Beginning in the mid 1990s, the CIA instituted a program of extraordinary rendition,
wherein foreign nationals suspected of terrorist activity were detained, without legal
process, and then covertly transported to countries where regulations for interrogation
were less stringent than those imposed the United States and elsewhere or completely
absent. The program was dramatically escalated after the September 11 attacks and has
been defended vigorously by the Bush administration. Former CIA agent Robert Baer
describes renditions bleakly: "If you want a serious interrogation, you send a prisoner to
Jordan. If you want them to be tortured, you send them to Syria. If you want someone to
disappear — never to see them again — you send them to Egypt."
The etymology of "extraordinary rendition" can perhaps be traced to the meaning of the
verb rend: to tear, to remove from a place by violence, to wrest. Other meanings include
to tear (the hair or clothing) as a sign of anger, grief, or despair, to lacerate with painful
feelings, and to pierce with sound.