What kind of country are we?

Starting in the Clinton Administration--but greatly expanded under George W. Bush--the CIA has been sending detainees (aka prisoners) it can't crack to countries that will torture them and return them with "confessions." (Among these torture facilities: Egypt, Syria, Jordan, and Morocco.)

Called "extraordinary renditions," this franchising of torture is wholly illegal. A 1998 American law, the Foreign Affairs and Restructuring Act, states unequivocally: "It shall be the policy of the United States not to expel, extradite, or otherwise effect the involuntary return of any person to a country in which there are substantial grounds for believing the person would be in danger of being subjected to torture."

The CIA, benefiting from the "special rules" allowed it by the Bush Administration (as admitted by Alberto Gonzales in his confirmation hearing) is also violating article 49 of the Geneva Convention, ratified by the U.S. in 1955.

Except for a few persistent reporters--most notably Dana Priest of The Washington Post--and releases by human rights organizations, the media largely ignored these renditions for a long time. (A television exception was Ted Koppel's Nightline, which may soon be extinguished by the ABC network.)

Our government has been so careful to shroud its exporting of torture that members of the 9/11 Commission were forbidden to ask about it. And until recently, Congress has again suspended the separation of powers by avoiding any investigation of the CIA's "special rules."

But after the photographs of horrors at Abu Ghraib--and other prison camps in documents released by the ACLU--somewhat more attention is being paid not only to the renditions but also to the CIA's own secret interrogation centers around the world where prisoners are held without charges, indefinitely, and, of course, without access to lawyers or human rights groups. Enough has been leaked to reveal that "extreme interrogation methods" take place there.

Some momentum is now taking place in the Senate Intelligence Committee and elsewhere in Congress to look into these crimes--and they are war crimes--being committed by the CIA. But any investigation that does not include subpoena powers all the way to the highest echelons of the Administration will be a sham. No doubt, the Republican leadership in both houses will work hard to block any meaningful investigation.

The CIA is getting nervous about what to do with its own ghost prisoners hidden in its remorseless interrogation rooms. Whatever information comes from torture, a notoriously unreliable source, cannot be used in American courts.

So, as a former senior intelligence officer told The New York Times: "No one [in the CIA] has a plan for what to do with these guys." And Jane Mayer, in her invaluable, detailed report, "Outsourcing Torture," in the February 14-21 New Yorker, quotes former CIA counter-terrorism expert Michael Scheuer: "Are we going to hold these people forever?" They can't be brought in to court, he notes, adding, "You can't kill them, either. All we've done is create a nightmare."

What kind of a country are we becoming? Watching the smiling Alberto Gonzales taking his oath of office, I remembered his declaration the day the full Senate made him our attorney general: "Torture and abuse will not be tolerated by this Administration." No one in Washington has been indicted for the abhorrent practices at Abu Ghraib. It was there, the Associated Press reported on February 18, that an Iraqi prisoner "died under CIA interrogation ... suspended by his wrists, with his hands cuffed behind his back."

The CIA and the Justice Department declined to comment to the AP on this story. No wonder.

Nat Hentoff is a columnist for The Village Voice, Free Inquiry, and The Progressive. He is the author of "The War on the Bill of Rights and the Gathering Resistance."