Dublin Opinion

A subsidiary of Boeing called Jeppesen International Trip Planning are experts at the logistics involved in international flight operations, according to Boeing’s website. “Jeppesen has done it all.” the final paragraph boasts. So where else should the CIA go when trying to outsource those tricky “extraordinary rendition” flights to bring suspected terrorists to windowless rooms somewhere on the outskirts of an anonymous looking Czechoslovakian industrial town?

The New Yorker now informs us:

A former Jeppesen employee, who asked not to be identified, said recently that he had been startled to learn, during an internal corporate meeting, about the company’s involvement with the rendition flights. At the meeting, he recalled, Bob Overby, the managing director of Jeppesen International Trip Planning, said, “We do all of the extraordinary rendition flights—you know, the torture flights. Let’s face it, some of these flights end up that way.” The former employee said that another executive told him, “We do the spook flights.” He was told that two of the company’s trip planners were specially designated to handle renditions. He was deeply troubled by the rendition program, he said, and eventually quit his job. He recalled Overby saying, “It certainly pays well. They”—the C.I.A.—“spare no expense. They have absolutely no worry about costs. What they have to get done, they get done.”