Downtown San Jose Company planned CIA Terror Flights

(CBS 5) SAN JOSE You've heard about Abu Ghraib prison, Guantanamo Bay, and a host of other places where torture is alleged to have happened. But you've probably never heard that a company in downtown San Jose is said to have helped the Central Intelligence Agency get prisoners to the alleged torture sites.

The 16th floor of a gleaming tower on West Santa Clara Street is home to the Jeppesen corporation's International Trip and Flight Planning office.

But Charlotte Casey of South Bay Mobilization says they should be called the travel agents of terror.

"I really felt ill, sick to my stomach, that this was happening in San Jose," Casey said.

Casey is responding to an investigation by The New Yorker magazine that said Jeppesen regularly arranges what they call "spook flights" for the CIA.

Aboard Boeing 737 business jets were shackled and hooded passengers accused of terrorism, The New Yorker reported in its Oct. 30 issue. They were sometimes stripped nude and chained to the cabin floor, the magazine said.

Casey said the CIA calls it "extraordinary rendition."

"They are basically kidnapped and taken to a third company where they can be tortured," Casey said.

The Englewood, Colo.-based company has offices located around the world and is a business subsidiary of Boeing, according to the Jeppesen Web site.

Boeing allegedly provides the jets. Jeppesen reportedly provides the logistics, flight plans, and even clearances into places like Baghdad and Kabul where the passengers are turned over as prisoners.

"The investigative analysis has shown that there have been over 150 of these kinds of flights in the last few years," Casey said.

In fact, a former Jeppesen employee reportedly told The New Yorker the company's managing director, Bob Overby, admitted to the practice, saying, "We do all the extraordinary rendition flights -- you know, the torture flights. Let's face it, some of these flights end up that way."

In return, American flight crews get kickbacks, resort vacations off the coast of Spain, using tax dollars, The New Yorker uncovered.

"The fact that these horrors are being carried out in our name, with our tax dollars, is completely unacceptable," Casey said.

Jeppesen would not comment Thursday.

The CIA also declined to comment.