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This is the first of a two-part investigative report I wrote  and which was originally published in the Daily Sparks Tribune.

The American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit accusing the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency and three companies of illegally abducting a Muslim German citizen and subjecting him to torture in a secret prison overseas.

The suit, filed Tuesday in federal court in Alexandria, Va., claims that Khaled El-Masri, 42, was abducted by the CIA, ACLU Executive Director Anthony Romero said at a press conference in Washington.

The suit charges that former CIA Director George Tenet and other agency officials violated U.S. and international laws when they authorized agents to snatch El-Masri on New Years Eve day, 2003.

The suit also holds Reno, Nevada-based Keeler & Tate Management LLC legally responsible for assisting in the violation of El-Masri’s civil and human rights. The company allegedly supplied one of the aircraft and provided the personnel to abduct El-Masri.

The Boeing 737-7BC, whose tail number reads N4476S (it originally read N313P until outted by media reports in December 2004) is reportedly a flagship of the CIA Airline, is not really leased by the CIA. It is owned by a shell company, Keeler & Tate Management Group, LLC. Like other CIA shell companies, it has no full-time employees, no real business premise, and no website.

In lieu of this, Keeler & Tate has an attorney who provides a mail place, registers the company with the state and the plane with the Federal Aviation Administration, and responds in other necessary ways with government agencies and the public. This attorney provides many of the legal services needed by a normal company, including a place to serve legal papers and court documents on the company.

The address of Keeler & Tate is 245 E. Liberty St., Suite 510, Reno. The corporate information provided to the Nevada Secretary of State Dean Heller’s office lists the resident agent as Steven F. Petersen, an attorney whose address are the same as Keeler & Tate’s. The only company officer listed is Tyler Edward Tate of the same address.

The address of Keeler & Tate and of the lawyer Petersen is shared by Laxalt Group West, the law firm of Paul D. Laxalt and Peter D. Laxalt. Paul D. Laxalt is a former Republican senator from Nevada. His law firm specializes in “political public relations services.” So does Petersen’s, which has the same address and phone number.

Laxalt, the former U.S. senator whose address and phone number are used by the owners of the CIA’s 737, was a close friend of President Ronald Reagan. When Reagan was president, Laxalt was referred to as the “First Friend.”

When phoned, the receptionist answered “attorneys office” She could not tell the Sparks Tribune which attorney worked at the offices other than there was one who is retired and comes in every once in a while. She did confirm that the office was used by Laxalt Group West. She claimed having no knowledge of Keeler & Tate Management Group.

According to the suit, El-Masri was taken while on vacation in Macedonia on Dec, 31, 2003. He was then transported to a secret location somewhere in Afghanistan where he was subjected to “inhuman” conditions and interrogations.

The civil liberties organization said that soon after El-Masri was flown to Afghanistan, CIA officers realized they had a case of mistaken identity. Tenet was notified about the error. El-Masri remained in custody for two more months.

The suit contends that El-Masri was forbidden to contact a lawyer or any member of his family and after several months of confinement, he was abandoned in Albania in May, 2004.

Copyright © 2005 The Daily Sparks Tribune 

Why the two women were feeling sad is beyond my recollection. What I do recall is that my response was to try to make them feel better.

Since both my then-girlfriend Cathy Andre and her friend and our classmate Cathy Dickey were in a blue-funk, I decided to run up town and buy tickets to a movie for the three of us.  I figured it would be good for them to get out of the house and do something aside from mope.

The movie I chose was highly rated by everyone I had spoken too. And every critic on television and on radio had given the film starring Meryl Streep high marks, besides I figured, with Streep in it, it had to be good.

Wrong.

Don’t get me wrong the performance and the story were both powerful. It jus’ wasn’t the right movie to take Cathy and Cathy to go see at that time.

The film, it turns out is about a woman who makes a gut and heart wrenching decision to surrender one of her children to a Nazi concentration guard in order to save the other child’s life. The surrendered child, we are led to believe ends up being gassed, and that action leaves her emotionally and later mentally unstable.

By the time the movie let out both of the women I was with looked as if they were in shell-shock.  “Sophie’s Choice,” was not my best choice.

I told myself, “Next time, jus’ ice cream.”

It was something right out of the Old Testament – Exodus to be exact. And worse yet, the teachers and other staff at Margaret Keating School refused to allow us kids to come back inside, so we had to endure it.

Jus’ after school started that day; swarms of flying ants began filling the air. They nearly blotted out the blue skies with their numbers and when they weren’t flying, they were crawling everywhere.

During first recess, I saw a girl so freaked out by them, that as she dashed for the restroom, she undressed herself before getting there. She later said she felt like she had hundreds of flying ants crawling inside her blouse and pants.

