated actively. US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is likely to expect the same silent complicity from the new chancellor, Angela Merkel.

Planespotters, hobby airplane photographers, say they noticed an increase in the number of flights at the Frankfurt Airport between 2002 and 2004.

In his heyday as leader of Germany, Gerhard Schröder was always ready to demonstrate indignation at how George W. Bush waged his war on terror. He loved to portray himself as the man who kept Germany out of Iraq. On his watch, Germany would have nothing to do with America's methods in its global campaign against al-Qaida. He liked to underline that stance by saying Washington should be held accountable for its actions.

Schröder's time is over now. But questions about Germany's involvement in the methods of CIA agents operating in Europe are catching up with him as well as with the other political pensioners -- former foreign minister Joschka Fischer and especially former interior minister Otto Schily. Research by the Washington Post, SPIEGEL and other media show that neither the previous government nor the new administration under Angela Merkel should have been surprised about the reports in recent weeks about secret prisoner transports, secret prisons and CIA kidnappings.

It is also becoming ever clearer that the Schröder government was informed in detail and at an early stage about the policy of so-called "extraordinary renditions" and "black sites" across Europe. Cabinet ministers in Berlin clearly didn't just know the dirty details about Bush's unrestricted war on terror by reading the newspapers.

In some cases German intelligence officers even tried to profit from the controversial methods by questioning prisoners who were being held without any legal foundation. Schröder's stance on Iraq was popular and won him votes. But behind its anti-American veil, his government was quietly complicit and was occasionally rewarded for its silence.

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and new German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier are old acquaintances.