Doc. 11302 Report to the contrary, without ever independently or transparently inquiring into the allegations itself, or accounting to the public in a sufficiently thorough manner. Second we have been told that Thailand hosted the first CIA “black site”, and that Abu Zubaydah was held there after his capture in 2002. CIA sources indicated to us that Thailand was used because of the ready availability of the network of local knowledge and bilateral relationships that dated back to the Vietnam War.27In line with the approach of most United States partner countries, the Thai Government has denied these allegations outright.28 71. The HVD programme has, to a certain extent, grown out of an assertion of independence on the part of the CIA in the exercise of “exclusive custody” over its high-value detainees for as long as it continues to question them. However, as my findings in the following sections demonstrate, the CIA’s clandestine operations in Europe – including its transfers and secret detentions of HVDs – were sustained and kept secret only through their operational dependence on alliances and partnerships in what is more traditionally the military sphere. 3. Secret detentions in Council of Europe member states 3.1. The framework 3.1.1. Securing CIA clandestine operations overseas on the platform of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) 72. By enacting an extraordinary authorisation for CIA covert action through a presidential finding within national law, the Bush administration furnished the agency with the first half of the operational framework it required to spearhead the United States’ “global war on terror”.29To recap, the key elements of this authorisation were permissions that were as broad as possible, and protections (from interference and oversight) that were as robust as possible. 73. The second half of the equation was then to identify the means by which to integrate the key elements of United States national policy into an international, intergovernmental approach. 74. According to our sources, the CIA simply could not embark upon sensitive covert action to dismantle terrorist networks and kill, capture or detain their members overseas without the express knowledge and approval of key American allies – particularly European allies: “We wouldn’t have even dreamed of it.”30On 27. One CIA source told us: “In Thailand, it was a case of ‘you stick with what you know’”; however, since the allegations pertaining to Thailand were not the direct focus of our inquiry, we did not elaborate further on these references in our discussions. The specific location of the “black site” in Thailand has been publicly alleged to be a facility in Udon Thani, near to the Udon Royal Thai Air Force Base in the north-east of the country. This base does have long-standing connections to American defence and intelligence activities overseas: during the Vietnam War it served as both a deployment base for the United States Air Force and the Asian headquarters of the CIA-linked aviation enterprise, Air America. 28. See, for example, The Bangkok Post, “Thaksin denies Thailand had ‘CIA secret prison’”, 5 November 2005, available at http:// www.bangkokpost.com/breaking_news/breakingnews.php?id=59604. 29. At this point I shall leave aside my discomfort with the phrase “war on terror” as a characterisation of the broad spectrum of counter-terrorist policies pursued by the United States in recent years – it was the phrase accepted in all quarters in the immediate post-11 September 2001 period. In this regard I agree with Anderson and Massimino, the authors of an excellent policy study recently released in the United States: “The very idea of a ‘global war on terror’ is today seen as the policy of a particular presidential administration in a way that it was not immediately following 11 September 2001”; see Kenneth Anderson and Elisa Massimino, “The Cost of Confusion: Resolving Ambiguities in Detainee Treatment”, part of the series entitled Bridging the Foreign Policy Divide, The Stanley Foundation, March 2007; hereinafter “Anderson and Massimino, “Resolving Ambiguities in Detainee Treatment”. My conclusion that President Bush put the CIA at the forefront of his “war machinery” is corroborated by numerous CIA insiders; see, for example, Tyler Drumheller, On the Brink, supra note 16, p. 35: “It was clear that the administration saw this as a war that would largely be fought by intelligence assets”. See also Michael Scheuer, interview with the rapporteur’s representative, supra note 21: “The agency felt the brunt of the executive branch’s desire to show the American people victories.” 30. Our sources have continually emphasised to us how keenly the United States has sought to observe the “sovereignty” of its allies, particularly those in Europe. From an intelligence perspective, the notion of “unilateral actions on European turf” has been characterised to us as “counter-productive” and “a surefire way of destroying the trust”. More importantly, from a political perspective, the art of “coalition-building” is just as important for covert action as for large-scale military operations. It affords the United States Government the opportunity, as one official described it to us, “to cover our backs by saying ‘hey, we’re not the only ones’”. In this regard, it is relevant to consider the policy statements made by members of the Bush administration to defend its detention and rendition practices after the fact: see, in particular, Secretary Condoleezza Rice, United States Secretary of State, “Remarks upon her departure for Europe”, Andrews Air 16