What is rendition?
Developed in the mid-1990s during the Clinton administration, the CIA’s rendition program allowed the agency to capture high-value targets anywhere in the world and bring them to a third country for interrogation. Critics argue that rendition is “outsourcing torture”; suspects are believed to have been taken to countries including Egypt, Morocco, Syria and Jordan, which have all been accused by the U.S. State Department and human rights organizations of torture. Michael Scheuer was one of the architects of the rendition program. He told FRONTLINE that it is a legal process: “First, we had to identify a person who was worth incarcerating,” he explains. “Second, that person had to be in a country that was willing to help us arrest him. Third, that person had to be wanted in a third country in a legal process. Either a warrant had to be issued for him, or he had been tried in absentia. … It wasn’t just reaching out and grabbing someone. Lord knows there are hundreds of Al Qaeda people we
