NY Times "Outs" CIA Flight Operations

The NY Times wrote an article this morning on Aero Contractors, Ltd., a charter plane company that is a supposed front company for the CIA used to transport CIA and paramilitary personnel to locations around the globe. Even if some of the facts in the article are true, the use of a private company to assist the government should not surprise anyone.

The intent of the Times is to create the impression that the CIA is involved in some underhanded methods (such as contracting private planes) used to conceal the fact that it engages in torture.

Some of the C.I.A. planes have been used for carrying out renditions, the legal term for the agency's practice of seizing terrorism suspects in one foreign country and delivering them to be detained in another, including countries that routinely engage in torture. The resulting controversy has breached the secrecy of the agency's flights in the last two years, as plane-spotting hobbyists, activists and journalists in a dozen countries have tracked the mysterious planes' movements.

I don't believe anything I read in the NY Times, but it makes me wonder how far the media will go to harm national security for the sake of a story. (I think we know that answer already.)