Flog Is My Co-Pilot

It's not publicly known how much Boeing, the nation's No. 2 defense contractor, earned from the flights. The CIA, a stand-alone agency, does not reveal its contracts and agency work can be billed through other government departments, including the Pentagon. Jeppesen has done $7.7 million in defense contracting since Boeing bought it in 2000, based on a review of Pentagon records.

Ghost Plane.

Grey says he plans to soon post on the Internet "assorted aviation documents including Jeppesen planning data" that confirm Boeing's role (Update: Grey posted the flight logs today at www.ghostplane.net.). The documents include, he says, a 2004 Boeing-arranged flight on the Boeing jet from Morocco through Spain and on to Afghanistan, which coincides with the Masri case.

Masri was mistaken as an Al Qaeda suspect and arrested by Macedonia officials on New Year's Eve 2003. In a Virginia federal lawsuit filed against ex-CIA Director George Tenet and others, Masri says he was "forcibly abducted" in Macedonia and handed over to U.S. officials. He was beaten, drugged, and eventually flown to a CIA prison in Afghanistan, he says. Five months after his abduction, the suit notes, "Mr. El-Masri was deposited at night, without explanation, on a hill in Albania"—and that was two months after U.S. officials realized they made a mistake, the suit says.

The lawsuit was thrown out earlier this year, not because it lacked merit but because it could lead to disclosure of state secrets, a federal judge ruled. Masri is appealing and Wizner, his attorney, was scheduled to make his arguments this week before a Virginia appeals court.

"Obviously," says Wizner, "before we can add Boeing to the suit, we have to get it reinstated. It's a real hurdle—the CIA is, in effect, claiming immunity, that they're never liable in such cases." He's buoyed by three federal court rulings in recent months that rejected similar government-secrets argument—all of them cases involving challenges to warrantless eavesdropping authorized by President Bush.

"If the el-Masri suit can continue, we would try to develop evidence that people within Jeppesen were aware that detainees were being subjected to human rights abuses on these flights," Wizner says. "If we can show that, Boeing should by all rights be a defendant."

randerson@seattleweekly.com