Doc. 11302 Report 115. The bilaterals at the top of this range are classified, highly guarded mandates for “deep” forms of cooperation that afford – for example – “infrastructure”, “material support” and/or “operational security” to the CIA’s covert programmes. This high-end category has been described to us as the intelligence sector equivalent of “host nation” defence agreements – whereby one country is conducting operations it perceives as being vital to its own national security on another country’s territory. 116. The classified “host nation” arrangements made to accommodate CIA “black sites” in Council of Europe member states fall into the last of these categories. 117. The CIA brokered “operating agreements” with the governments of Poland and Romania to hold its high-value detainees (HVDs) in secret detention facilities on their respective territories. Poland and Romania agreed to provide the premises in which these facilities were established, the highest degrees of physical security and secrecy, and steadfast guarantees of non-interference. 118. We have not seen the text of any specific agreement that refers to the holding of high-value detainees in Poland or Romania. Indeed it is practically impossible to lay eyes on the classified documents in question or read the precise agreed language because of the rigours of the security-of-information regime, itself kept secret, by which these materials are protected. 119. However, we have spoken about the high-value detainee programme with multiple well-placed sources in the governments and intelligence services of several countries, including the United States, Poland and Romania. Several of these persons occupied positions of direct involvement in and/or influence over the negotiations that led to these bilateral arrangements being agreed upon. Several of them have knowledge at different levels of the operations of the HVD programme in Europe. 120. These persons spoke to us upon strict assurances of confidentiality, extended to them under the terms of the special authorisation I received from my committee last year.84For this reason, in the interests of protecting my sources and preserving the integrity of my investigations, I will not divulge individual names. Yet I can state unambiguously that their testimonies – in so far as they corroborate and validate one another – count as credible, plausible and authoritative. 121. I am convinced that these individuals who were or still are in highly placed positions within the system spoke the truth to us. This was not always simply because they valued truth. In most cases they did so because, to paraphrase one high-ranking politician we interviewed, they did not want the truth to come out on somebody else’s terms. 122. In short, we used our considerable network of contacts in Poland, Romania, the United States and elsewhere, along with our own form of “intelligence work”, to ensure that in our discussions with our sources, the “dynamics of truth” were also at play. 3.2.2. The United States’ choice of European partners 123. It is interesting to note that the United States chose, in the case of Poland and Romania, to form special partnerships with countries that were economically vulnerable, emerging from difficult transitional periods in their history, and dependent on American support for their strategic development. 124. In terms of both political and intelligence considerations, several sources confirmed that much of the eastern European “bloc” was considered “out of bounds” for the CIA in contemplating sites for its covert HVD programme. A long-serving CIA officer shared the following analysis with us: “In a lot of those countries, there is still a mindset formed during the Cold War that we are not always on their side. There’s a certain tendency to be less than open to our advances. You have to remember most of the east European services are KGB services and that doesn’t change overnight. 84. Reference to the written record of the meeting of the Parliamentary Assembly’s Committee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights (AS/Jur) in Paris on 13 March 2006 (Synopsis No. 2006/25), by which the committee authorised my inquiry to treat information in confidence. Based upon this authorisation, I engaged in an exchange of letters with European Commissioner Franco Frattini. Copies of this correspondence as well as the abovementioned synopsis are held on file with the rapporteur. The assurance of absolute confidentiality with which I have provided my sources, scrupulously observed by the team members who attended the interviews, has proven to be an important, if not decisive, asset to progress in our inquiry. 25