Boeing’s Fingerprints on Torture?
Here’s a corporate responsibility story that belongs in the textbooks. A subsidiary of the giant airplane maker and defense contractor Boeing Co. is being sued by the ACLU for alleged complicity in the CIA rendition program, which transfers terrorism suspects to secret prisons located outside the U.S. to interrogate them without legal constraints.
The suit was filed on behalf of a certain guest at the exclusive Guantanamo Bay Resort for Terrorists (Gitmo for short) and two other suspects held in Egypt. All guilty before proven innocent. Boeing’s Denver-based subsidiary Jeppesen Dataplan Inc. is accused of providing the CIA with transportations services to take the prisoners overseas, where they were tortured.
Boeing is denying any knowledge of the case. Sound familiar? Multinational retailers also claim they have no knowledge of their apparel contractors operating sweatshops in developing nations CEO’s say they had no idea their accounting departments were cooking the books. American contractors in Iraq say they didn’t know about the corruption in the UN’s oil for food program.
The guilty ones aren’t the terror suspects – they should have been given their fundamental rights to be free from torture and not to be condemned to punishment before proven guilty in a trial. The War on Terror doesn’t suspend the sanctity of human rights, and any corporation that is complicit in human rights violations, knowingly or not, deserves to be taken to task. Nor can Boeing subsidiary Jeppesen Dataplan get off the hook by claiming it’s operatives didn’t know who they were transporting or why when they took care of logistics for the CIA. Corporations have an obligation to be transparent in their activities, even when a customer like the CIA can get away with disinformation and deniability in its rogue operations.
This lawsuit will be interesting to follow, even if it is likely to be thrown out of court. It may help unravel the shroud of deceit covering the Bush Administration’s battle against civil rights.
The suit was filed on behalf of a certain guest at the exclusive Guantanamo Bay Resort for Terrorists (Gitmo for short) and two other suspects held in Egypt. All guilty before proven innocent. Boeing’s Denver-based subsidiary Jeppesen Dataplan Inc. is accused of providing the CIA with transportations services to take the prisoners overseas, where they were tortured.
Boeing is denying any knowledge of the case. Sound familiar? Multinational retailers also claim they have no knowledge of their apparel contractors operating sweatshops in developing nations CEO’s say they had no idea their accounting departments were cooking the books. American contractors in Iraq say they didn’t know about the corruption in the UN’s oil for food program.
The guilty ones aren’t the terror suspects – they should have been given their fundamental rights to be free from torture and not to be condemned to punishment before proven guilty in a trial. The War on Terror doesn’t suspend the sanctity of human rights, and any corporation that is complicit in human rights violations, knowingly or not, deserves to be taken to task. Nor can Boeing subsidiary Jeppesen Dataplan get off the hook by claiming it’s operatives didn’t know who they were transporting or why when they took care of logistics for the CIA. Corporations have an obligation to be transparent in their activities, even when a customer like the CIA can get away with disinformation and deniability in its rogue operations.
This lawsuit will be interesting to follow, even if it is likely to be thrown out of court. It may help unravel the shroud of deceit covering the Bush Administration’s battle against civil rights.
posted by Karl at 12:49 PM
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