The Adventures of Chester: Good Cop, Bad Cop

Suppose you are a member of Britain's security services and are faced with a dilemma: you can either arrest a terror plotter and lose the opportunity to continue rolling up his network, or know that if you don't, the US will swoop him up and send him to a secret prison (aka, "render" him)? Which is worse?

Such is the scenario reported in the Guardian on Sunday [via the CS Monitor's Terrorism and Security Brief]:

US pushed MI5 into airport terror swoop

The US warned Britain that it was prepared to seize the key suspect in the UK's biggest ever anti-terrorism operation and fly him to a secret detention centre for interrogation by American agents, even if this meant riding roughshod over its closest ally, The Observer can reveal.

American intelligence agents told their British counterparts they were ready to 'render' Rashid Rauf, a British citizen allegedly linked to al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and who was under surveillance in Pakistan, unless he was picked up immediately. Rauf is the key suspect in the alleged plot to detonate explosives on up to 10 transatlantic planes that was exposed in August and, according to the police, would have brought 'mass murder on an unimaginable scale'.

The Americans' demand for Rauf's quick arrest dismayed the British intelligence services, which were worried that it could prompt terrorist cells in the UK working on separate plots to bring forward their plans or go underground. In the weeks preceding his arrest it is understood that MI5 and MI6 discussed with their US counterparts the best way to dismantle the alleged plot. Britain wanted more time to monitor Rauf, but the US was adamant that Rauf should be arrested immediately.

The newspaper credits "a senior intelligence source" with this information.

Commentary

Well, what would you do? One can't sit idly complicit as the US continues its campaign of torture, you know! We all know what goes on down in Guantanamo!

Whatever horrible means of extracting information might take place in rendition facilities, it is not inconceivable that the US frequently threatens the use of such operations to goad its allies into action when it feels its interests are sufficiently threatened. The threat of rendition becomes a sort of deterrent. Perhaps it is not rendition itself that is useful in the War on Terror. Perhaps it is the threat of rendition, allowed to slip every now and then to allies who otherwise might not behave as we'd like. The previous post notes that the European Defense Agency forecasts that in the future, "Voters will also be insistent on having backing from the United Nations for operations, and on crafting large coalitions of EU member states with a heavy involvement of civilian agencies, and not just fighting units, the paper states. They will also want military operations to be environmentally friendly, where possible."

Hmm. Today we threaten rendition in order to gain cooperation. Tomorrow . . . perhaps the knowledge that "if necessary we'll use non-biodegradable bullets" will be enough to get the Europeans to act.

Of course there's another explanation altogether, which goes like this: "The US will probably be loathe to comment publicly on secret prisons or rendition. So let's just get one of our senior guys to drop a note to the Guardian telling them that that's why we arrested all these Muslims."

The Americans made me do it. Now that might keep the press off your back . . .

Posted by Chester on October 3, 2006 3:13 PM to The Adventures of Chester