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		CIA Committee Plenary Speech - Wednesday 14th February 2007 This CIA initiative has been a "Me-Too" exercise from the start. The Council of Europe under Swiss Senator Dick Marty produced a report on extraordinary rendition, so the European parliament had to do one as well. A British government Minister said that the Marty report was "As full of holes as a Swiss cheese", and the Fava report is not much better. I understand Senator Marty has observed that with enormously greater resources, our committee has produced little solid material in addition his own report. We have assembled a great number of press cuttings. We have collected flight information obsessively, with enormous lists of aircraft movements, and we are told that these aircraft may have been owned by companies that may have some connection with the CIA. But we have no idea who or what was on these flights. All the way through our work we have sought to conflate flights with renditions. We have simply assumed that "CIA flight" equates with "extrajudicial rendition of suspects". But the CIA may have all sorts of legitimate reasons to move people and matériel around the world. We went to Washington determined that senior US politicians should be made to confess their guilt, but we were met by a robust response. The US administration admits that a few renditions took place in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, but far fewer than we wanted to hear. We heard allegations from a number of people who claimed to have been subject to rendition, but with little supporting evidence. We went at great expense to Macedonia, but all we learned was that Macedonian hotels and border posts keep rather poor records. The fact is that our whole exercise was designed to provide a platform for anti-American propaganda. We should all be ashamed of the deep under-current of anti-Americanism in this House. The Fava report is its latest manifestation. But it was not enough to attack the US. We also attacked member-state governments, accusing them of collusion with American security services. For my part, I should be concerned if European governments did not cooperate with the US in the War on Terror. In particular the virulent attack on British Defence Minister Geoff Hoon by our Vice President Baroness Ludford breached the norms of courteous political discourse, and stands as a reproach to our House. Of course we are right to insist on human rights and humane treatment for terrorist suspects. But we cannot expect either European or American security services to operate under constant public scrutiny, amounting to harassment, from MEPs. This report will do little to promote human rights. What it will do is to give comfort and encouragement to the very terrorists who intend to destroy our way of life. If we approve this report, they will know that we are more concerned about the comfort of terrorist suspects than about the safety of the people we represent.