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AWARD WINNER - the OVERSEAS PRESS CLUB OF AMERICA Joe and Laurie Dine 2007 award for best international reporting on human rights in any medium. The judges said: “Stephen Grey’s “Ghost Plane” is the consummation of years of investigation, not only by the author, but, as he acknowledges, the informal global network of journalists with whom he collaborated to reveal the murky world of rendition, extraordinary rendition and proxy torture. By tracing the landings and takeoffs of clumsily concealed CIA flights, his work not only demonstrates concerned investigative journalism in action, it lifts the lid on a global gulag of prisons and torture chambers, assembled by US officials in defiance of domestic and international human rights law. It caused a furore in Europe, and should here.” REVIEWS USA Inside the CIA's Secret Prisons Program - An explosive new book provides a rare glimpse into the full extent of the agency's controversial terror renditions - and the curious coalition of partners who helped the U.S. pull them off --- Time Magazine FULL STORY
"The secret police of Middle Eastern countries freely torture, and their tools of the trade -- as Stephen Grey shows in his powerful and damning "Ghost Plane" -- include razor blades ... His attention to detail can be chilling." ... Evan Thomas, The Washington Post READ FULL REVIEW
"If a congressional committee ever decides to hold hearings into the rendition program, it should hire Grey. He had little money and no subpoena power, but he uncovered a vast network of planes, their flights, and the mailbox drop companies that the CIA used as covers ... By following the planes, Grey tells the chilling story of rendition and torture" ... The New York Review of Books. READ FULL REVIEW (subscription site) "The CIA methods, past, present, and future, the administration insists, must be kept from the public. We are left to imagine the range of those "dark arts," some of them detailed by survivors in Stephen Grey's hugely documented, essential new book, Ghost Plane." --- Nat Hentoff, the Village Voice.
"I once heard a CIA official remark that if the American people were given a choice, they would choose not to know about the dark side of the war on terror ism. It was the media who foisted those unsavory secrets on them, he said. Like it or not, British investigative journalist Stephen Grey unveils that hidden world in stark detail. His new, meticulously footnoted book, "Ghost Plane," outlines the most controversial US weapon in the war on terrorism: extraordinary rendition, the covert US practice of kidnapping terrorism suspects and secretly transporting them to countries where torture is routinely used in interrogations......Grey doesn't tell a one-sided story. He also interviews CIA officers who raised the alarm about terrorism long before 9/11"... --- Farah Stockmann, the Boston Globe READ FULL REVIEW ‘An impressively detailed investigation that includes original reporting, public documents and a remarkable number of on-the-record interviews.’ -- Los Angeles Times READ FULL REVIEW
Canada "The story of how the United States began ferrying prisoners to totalitarian regimes, including Syria, which it says has ties to international terrorism itself, is brilliantly told in Stephen Grey's Ghost Plane ...Investigative journalism at its best." -- NOW magazine, Toronto READ REVIEW United Kingdom
a remarkable book ...Ghost Plane is not only a brilliant piece of journalistic investigation into the shocking facts of the rendition programme, it's also a history of the practice and an argument against it. Grey places rendition within the long history of CIA covert action: possessing a secret airline and employing proxies to carry out its least attractive and legal missions are practices familiar to the agency since the early days of the cold war." -- New Statesman, London READ REVIEW
Australia ...
'Brilliant book … gripping and chilling … Ghost Plane is full of the forensic detail you would expect from an investigative reporter ... his analysis of how the rendition policy was brought out of the mothballs and morphed into "extraordinary rendition" is fascinating … Grey is no bleeding heart and, at times, attacks "liberals" for their obsession with civil liberties in the war on terrorism. But, in a superbly argued final chapter, he comes more or less to the same conclusions.' -- Sydney Morning Herald 'Ghost Plane is a welcome addition to our knowledge of America's global prison network and exposes the democratic governments that assist in providing air space and diplomatic cover ... Grey's book is an invaluable tool in revealing the darkest secrets of the world's only superpower.' -- The Melbourne Age 'Grey's book Ghost Plane is a remarkable piece of storytelling that reconstructs a series of horrifying renditions and tracks the re-emergence of this highly questionable process. His book is based on seemingly exhaustive (and, from a journalist's point of view, hugely impressive) research drawn from public documents, confidential sources and a large range of sometimes shocking interviews with prisoners.' -- Bulletin with Newsweek (Australia) 'This is a compelling and fast-paced read. Grey's account compares with Woodward and Bernstein's All The President's Men as a prodigious piece of detective work.' --- Brisbane Courier Mail 'This excellent example of investigative journalism uses interviews with former CIA pilots and tortured suspects to uncover how the American government authorised the detention — and brutal torture — of suspects without charge.' -- Melbourne Weekly 'Ghost Plane is an explosive book, and so chilling I could only read a few chapters at a time … It is an extraordinary book.' --Melbourne Observer More reviews ..