By our lunchtime recess, there were so many flying ants, all we could do was stand in the shade of the school’s building and watch them swarm over the playground. For some reason, the ants didn’t fly in the shaded areas, instead sticking to the sunshine.

By the time the school day was done, the flying hoards of ants had moved on. No one knew where they came from or where they went too.

And I never learned if they affected anyone else in either the county or the town.

“The washer is broke down again,” Mom said over the phone to Dad.

He was at Requa Air Force Station.  Earlier that year he had been able to get permission from the Base Commander to use the station’s laundry facilities.

A few minutes later Dad called back.  Mom lifted the receiver from its cradled and answered.

“Sorry,” Dad started off, “the laundry facilities are out-of-order up here as well.”

After a few more minutes of conversation, they hung up one from the other.

“Tommy, Adam,” Mom yelled out.

Both of us were in our bedroom when she called.  We rushed to her immediately.

“I’m going to need your help with the laundry,” she said as she picked up the telephone and called Camp Marigold to see if they could use their washing machines.

Camp Marigold was just over the fence in the back yard.  It was an RV park during the summer and not much of anything else during the winter.

It was long past summer and using their laundry room would prove to be no problem.

The plans were to take the laundry over, wash it, haul it back over the fence then dry it since our dryer was still working.  And after a weeks time with four children and two adults, there were fourteen piles of dirty clothes laid out in masses on the floor.

Adam looked at me and said, “There goes our day.”

We both sighed because I knew my brother was right.

There were only two washers available in the campground’s laundry room.  And it each took nearly twice the time to wash as our washer did at home.

The going was slow and the coins in our pockets, Mom had given us to pay for the washings, burned even slower yet.  However, we continued to climb back and forth over the fence, each with a load of laundry in tow.

We were down to our last three loads of laundry by sunset.  The back porch light had to finally be turned on.  The yellow glow from the single bulb cast long shadows towards the fence.

There were actually two fences.  Ours was set higher by two feet with a foot and a half gap to the lower fence built by the owner of Camp Marigold.

All day long, Adam and I climbed over our fence and down to the camp’s fence and finally to the ground.  Then we climbed up the camp’s fence and to our higher fence then down into our backyard.

After dark there was very little lighting on the Camp’s side of the fence.  And from behind the top of the higher fence to about ten feet out on the Camp’s side, there was no light at all.

In fact it was pitch-black.

Having noticed this, I set up a devious plan.  I would wait for Adam to start climbing the fence, and then I would scare him.

The very thought caused me to chuckle as an image of the event formed in my brain.  I could see myself reaching out into the pitch-blackness and touching my younger brother on the shoulder.

And even though I knew I wouldn’t be able to see Adam’s face, I imagined the fright in his eyes.  I could also see him as he ran in place from being so scared.

I crouched down in the darkness, between the light of the porch and the shadow of the fence, where I sat and waited.

Adam appeared and approached the fence.  He set the basket full of wet, clean laundry on the top rail of the Camp’s fence and proceeded to climb up it.

That’s when I reached out and grabbed his shoulder and in my scariest voice, a half-whisper and a half-growl, said, “Little boy!”

I felt Adam’s body stiffened at my touch.

The darkness blanketed everything, including the lightning swift right fist Adam hurled at the sound of my voice.  He was on target and I never saw the punch that hit me squarely in my nose.

I fell backwards as Adam clamored over the fence.

The basket of wet, clean clothes toppled from the fence rail and landed in my mid-section.  I gasped for air and could only breathe through my mouth.

Next thing I knew, I was awakened by a stabbing pain from a beam of light shining in my eyes.  I tried to lift myself up, however I could only raise up on elbows elbow as my head was heavy and swimming with confusion.

It was Dad and he had a flashlight.  He was looking down at me from a top the fence.

He quickly climbed over and down next to me as I lay on the ground.  I leaned back, hoping that Dad would have pity on me and the sorrowful state I was in.

“Crap! I think you broke his nose, Adam!” Dad yelled up towards the fence.

I could vaguely see Adam’s silhouette rise up slowly from beyond the fence at that moment.

“Well, he shouldn’t have scared me like that,” he said in his defense, adding, “I didn’t know it was Tommy.”

Dad helped me sit up and then eventually stand-up.  I felt sick to his stomach and my legs were weak.

“The only reason I don’t give you a whipping is because your brother’s already done it for me,” Dad said.

I remember thinking, “I wish I could have taken a trip to the wood shed.”

Mom was even less sympathetic.  After cleaning me up, she sent me back out to finish the wash.

That included re-washing the wet, clean load of laundry that had fallen on top of me and on which I had bled all over.

Prior to moving to Nevada, I was living in Arcata. Every weekend I would jump in my car and zoom up the coast to Crescent City to visit my then-girlfriend Cathy Andre.

