Former US President Bill Clinton was the first to use the CIA's rendition program to capture, transfer and question terror suspects on foreign soil, a former US counterterrorism agent has revealed.
"President Clinton, his national security advisor Sandy Berger and his terrorism advisor Richard Clark ordered the CIA in the autumn of 1995 to destroy Al-Qaeda," Michael Scheuer, a 22-year veteran of the CIA who resigned from the agency in 2004, told Thursday's issue of the German newsweekly Die Zeit, reported Agence France Presse (AFP) Wednesday, December 28.
"We asked the president what we should do with the people we capture. Clinton said 'That's up to you'."
The rendition program was first authorized by President Ronald Reagan in 1986.
Scheuer, who headed the CIA unit that tracked Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden from 1996 to 1999, said that he developed and led the "rendition" program.
The program development, he added, included moving prisoners without due legal process to countries without strict human rights protections.
"In Cairo, people are not treated like they are in Milwaukee. The Clinton administration asked us if we believed that the prisoners were being treated in accordance with local law. And we answered, yes, we're fairly sure."
Scheuer bashed European countries for what he said hypocrisy in criticizing the Bush administration for its anti-terror tactics while benefiting from them.
"All the information we received from interrogations and documents, everything that had to do with Spain, Italy, Germany, France, England was passed on," he said.
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