More evidence the CIA is a terrorist outfit

Mistaken identity leads to abuses that Congress should investigate

In the 1985 film “Brazil,” anti-terrorist police in a grim industrialized society burst into a modest flat and cart off a hapless man named Buttle. His family never sees him again.

The fact that the real target of the raid was supposed to be someone named Tuttle is of no concern to anyone in power because there was no one else in power looking over their shoulder. That, of course, couldn’t happen in real life.

Yes, it could. Our government did something remarkably similar, except for the part about the wrong man never being seen again, and our judicial system has shamefully refused to do anything about it.

On New Year’s Eve 2003, one Khaled el-Masri, a German citizen of Lebanese descent, was pulled off a bus at the Serbian- Macedonian border for no reason that he was able to fathom, questioned for 23 days and then turned over to the CIA. His clothes were torn off. He was beaten, injected with drugs and chained spread-eagle to the floor. He spent four months in a CIA prison in Afghanistan. Then someone realized that the prisoner was Khaled el-Masri, not reputed terrorist mastermind Khalid al-Masri. Without apology or even explanation, el-Masri was flown to Albania and dumped along the side of the road. At least the agents didn’t kill him.

El-Masri sued the CIA. A federal appeals court threw out his case, accepting the government argument that allowing it to go to trial would expose secrets about how our government looks for terrorists. Last week the U.S. Supreme Court, without comment, refused to take up the appeal.

Even if we don’t care about innocent people we’ve kidnapped and tortured, we darn well ought to care about an intelligence system that can be so horribly wrong about who it grabs. If it took five months of “aggressive interrogation” for our spies to figure out they were torturing someone who had nothing of value to tell them, then their usefulness to national security is less than nothing.

Not only had they further besmirched the reputation of the United States within the civilized world, they greatly increased the real Khalid al-Masri’s chances of moving about the world freely.

Congress, which has committees that can handle secrecy, won’t protect our national security if it ignores this case. It will damage it further.

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