Doc. 11302 Report 42. Yet while the momentum was gathering last year, we were perfectly aware that we would still have to overcome formidable obstacles in order to get to the truth about the CIA programme of secret detentions in Europe. State secrecy has been systematically invoked at national level in several instances both to deny us access to classified documents and to thwart action taken by the competent judicial and parliamentary authorities.13Moreover, as I demonstrate later in this report,14the secrecy and security-of-information policies adopted by states in the framework of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) are just as impenetrable when applied as barriers to transparency as they have proven since they were selected to act as coverage for CIA clandestine operations. 43. To encourage even a minor departure from strict adherence to these regimes of silence, secrecy and cover-up would require a rare convergence of factors. The first signs of cracks would have to appear in alliances that had hitherto been absolutely watertight. The motivation for insiders on one or both sides of the Atlantic to talk to us would surely derive only from their fear of betrayal – either by their colleagues, their political masters or their transatlantic partners. 44. The catalyst for those involved in the HVD programme to talk candidly to our team appears ultimately to have come from the American side – albeit that a degree of ambiguity about who was “allowed” to say what appears to have worked in our favour. My representative, who was on-the-spot in Washington DC when President Bush disclosed the existence of the CIA’s covert overseas detention and interrogation programme, received an off-the-record briefing. 45. Thereafter, one of the most challenging aspects of our investigation has been our effort to access the structures where the information is held within the different European states. To this end our team has undertaken visits and developed sources in both the political and intelligence spheres in various countries, sometimes pursuing multiple contacts over a period of months. 46. Consequently, all of the conclusions drawn in this report rely upon multiple sources, which validate and corroborate one another. Indeed, in the course of my inquiry, our team has spoken – and in many cases conducted interviews – with over 30 one-time members (serving, retired or having carried out contract work) of intelligence services in the United States and Europe. 47. However, by necessity, the majority of these conversations have taken place under conditions of strict confidentiality, in order to enable the individuals concerned to be able to speak freely and without fear of consequence. 48. It is my firm conviction that what I publish here poses no threat to the individual or collective safety of any of my sources, some of whom have taken considerable personal risks to speak to us. Thus I do not identify by name the sources of many specific quotes and other items of information, nor do I attribute them too specifically to the office held by the speaker, such that no reader is able to identify the individuals who spoke in confidence to us and whose anonymity, at least for the moment, must be preserved. 49. These rules on confidentiality, imposed upon us because of the lack of collaboration from the states concerned, cannot and should not prevent me from naming individual office-holders who occupied key positions of power at the relevant times and who thus answer for the decisions they took on behalf of their states. 50. In the sections that follow, I have therefore drawn upon multiple sources in the United States and European intelligence communities in an attempt to lay bare the anatomy of this controversial programme. In so doing, I believe that I have been able to provide the most in-depth account to date of the conceptual development of the HVD programme, the NATO framework so vital to the programme’s operations, details of the bilateral arrangements for its operations, and important strands of evidence that belie the repeated denials of high-ranking officials – including several presidents and prime ministers – about what took place and what they knew. Certainly we are far from knowing the whole truth. The information we have gathered is, however, sufficiently concrete – and worrying – to encourage states at last to do all they can to get to the bottom of what took place in their countries and within certain of their institutions. Rights, Human Rights First, Human Rights Watch, the International Commission of Jurists, REPRIEVE, Statewatch and the Swedish Helsinki Committee for Human Rights. I salute your work and that of the many other NGOs active in the field who have supported me anonymously or whose names I have inadvertently failed to mention. 13. Pertinent examples of the invocation of state secrecy in at least two different jurisdictions are provided in the section entitled “A case study of Khaled El-Masri”, at Section VI.i in this report. 14. See section entitled “Preserving secrecy and NATO Security Policy”, at Section II.iii.d in this report. 12