One late evening, I was on my way to see her when I had to make a pit stop and use the restroom. I stopped at the Big Lagoon rest area jus’ south of DeMartins Beach.

As I left the restroom, I was suddenly attacked from behind. The person attacking me had wrapped a chord or belt around my throat and was choking me.

My reaction was more than my attacker could handle. I stepped backwards into them as I grabbed their forearms and flipped them over my back.

They hit the asphalt with a thud and I jumped over them and ran to my car. Since there were no lights in the parking lot, I didn’t see what they looked like.

Instead I raced away, heading south towards the Trees Motel. I knew the managers and I also knew I could rely on help from them.

Mrs. Stobert came to the front desk, once I entered the office. I explained to her what happened and she called the Del Norte County Sheriff’s office for me.

A few minutes later, Deputy Lloyd Seats pulled into the motel’s parking lot. He was quickly followed by a California Highway Patrol Officer.

While I explained to them what had happened and they examined my neck, I was immediately accused of having a homosexual tryst in the restroom by the CHP officer. I was completely dumbfounded.

After half an hour of questioning by both Deputy Seats and the CHP officer, they told me they planned to go roust a hitchhiker they had seen along the highway. I suspect that this was a ploy to see what my reaction would be.

I told them to go do it.

Having called their bluff, I was allowed to go on my way. It was real late getting to Cathy’s and she was angry at me.

Worse yet she didn’t believe me either. I was so upset with the whole thing that I decided to head back to Arcata the following morning rather than stick around Crescent City.

Later that evening Cathy called me to say she was sorry for not believing me. I asked her what had changed her mind and she told me that after the police and sheriff’s log were reported over the air on KPOD, where she worked, a call came into the station.

“It was a Mrs. Stobert, who manages the Trees Motel,” Cathy explained, “She wanted to know why the attack on Tommy Darby wasn’t a part of the radio station’s report.”

Nearly two-weeks ago a power supposed failure at F.E. Warren Air Force Base in Wyoming took 50 nuclear intercontinental ballistic missiles, one-ninth of the U.S. missile stockpile, temporarily offline.  The 90th Missile Wing, headquartered there, controls 150 Minuteman III missiles in a tri-state area.

Now, the Pentagon is being dogged by questions about a possible missile launch from Vandenburg Air Force Base or a submarine, that was video taped by a news helicopter. The official claim is that the contrail seen in the video is nothing more than that of a jet aircraft.

During the Warren ABF event, the ICBMs shifted into what’s known as LF Down status, meaning that missileers could no longer communicate with the missiles. An LF Down status also means that various security protocols built into the missile delivery system were offline but that the missiles remained technically launch-able.

It’s believe that a launch control center computer (LCC) began to out of sequence, which resulted in “a surge,” in the system. The LCCs interrogate each missile in sequence and if they begin to send signals out when they’re not supposed to, the missiles receivers send out error codes.

Since LCCs ping out of sequence occasionally, missileers are ready to administer a quick fix.  However as multiple missiles began to display error settings, missiliers decided to take all five LCCs the malfunctioning center was connected to off-line, leaving 50 missiles dark.

The missileers then restarted one of the LCCs, which began to normally interrogate the missile. Eventually, three LCCs were successfully restarted, while the suspect LCC remained off-line.

Admittedly, my knowledge of how the system works, is predicated on 30-year-old information. When I was stattioned at Warren AFB, a $2.98 piece of hardware at NORAD failed, shocking the entire base into a sudden state of alert.

When on alert, the missiles are under the direction of the  U.S. Strategic Command but when not on alert status, they are under the control of the Global Strike Command. The Air Force contends command and control was never lost and that the failure lasted less than an hour and triggered an emergency inspection, sending security forces to verify all of the missiles were safe and properly protected.

A similar hardware failure triggered an event in 1998 at Minot AFB in North Dakota and Malmstrom AFB in Montana, leaving an unknown number of missiles dark. In 1976, Warren AFB was witness to an event that shutdown a series of missile silos in the Wyoming and Nebraska areas and nine years earlier Malmstrom lost communication with ten of it’s Minutemen Missiles, twice in a two week period.

So far no one has officially connected the two incidents. However most current and former Air Force personnel will tell you: there is no such thing as a coincidence in the military.

Why anyone would stand at the edge of a cliff to pee, while drunk is beyond my understanding. Perhaps it’s due to the amount of alcohol in the person’s body, clouding their judgement.

But that was the call Dad and I got one early evening. It sent us scrambling to the fire station and southbound on Highway 101 to the south side of the Klamath River, where the old highway used to run.

