I tend to be wary of anything that smacks of a conspiracy theory. In
this case, although the details are certainly lurid enough, the story
is being reported by the Chicago Tribune and the reporter seems to have
done a good job of compiling and presenting his evidence. The
implications are, suffice it to say, disturbing beyond all measure:
http://tinyurl.com/6pxrf
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By John Crewdson Tribune senior correspondent
The first question is: Where is Leonard T. Bayard? The next question
is: Who is Leonard T. Bayard? But the most important question may be:
Does Leonard T. Bayard even exist?
The questions arise because the signature of a Leonard Thomas Bayard
appears on the annual report of a Portland-based company, Bayard
Foreign Marketing LLC, that was filed in August with the Oregon
secretary of state.
According to federal records, Bayard Foreign Marketing is the newest
owner of a U.S.-registered Gulfstream V executive jet reportedly used
since Sept. 11, 2001, to transport suspected Al Qaeda operatives to
countries such as Egypt and Syria, where some of them claim to have
later been tortured.
The Central Intelligence Agency (news - web sites) has declined to
discuss the plane. But one retired CIA (news - web sites) officer said
that he understood the Gulfstream had been operated by the Joint
Special Operations Command, an interagency unit that organizes
counterterrorist operations in conjunction with the CIA and military
special forces.
A search of commercial databases turned up no information on Leonard
Thomas Bayard: no residence address, no telephone number, no Social
Security (news - web sites) number, no credit history, no automobile or
property ownership records--in short, none of the information commonly
associated with real people.
And yet, someone signed the name Leonard T. Bayard to Bayard Foreign
Marketing's annual report.
The report, which describes the company as an "international marketing
firm," lists Bayard's principal place of business as a suite in a
historic downtown Portland office building known as the Pittock Block.
But a visitor to the suite who asked to see Bayard was told by a
receptionist only that "Mr. Bayard doesn't work here."
The telephone number on Bayard's annual report is listed to a private
residence in a rundown section of northeast Portland whose doorbell
went unanswered earlier this week. Calls to that number, however,
appear to be answered by a bank of operators.
An initial call was answered as "Baynard Foreign Marketing" by an
operator who insisted she never had heard of Leonard Bayard. A second
call two minutes later was answered as "Bayard Foreign Marketing" by a
different operator, who said that "Mr. Bayard is away from his desk."
A message left by a reporter went unanswered. The CIA has long had a
well-known practice of "backstopping" local telephone numbers for its
proprietary companies around the world, whose calls are forwarded to
operators at CIA headquarters in Langley, Va.
Scott Caplan, an attorney whose offices occupy the same Portland suite
as the one listed by Bayard Foreign Marketing, identified Bayard as "a
client" but declined to say more. Public documents show it was Caplan
who filed the incorporation papers for Bayard Foreign Marketing when
the company was created in August 2003.
Ann Martens, a spokeswoman for Oregon Secretary of State Bill Bradbury,
said that knowingly filing a false corporate document in Oregon is
punishable by up to 6 months in prison and a $1,000 fine.
November sale
Leonard T. Bayard--whoever he may or may not be--became the sole owner
of the mysterious Gulfstream jet on Nov. 16, according to public
records compiled by the Federal Aviation Administration (news - web
sites).
The records show that Bayard Foreign Marketing purchased the plane, for
an undisclosed sum, from Premier Executive Transport Services, whose
address is the same as that of a Dedham, Mass., law firm that
incorporated Premier Executive in January 1994.
The Massachusetts law firm's address is shared by a second company,
Crowell Aviation Technologies Inc., which according to Dun & Bradstreet
claims to have only a single employee and $65,000 in annual revenue.
Government records show, however, that Crowell is one of only nine
companies, along with Premier Executive, that has Pentagon (news - web
sites) permission to land aircraft at military bases worldwide.
The same day it transferred ownership of the Gulfstream to Bayard,
Premier Executive sold an unmarked, 3-year-old Boeing 737 to Keeler and
Tate Management LLC of Reno. That company's address is the same as that
of the Reno law firm that incorporated it in October 2003, records
show.
Like Leonard T. Bayard, the only named principal in Keeler and Tate,
one Tyler Edward Tate, also appears not to exist in any public records
accessible by the Tribune.
Premier Executive's only listed executive is its president, Bryan P.
Dyess. A person with that name does appear in commercial databases, but
his only addresses are two post office boxes in Arlington, Va., not far
from CIA headquarters.
Premier Executive purchased or leased the new Gulfstream V in 1999, FAA
(news - web sites) records show. The plane's original registration
number, N581GA, would later be changed by the FAA to N379P, and again
to 8068V.
The first public mention of the Gulfstream appeared six weeks after
Sept. 11, 2001, when a Pakistani newspaper reported that Jamil Qasim
Saeed Mohammed, a 27-year-old microbiology student at Karachi
University, had been spirited aboard the plane at Karachi's airport by
Pakistani security officers in the early hours of Oct. 23, 2001.
There is no information about where Mohammed was taken. But Pakistani
officials said later that Mohammed, a Yemeni national, was believed by
the U.S. to belong to Al Qaeda and to have information about the
October 2000 bombing of the USS Cole (news - web sites).
Since Sept. 11, unnamed U.S. officials have been quoted in several
publications discussing the U.S. practice of "rendition," which
involves sending suspected terrorists or Al Qaeda supporters captured
abroad for interrogation to countries where human rights are not
traditionally respected.
Well-documented case
One well-documented rendition occurred in December 2001, when two
Egyptian nationals, Ahmed Agiza and Muhammed al-Zery, were flown aboard
the Gulfstream from Sweden's Bromma airport to Cairo. A Swedish
television broadcaster, TV4, reported last year that a check of the
plane's registration number, N379P, showed it belonged to Premier
Executive.
The Swedish ambassador to Cairo later said Agiza and al-Zery both told
him they had been tortured by Egyptian police. Al-Zery was released in
October 2003 without charges. Agiza was sentenced to 25 years in prison
for his alleged membership in an Egyptian terrorist group.
The Swedish government has called on Egypt to agree to an international
investigation into the torture charges. The government has said it had
been assured by Egypt that the two men would not be mistreated.
Another widely reported rendition to Egypt occurred in January 2002,
when the Gulfstream arrived in Jakarta, Indonesia, to pick up a
24-year-old Al Qaeda suspect and dual Egyptian-Pakistani citizen,
Muhammad Saad Iqbal, and transport him to Cairo.
German intelligence sources later said Indonesia refused to permit
subsequent renditions to Cairo after learning that Iqbal had been
tortured.
An international network of "plane spotters," hobbyists who log the
comings and goings of specific aircraft around the world, have posted
on the Internet photographs of the Gulfstream in various locations.
The Sunday Times of London, which claimed to have obtained the plane's
flight logs, reported in November that the plane was based at Dulles
International Airport outside Washington. The newspaper said it had
flown to at least 49 destinations outside the U.S., including
Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, other U.S. military bases, as well as airports in
Egypt, Jordan, Iraq (news - web sites), Morocco, Afghanistan (news -
web sites), Libya and Uzbekistan.
Two days after the Sunday Times report, Premier Executive Transport
sold the Gulfstream to Bayard Foreign Marketing. On Dec. 1, records
show, the FAA assigned the plane yet another tail number, N44982.
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Andrew Lias
http://andrewlias.blogspot.com
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