Lithuania will probe claims of secret CIA prison potentially located in Rudininkai

Independent investigation?
Lithuania has promised  to investigate the latest allegations of hosting a secret CIA prison for al Qaeda suspects on the outskirts of the capital Vilnius, said its new president Dalia Grybauskaite on the 25th of August.

The parliament of the former Soviet country was already putting together a special committee to look into the case, Grybauskaite told reporters during an official visit to Brussels on Tuesday. However, she said she had no confirmation of the claims.”It is regretful that my country’s name is on the list,” said Grybauskaite. “It will be for us to prove if it is true or not.”

The Lithuanian Prime Minister Andrius Kubilius has expressed his doubts on creating such a committee to investigate claims, stating that:

The Committee on Foreign Affairs stated very clearly [in response to the Dick Marty report] that there have been no such prisons or interrogation area in Lithuania and we do not have new information to this day to reverse this conclusion.  Now, as one of the US top media company reports these allegations, we could repeat the investigation, i.e. launch a probe in one or another parliamentary committee, but I am convinced that we would get the same answer”.

The former head of state, Valdas Adamkus, who was president throughout the period in which the United States employed such black sites in Europe and elsewhere, has denied the reports, as have other Lithuanian officials.

European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso restated that EU member states should investigate such allegations. “We have repeatedly stressed the need for member states to start or continue in-depth, independent, impartial investigations to establish the truth of such claims,” Barroso said at the press conference with Grybauskaite.

Amnesty International urges the Lithuanian authorities to avoid the mistakes of other European governments and to conduct a full, effective, independent and impartial investigation into the alleged role of Lithuanian officials and the use of state territory in connection with secret detention and enforced disappearance, and the possible involvement of Lithuanian state agents in other serious human rights abuses, including torture. The investigation should be conducted with as much transparency as possible, with its scope, methodology, and findings made public. Hearings should be held in public and any claims that evidence should not be disclosed must be determined by an authority independent of the Lithuanian executive.

Base in Rudninkai?
Russia Today claimed that the facility was in a ‘disused ex-Soviet army base’, located in the heart of Lithuania’s fifth-largest forest, about 40 kilometers south of Vilnius, and just 30 kilometers from Vilnius International airport. The base also has its own airstrip.

It’s quiet, undisturbed, and surrounded by the ultimate deterrent to inquisitive journalists – unexploded bombs.

If Russia Today’s claim is true, it is hard to see which other base the paper can be talking about than the Rūdininkai or Rūdninkai airbase, located in the woods, 16 km away from the border with Belarus and 40 kilometers south of Vilnius. The base was used as a training ground for Soviet bomber pilots – resulting in various explosives still being found.

CIA contacts with Lithuania
Time to introduce Michael Sulik and his past whereabouts. Ex-Vietnam marine Sulik served as a deputy of Stephen Kappes, a senior officer in the CIA Directorate of Operations (the operational part of the CIA) which oversaw the HVD programme when it was operating at full speed between 2002 and 2004 – a period in which the worst abuses took place according to the leaked ICRC report.

Sulick retired in November 2004 as Associate Deputy Director for Operations together with Kappes, after they both clashed with ex-CIA-director Porter Goss on demands by members of Goss’s staff Sulick be disciplined for ‘insubordination’ when he heavily criticised Pat Murray, Goss’s chief of staff.

According to another ex-CIA agent, Tyler Drumheller, the Goss staff ‘appeared to be listening to officers who had grown irritated by the demands that had been placed on them since the September 11 attacks to provide real sources.’ (…)

‘Their lack of understanding of the intricacies of intelligence collection’ complicated the relationship between Goss and some of the CIA officers.

Both the NYT and the WP gave prominent coverage to a November 2004 memo in which Goss reportedly laid out ‘the rules of the orad’ for his staff, saying they were to distance themselves from any and all criticism of the administration and its policies.

In September 2007 both Sulick and Kappes returned to the CIA and were promoted: Michael Sulick is now the director of the CIA’s National Clandestine Service (the former ‘Directorate of Operations’), overseeing most of the CIA’s covert officers and foreign posts. Kappes is now deputy director of the CIA. Current CIA director Leon Panetta has kept both of them.

Interestingly, Michael Sulick left in August 1991 “on one of the most thrilling and rewarding trips” of his CIA career to Lithuania, offering his help and working closely together the new vice president of Lithuania at that time, Karol Motieke, in order “to build a strong intelligence service for its defense, one based on democratic principles and the rule of law.”
Ironically,

“From its experience in Eastern Europe, the CIA had already designed appropriate training programs and dispatched attorneys to outline the laws and regulations governing intelligence collection and parliamentary oversight in the United States and other Western democracies.”

Sulik and Rumsfeld visiting Lithuania’s communist torture detention sites

We had only one event remaining before Bearden and I left Vilnius. (…) It was to prove the most dramatic and emotional of my stay in Lithuania. Motieka arranged a tour of KGB Headquarters for Bearden. (…) The tour was a grisly one as our guide showed us cells designed for torture. In one of them, prisoners were forced to stand hours on end on a slight incline built into the wall in order to avoid standing on a floor flooded with water. Tired and helpless prisoners would fall into the water nearly frozen by winter air that had been allowed to blow in from an open window. The empty cells still seemed faintly to echo the screams of tortured prisoners. The chairman showed us a cell in which he had spent six years. He told us that despite this kind of treatment, most dissidents never lost heart and devised methods to communicate with each other and with the outside world. As an example, he showed us tiny scraps of paper he had saved on which he had neatly written messages in script so infinitesimally small that we could barely decipher the letters.

Donald Rumsfeld visited Lithuania in October 2005 noting “Lithuania’s active role in the Global War on Terror.” In an “open Letter to the People of Vilnius” he said:

I recently visited your beautiful city for important discussions with President Adamkus, Prime Minister Brazauskas, and other senior Lithuanian leaders. During our talks, we discussed a variety of security issues as well as the warm relationship between the United States and your nation. Vilnius provided a fine venue for our conversations.

I also had the chance to spend an enjoyable and educational Sunday morning walking through your historic, old town district and visiting the KGB museum. The museum was a stark reminder of the importance of preserving our liberty at all costs, and the visit helped me understand the depth of Lithuania’s commitment to freedom.