2007: Extraordinary Renditions and Secret Prisons

In a major foreign policy speech in 2007, as he ran for president, Joe Biden offered a critique of Bush-era “war on terror” policies, including torture and the CIA’s extraordinary rendition program. Biden said that “although there is a place in the war on terror for rendition to justice, where a suspect is sent to another country to face trial, the use of extraordinary rendition, or rendition to a country that we know uses torture, is out of bounds and counterproductive.” He described the CIA’s program of “extralegal kidnapping” and torture as “anathema to our national values.” Biden called on President George W. Bush to “close the black sites that are a black stain on the name of America, and close Guantánamo and bulldoze Abu Ghraib to the ground.” Without mentioning his own early support for housing prisoners at Guantánamo and denying them prisoner-of-war status, Biden declared that “nations around the world view Guantánamo not as a facility necessitated by the war on terror, but as a symbol of American disregard for the rule of law.”