The Center for Public Integrity

PORTSMOUTH, England — A plane lands in darkness and is directed to a far corner of an airfield, well out of public view. A group of men described as "masked ninjas" — wearing black overalls and hoods with slits for their eyes, nose and mouth — descend the aircraft steps and make their way to a nearby airport building. Inside a small room the detainee is waiting under armed guard, perhaps already blindfolded. He is immediately hooded as a process known as a "twenty-minute takeout" begins. Soon he is aboard the plane, on his way to another country to be harshly interrogated and possibly tortured.

That is what happened to two Egyptian asylum seekers in Sweden on December 18, 2001, and to numerous other terrorist suspects since the September 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Events like this rarely happened before 9/11, but many sources claim that the CIA began frequent use of the practice almost immediately afterward. Now its pattern is familiar and so is its odd name: "extraordinary rendition."

The United States has never acknowledged such renditions, but the CIA's activities have been extensively studied and documented by European and other governments, as well as organizations that monitor human rights violations. One such inquiry, by Sweden's parliamentary ombudsman, was set in motion when the Egyptian asylum seekers were swept away — and Sweden landed in hot water with the United Nations Human Rights Committee.

PORTSMOUTH, England — When a conservative talk-show host from radio station WDAY in Fargo, N.D., recorded an interview with Vice President Cheney in late October 2006, the broadcaster was just a small fish in a vast ocean of airwaves. Big scoops rarely came his way. Scott Hennen had interviewed Cheney several times for his weekday "Hot Talk" program but never before in the West Wing of the White House during the run-up to major midterm elections.

Cheney sat at a corner of his large desk as Hennen held out a microphone bearing WDAY's logo. They talked easily about the elections, Iraq and "dunking a terrorist in water." Hennen concluded the interview with a folksy question about the vice president's fondness for pheasant hunting: "There's some great bird hunting in North Dakota. Is this going to be the year you come up and do a little bird hunting in North Dakota?"

Whether either man fully grasped what the vice president had acknowledged — that al Qaeda detainees had received "a dunk in water" — may never be known. Cheney had let slip something that no other member of the U.S. government had dared confirm. The significance of his words became clear the next day when the Washington bureau of the McClatchy News Service obtained a transcript and ran a story saying, "Vice President Dick Cheney has confirmed U.S. interrogators subjected captured senior al-Qaeda suspects to a controversial interrogation technique called 'waterboarding,' which creates the sensation of drowning."

Hennen had casually introduced the subject, claiming on behalf of his listeners: "We're all for it, if it saves American lives." Seconds later, he asked Cheney outright: "Would you agree a dunk in water is a no-brainer if it can save lives?"

There is no single, accepted definition of the terms “foreign aid” or even “foreign military aid” or “military assistance.” For a government as large as that of the United States, it’s virtually impossible to track all of the various federal agencies’ programs across countries and sectors to arrive at a single number that captures the true amount of U.S. taxpayer dollars going to foreign governments, or even just their militaries.

For the “Collateral Damage” investigative study, the Center for Public Integrity created a database that tracks a subset of those financial flows: taxpayer-funded programs or assistance that contribute to a nation’s offensive military capabilities. The database does not include certain large nuclear non-proliferation programs or expenditures such as Foreign Military Sales or Direct Commercial Sales, which are not supported directly with taxpayer dollars. The database is also limited to tracking funds appropriated to either the Defense Department or the State Department. For this report, these are the criteria for “foreign military assistance” or “foreign military aid.”

Funds appropriated to the State Department and Defense Department represent the vast majority of unclassified military aid and assistance. This report does not attempt to track smaller overseas programs where funding is appropriated to the Justice Department, Drug Enforcement Agency, or Department of Homeland Security. The public does not have any way of tracking classified programs administered by the U.S. intelligence community. These classified programs likely command large amounts of funding, especially after the 9/11 attacks, and oversight is limited to members of congressional intelligence committees.

Programs included in the Center’s database:

Coalition Support Funds (CSF): created after 9/11 to reimburse key allied countries for providing assistance to the U.S. in the global war on terror.

JAKARTA, Indonesia — Indonesia's national intelligence agency used a former Indonesian president's charitable foundation to hire a Washington lobbying firm in 2005 to press the U.S. government for a full resumption of controversial military training programs to the country, the Center for Public Integrity's International Consortium of Investigative Journalists has learned.

The documents were uncovered as part of a year-long ICIJ investigation into changes in America's post-Sept. 11 foreign military aid and assistance programs and the impact of those changes on human rights. The investigation, focusing on 10 key countries, including Indonesia, is scheduled for release in early 2007.The connection between the intelligence agency, Badan Intelijen Negara (BIN), and the charity group, the Gus Dur Foundation, is documented in papers filed by the lobbying firm, Richard L. Collins & Co., in compliance with the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA).

After years of lobbying by both the Bush administration and the Indonesian government, Congress and the State Department in late 2005 fully reinstated military cooperation and aid to Indonesia, even though BIN has a long history of involvement in human rights abuses and was recently linked to the assassination of a prominent Indonesian human rights activist.

The Gus Dur Foundation was established by former Indonesian President Abdurrahman Wahid, who goes by the nickname "Gus Dur" and is known for his moderate politics and support for human rights. Gus Dur and another foundation official denied knowing about the contract between their Jakarta-based charity group and the lobbying firm.

In May 2005, the Gus Dur Foundation retained Collins & Co. for $30,000 a month to lobby Congress to "remove legislative and policy restrictions on security cooperation with Indonesia," according to a copy of a signed contract.