Who needs a smoking gun?

By now, everybody and their grandmother has heard about the “secret CIA prisons” being operated by the U.S. government in “dozens” of countries in violation of all kinds of international conventions, statutes, agreements and treaties.

A Swiss senator, Dick Marty, recently submitted a 67-page report to Europe’s top human-rights body in which he concluded there was a “spider’s web” of human-rights abuses being committed by the United States in collusion with 14 European nations.

The report, addressed to the 46-nation Council of Europe, said aircraft operated by the CIA, loaded with terrorist subjects, stopped in both Romania and Poland, where they “likely” dropped of detainees where they could be interrogated and “probably tortured.”

Commented Michael Moore (not the idiot filmmaker, but another idiot of the same name who is Britain’s Liberal Democrat’s foreign affairs spokesman): “This report exposes the myth that European governments had no knowledge of, or involvement in, rendition and secret detentions.”

The explosive report has it all: secret meetings, clandestine prisoner drops, unmarked planes, guys in trench coats, illegal prisons, torture … you name it – well, so does this report.

Marty, investigating the flights since November, said the 14 European nations – along with some other countries including Iraq, Morocco and Afghanistan – aided the movement of at least 17 detainees who said they had been abducted by U.S. agents and secretly transferred to detention centers around the world.

“I have chosen to adopt the metaphor of a global spider’s web, a web that has been spun out incrementally over several years using tactics and techniques that had to be developed in response to new threats of war,” Marty said.

The only “problem” – and for him it evidently isn’t really a problem – is that there isn’t any supporting evidence. The reason? Well, they are secret detentions, so the lack of evidence is proof the charges are true.

Now follow along with me, here. If the prisons weren’t secret, then there would be plenty of evidence to support the charges, but because they are secret, the investigators can’t prove it, which automatically means a high-level cover-up.

The possibility that the lack of evidence suggests the charges might not be true is not even under consideration. Filip Ilkowski, leader of Poland’s “Stop War” movement protesting the Iraq war, said the Polish government was trying to thwart European Union investigators.

“It is hard to say whether prisoners were dropped off here, but from what we know, U.S. planes landed in Poland outside the official channels. The government has done nothing to clarify the matter; it is doing everything to cover it up,” Ilkowski said.

See? The government has failed to prove the negative; therefore, it must be guilty.

In his investigation, Marty – a former prosecutor – relied mostly on flight logs provided by the European Union’s air traffic agency, Eurocontrol, witness statements gathered from people who said they had been abducted by U.S. intelligence agents, and judicial and parliamentary inquiries in various countries.

He listed 14 European countries – Britain, Germany, Italy, Sweden, Bosnia, Macedonia, Turkey, Spain, Cyprus, Ireland, Greece, Portugal, Romania and Poland – as being complicit in “unlawful interstate transfers” of people.

The fact that those governments deny the charges is irrelevant. “This is slander, and it’s not based on any facts,” Kazimierz Marcinkiewicz, Poland’s prime minister, told reporters in Warsaw. Liar. British Prime Minister Tony Blair also denied the collusion allegations and said Marty’s report contained no new evidence.

“I have to say, the Council of Europe report has absolutely nothing new in it,” he told lawmakers. Another liar.

In fact, every country with friendly relations with Washington is lying, just as Washington is lying, because that is what democratic countries do. They lie. If you want the truth, you need to interview detainees sworn to the destruction of the United States and her allies.

So with that kind of logic, who needs “a smoking gun”? Now that is some of the most circular reasoning we’ve been treated to yet. This is modern media at its best.

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Hal Lindsey

Hal Lindsey is the best-selling non-fiction writer alive today. Among his 20 books are "Late Great Planet Earth," his follow-up on that explosive best-seller, "Planet Earth: The Final Chapter" and "Everlasting Hatred: The Roots of Jihad." See his website The Hal Lindsey Report. Read more of Hal Lindsey's articles here.