Power Line July 13, 2005 IS Hypocrisy Still Considered A Vice? http://powerlineblog.com/archives/011019.php "I'm referring, of course, to the exposure of a purportedly civilian airline as a CIA operation: While posing as a private charter outfit - "aircraft rental with pilot" is the listing in Dun and Bradstreet - Aero Contractors is in fact a major domestic hub of the Central Intelligence Agency's secret air service. The company was founded in 1979 by a legendary C.I.A. officer and chief pilot for Air America, the agency's Vietnam-era air company, and it appears to be controlled by the agency, according to former employees. An analysis of thousands of flight records, aircraft registrations and corporate documents, as well as interviews with former C.I.A. officers and pilots, show that the agency owns at least 26 planes, 10 of them purchased since 2001. The agency has concealed its ownership behind a web of seven shell corporations that appear to have no employees and no function apart from owning the aircraft. The planes, regularly supplemented by private charters, are operated by real companies controlled by or tied to the agency, including Aero Contractors and two Florida companies, Pegasus Technologies and Tepper Aviation. Who was it who "outed" these CIA employees, blew their cover and perhaps endangered their lives? The New York Times, of course! In an article that was based largely on leaks by former CIA employees, who were out to embarrass the administration. Ah, but that's the "good" kind of leak--the kind that exposes the Agency's real covert operatives, not the kind that tries to correct lies told by Democratic Party loyalists in the pages of the New York Times."