It took us nearly half-an-hour to arrive at the spot where a man had allegedly fallen after getting up on a stone wall with the intent of taking a whizz over the edge. We drove fairly slow because we didn’t want to miss the person who was there to flag us down.

One of the first things we did after parking, was to go to the wall and look over the edge. It was so dark, that neither of us could see beyond a few feet.

Dad pulled out a large lantern and shined it down the cliff side and still we couldn’t see anything. We were planning to wait for the National Park’s high angle rescue team, but because it was starting to get cold and a delay in first aid could cost the man his life, it was decided I’d rapple down to him.

While I secured my harness and pulled on my first-responders backpack, Dad tied a line off the front of the rescue truck. It took me only a few seconds to rotate the line through by carabiners and set myself for the first step over the wall.

In less than 30 seconds I dropped into the darkness, passed several branches from close standing trees and to a semi-flat surface. It took me a few more seconds to find the victim as he was jus’ a few yards further down the slope.

Much to my surprise he was conscious and talking. His chief complaint was having pissed on himself as he fell, though I could tell by the mangled shape of his legs, he had worse problems.

It took us two hours to secure him in a litter and hand crank the man to the old highway. I was on belay and therefore the last to leave the site.

By the time I reached the top of the old stone wall, the ambulance had already left with our patient. Later I would find out, while he was in a double-hip cast for three months the man would eventually walk again.

But still I wonder — why the fascination with peeing off the side of a cliff?

He had been an outstanding member of the track team I had coached over the summer, and now I was reading his name in the paper. George Smith, age 19, was dead.

He and a couple of friends were spending the day on the Truckee River, rafting and swimming. Authorities say their inflatable floatation device, perhaps an inner tube had struck a sharp submerged rock and developed a fast leak.

While two of the young men were able to swim to safety, George wasn’t able to get to the bank. His friends, though cold and frightened, searched the banks of the river for their buddy, they couldn’t find him.

George’s body was found down river a couple of days later somewhere near the town of Lockwood. An autopsy showed he had drown and it was concluded that this happened because he had been drinking alcohol earlier in the day.

Every once in a while I think about George, the shining young trackster, and I feel a terrible stab of grief over what he could have been and what he’ll never be. Now all I have to remember him by is a newspaper’s obituary.

Mom used to say, “Quit running around like a chicken with its head cut off,” all the time. Much to my terror, I discovered that old adage is grounded in reality.

All of kid’s were out back of the duplex at the end of Sander’s Court including Goldie, Jeannie and John-Paul Arnold and Adam and me. We were playing tag, running from one place to the other to avoid being caught.

It was early evening and getting close to dinner time. That’s when Mrs. Dorothy Arnold came outside and went to the family’s chicken coup.

She returned with red-colored hen and without fan-fare, grabbed the hatched buried in the old chopping block at the back door, and dispatched the chicken. Much to my shock the headless bird dropped to the ground and took off running.

The bodiless-hen dashed into the garden, disappearing amid the rows of Lima beans. It fell to John-Paul to chase after the chicken and retrieve it for his mother.

Later that night, Adam would climb in bed next to me and complain he had a nightmare about the bird. At nearly seven-years-old, I thought I was too old to admit I was awake because of a similar nightmare.

In our garage we have a large wire-mesh dog kennel. It is no longer being used for its intended purpose, so we have taken to storing stuff in it, including a couple of suit cases, a box of photographs and a couple of containers of seasonal clothing.

Now, I knew my housemate, Kay was home as I had jus’ spoken to her prior to my getting in the shower and readying for work. When I got out of the tub, I could no longer hear Kay knocking about in the kitchen or anywhere else in the house for that matter.

I continued getting ready for work.

Once dressed, I went to the front room to see if Kay was jus’ simply sitting quietly. She wasn’t in her bedroom, nor her bathroom and she definitely not in the kitchen.

That’s when I noticed the garage light was on. It’s one of those automatic lights that turns on when it senses movement.

I concluded that Kay must be in the garage.

Upon opening the door, I saw her in the kennel, rummaging about in a container of her summer cloths. Her back was turned to me and I could tell she was trying on different blouses as she was naked from the waist up.

I couldn’t resist.

Next to the automatic light sensor is the button to open the garage door. I pushed it.

Kay’s reaction was immediate. She screamed, “Oh, sh*t!” and tried to duck behind the containers and suit cases.

I pushed the button once again, stopping the door from rising any further.

Kay was squatted down, covering herself up with whatever piece of garment she had at the time. She turned and looked back at the garage door button and saw me standing there.

I nearly pee’d myself laughing at her predicament.

Later, I had a second good laugh when she told her daughter, Lyn what I had done to her. Lyn seemed to miss the major point of the story somehow.

“You mean to say,” Lyn asked in disbelief, “you keep your clothes in a dog cage?!”