User:Kiosacoup

Pedigree of ER's Dating Back to the 80s

In Extraordinary rendition by the United States, what is the pedigree of the allegation that the United States has "used rendition since the 80s"? As of this writing (31 January 2011) a request for citation has been made and I hereby second the motion. What I could find was a paragraph in Jane Mayer's The Dark Side on page 122 as follows:

As far back as the 80s, when [Douglas Feith] had been a midlevel Reagan Administration official, Feith had argued that terrorists did not deserve to be protected by the Geneva Conventions. The issue had first arisen in regard to the Palestinian Liberation Organization.

I found this quote by going to her index and looking under Reagan, treatment of terrorists under. If that's all she had to say on the subject, I'd say the lead is pretty cold. But. The meme has taken off, so it makes sense for someone to follow it on a separate page in WP. I created one. Hopefully someone out there will know enough to know where to start looking. I don't.

Possible leads (which I'm definitely thinking of looking into) include:

Torture Taxi: On the Trail of the CIA's Rendition Flights

Blank Spots on the Map: The Dark Geography of the Pentagon's Secret World

Ghost Plane: The True Story of the CIA Rendition and Torture Program

Questioning The Pedigree of OPEC's Numbers

Wikipedia needs an entry on the pedigree of OPEC's numbers. Entries on the subject of the world's oil reserves assume their credibility but according to the Wall Street Journal Snake Oil in the Desert:

the world's most reliable source for OPEC production is a little company called Petrologistics, located over a grocery store in Geneva. Conrad Gerber, the principal, claims to have spies in every OPEC port. For all we know, Mr. Gerber is making up his numbers, but everyone -- including the Paris-based International Energy Agency -- takes him seriously, since OPEC produces nothing better.