Text 7266, 130 rader
Skriven 2005-01-09 16:16:20 av Alan Hess
Ärende: is this Bjorn's plane?
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http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/printedition/bal-te.spyplane09jan09,1,5074248
.story?coll=bal-pe-asection
Records suggest mysterious plane ferries CIA detainees to torture sites
Investigation indicates Gulfstream's owner seems to exist only on paper


By John Crewdson
Chicago Tribune

January 9, 2005

PORTLAND, Ore. - The first question is: Where is Leonard T. Bayard? The next
question is: Who is Leonard T. Bayard? But the most important question may be:
Does Leonard T. Bayard even exist?

The questions arise because the signature of a Leonard Thomas Bayard appears on
the annual report of a Portland-based company, Bayard Foreign Marketing LLC,
that was filed in August with the Oregon secretary of state.

According to federal records, Bayard Foreign Marketing is the newest owner of a
U.S.-registered Gulfstream V executive jet reportedly used since Sept. 11,
2001, to transport suspected al-Qaida operatives to countries such as Egypt and
Syria, where some of them claim to have later been tortured.

The Central Intelligence Agency has declined to discuss the plane. But one
retired CIA officer said that he understood the Gulfstream had been operated by
the Joint Special Operations Command, an interagency unit that organizes
counterterrorist operations in conjunction with the CIA and military special
forces.

A search of commercial databases turned up no information on Leonard Thomas
Bayard: no residence address, no telephone number, no Social Security number,
no credit history, no automobile or property ownership records - in short, none
of the information commonly associated with real people.

And yet, someone signed the name Leonard T. Bayard to Bayard Foreign
Marketing's annual report.

The report, which describes the company as an "international marketing firm,"
lists Bayard's principal place of business as a suite in a historic downtown
Portland office building known as the Pittock Block. But a visitor to the suite
who asked to see Bayard was told by a receptionist only that "Mr. Bayard
doesn't work here."

The telephone number on Bayard's annual report is listed to a private residence
in a rundown section of northeast Portland whose doorbell went unanswered
earlier this week. Calls to that number, however, appear to be answered by a
bank of operators.

An initial call was answered as "Baynard Foreign Marketing" by an operator who
insisted she never had heard of Leonard Bayard. A second call two minutes later
was answered as "Bayard Foreign Marketing" by a different operator, who said
that "Mr. Bayard is away from his desk."

A message left by a reporter went unanswered. The CIA has long had a well-known
practice of "backstopping" local telephone numbers for its proprietary
companies around the world, whose calls are forwarded to operators at CIA
headquarters in Langley, Va.

Scott Caplan, an attorney whose offices occupy the same Portland suite as the
one listed by Bayard Foreign Marketing, identified Bayard as "a client" but
declined to say more. Public documents show it was Caplan who filed the
incorporation papers for Bayard Foreign Marketing when the company was created
in August 2003.

Ann Martens, a spokeswoman for Oregon Secretary of State Bill Bradbury, said
that knowingly filing a false corporate document in Oregon is punishable by up
to six months in prison and a $1,000 fine.

Leonard T. Bayard - whoever he may or may not be - became the sole owner of the
mysterious Gulfstream jet on Nov. 16, according to public records compiled by
the Federal Aviation Administration.

The records show that Bayard Foreign Marketing purchased the plane, for an
undisclosed sum, from Premier Executive Transport Services, whose address is
the same as that of a Dedham, Mass., law firm that incorporated Premier
Executive in January 1994.

The Massachusetts law firm's address is shared by a second company, Crowell
Aviation Technologies Inc., which according to Dun & Bradstreet claims to have
only a single employee and $65,000 in annual revenue.

Government records show, however, that Crowell is one of only nine companies,
along with Premier Executive, that has Pentagon permission to land aircraft at
military bases worldwide.

The same day it transferred ownership of the Gulfstream to Bayard, Premier
Executive sold an unmarked, 3-year-old Boeing 737 to Keeler and Tate Management
LLC of Reno. That company's address is the same as that of the Reno law firm
that incorporated it in October 2003, records show.

Like Leonard T. Bayard, the only named principal in Keeler and Tate, one Tyler
Edward Tate, also appears not to exist in any public records accessible by the
Chicago Tribune.

Premier Executive's only listed executive is its president, Bryan P. Dyess. A
person with that name does appear in commercial databases, but his only
addresses are two post office boxes in Arlington, Va., not far from CIA
headquarters.

Premier Executive purchased or leased the new Gulfstream V in 1999, FAA records
show. The plane's original registration number, N581GA, would later be changed
by the FAA to N379P, and again to 8068V.

The first public mention of the Gulfstream appeared six weeks after Sept. 11,
2001, when a Pakistani newspaper reported that Jamil Qasim Saeed Mohammed, a
27-year-old microbiology student at Karachi University, had been spirited
aboard the plane at Karachi's airport by Pakistani security officers in the
early hours of Oct. 23, 2001.

There is no information about where Mohammed was taken. But Pakistani officials
said later that Mohammed, a Yemeni national, was believed by the United States
to belong to al-Qaida and to have information about the October 2000 bombing of
the USS Cole.

Since Sept. 11, unnamed U.S. officials have been quoted in several publications
discussing the U.S. practice of "rendition," which involves sending suspected
terrorists or al-Qaida supporters captured abroad for interrogation to
countries where human rights are not traditionally respected.

An international network of "plane spotters," hobbyists who log the comings and
goings of specific aircraft around the world, have posted on the Internet
photographs of the Gulfstream in various locations.

The Chicago Tribune is a Tribune Publishing newspaper.

Copyright + 2005, The Baltimore Sun

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