“It’s not often an author gets an unsolicited pre-publication stamp of legitimacy from the U.S. president, much less one who reports on human-rights issues...disturbing in the depth and detail of its evidence…” --Kirkus Reviews, STARRED Review
"Stephen Grey's new book, Ghost Plane, is part exposé, part analytic essay, and part detective story. By speaking to dozens of sources -- including former and current CIA operatives, prosecutors, pilots, diplomats, lawyers, journalists, plane-spotters and prisoners -- and by poring over countless flight records, Justice Department memos, and other documents, Grey has managed to piece together a vivid history of the CIA's secret program of interrogation, detention and torture ... a complex yet gripping account" - FindLaw.com READ FULL REVIEW A new book says that a comment by former CIA director Porter Goss alerted a journalist to the agency’s controversial rendition program. -- Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball - Newsweek - Terror Watch FULL STORY
BROADCAST INTERVIEWS ABOUT GHOST PLANE NPR - FRESH AIR - Investigating the CIA Torture Program
October 19, 2006 · British journalist Stephen Grey writes about security issues and Iraq. His work appears in The Sunday Times of London, The New York Times, the Guardian, and The Atlantic Monthly. He says that dozens of terror suspects are still being held in secret prisons and interrogated by the CIA despite President Bush's declaration that the CIA is no longer doing so. Grey's new book is Ghost Plane: The True Story of the CIA Torture Program (St. Martin's Press).
MORE INTERVIEWS: DEMOCRACY NOW radio, New York. October 19, 2006. CBC's The Hour feature on Ghost Plane , Ottawa CBC's Hot Type with Evan Solomon, February 15, 2007, Ottawa interview with Ray Martin, Austalia's channel 9 Sydney
NEWS REPORTS THE C.I.A.’S TRAVEL AGENT - The New Yorker - Talk of the Town -- 30th October 2006. On the official Web site of Boeing, the world’s largest aerospace company, there is a section devoted to a subsidiary called Jeppesen International Trip Planning, based in San Jose, California. The write-up mentions that the division “offers everything needed for efficient, hassle-free, international flight operations,” spanning the globe “from Aachen to Zhengzhou.” The paragraph concludes, “Jeppesen has done it all.” ...The British journalist Stephen Grey, in a new book, “Ghost Plane,” refers to documents obtained by Spanish law-enforcement officials, along with flight logs, which indicate that international flight planners provided essential logistical support for many of the C.I.A.’s renditions, including that of Khaled el-Masri, a German car salesman who was apparently mistaken for an Al Qaeda suspect with a similar name, in January of 2004.
Book: CIA Pilots Lived in Luxury Between Kidnappings CIA pilots who flew kidnapped al Qaeda suspects to secret prisons for severe interrogation sessions stayed at five-star luxury resorts between rendition flights at taxpayers' expense, according to "Ghost Plane," a new book by journalist Stephen Grey to be published this week. --- ABC News website
Londoner was victim of secret rendition A FORMER inmate of the Guantanamo Bay camp has been identified as the first British citizen known to have been subjected to the CIA’s practice of rendition — the capture and transfer of terrorism suspects across the world without legal process. Newly revealed flight logs of a CIA Gulfstream executive jet — detailed in a book to be published this week — indicate that it was used in April 2002 to transport Martin Mubanga, a Londoner now aged 33, to Guantanamo after he was captured in Zambi ---- Sunday Times, London, October 22, 2006. Read full news story
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