Powell Aide: CIA Used Diego Garcia for 'Nefarious' Purposes
Guardian (UK) | Jan 31, 2015 | by Ian Cobain
The UK government is facing renewed pressure to make a full disclosure of its involvement in the CIA's post-9/11 kidnap and torture program after another leading Bush-era U.S. official said suspects were held and interrogated on the British territory of Diego Garcia.
Lawrence Wilkerson, who was chief of staff to Colin Powell at the U.S. State Department, said the Indian Ocean atoll was used by the CIA as "a transit site where people were temporarily housed, let us say, and interrogated from time to time".
In an interview with Vice News, Wilkerson said three U.S. intelligence sources had informed him that the CIA used Diego Garcia for what he described as "nefarious activities".
"What I heard was more along the lines of using it as a transit location when perhaps other places were full or other places were deemed too dangerous or insecure, or unavailable," said Wilkerson, who served under Powell from 2002 to 2005. "So you might have a case where you simply go in and use a facility at Diego Garcia for a month or two weeks or whatever and you do your nefarious activities there."
Donald Campbell, spokesman for the legal rights group Reprieve, said: "Ministers have consistently claimed that no CIA detainees were held on the island, but Col Wilkerson's account suggests that either they are lying or they have been lied to. It is high time the British government came clean over the part UK territory played in the CIA's shameful torture program."
Diego Garcia's population was removed during the late 1960s and early 70s and forced to settle on the Seychelles and Mauritius. Since then the atoll has been leased to the U.S. for use as a military base.
Wilkerson is the latest of several well placed officials who have said the atoll was used in the CIA rendition program.
http://www.military.com/daily-news/2015/01/31/powell-aide-cia-used-diego-garcia-for-nefarious-purposes.html
