November 20, 2005
By Bartholomew Sullivan and Marc Perrusquia
Published in Commercial Appeal (Memphis, TN)
WASHINGTON — A Cordova company is at the center of a diplomatic row over whether its planes have been used to secretly transport terrorism suspects for interrogation by foreign security services in a practice called extraordinary rendition.
Stevens Express Leasing, which Federal Aviation Administration records show owns four airplanes, was identified by the Spanish newspaper Diario de Mallorca as the owner of planes associated with CIA operations regularly landing on the island of Majorca, Spain.
A Central Intelligence Agency spokeswoman said last week that she could not address questions concerning Stevens. “All we’ve been saying all day is ‘no comment,’” she said.
Stevens’ registered agent is Douglas R. Beaty, a Cordova real estate attorney.
Beaty, also listed as an officer in the company, declined comment.
Last week, the Spanish newspaper reported that the chief prosecutor for Majorca, Bartolome Barcelo, ordered a police report of the planes’ activities forwarded to Spain’s national court. If suspects were flown through Spanish territory, it could have serious diplomatic consequences, Spain’s interior minister, Jose Antonio Alonso, hinted last week.
“If it is confirmed that it is true, we would be, I insist, facing very serious acts, acts that are not tolerable in any way,” Alonso was quoted saying in The New York Times.
Several countries have objected to the American practice of sending suspects to countries that permit torture, and human rights groups and the European Union are investigating reports that the U.S. operates detention facilities overseas where anonymous suspects are held beyond the reach of lawyers.
Italy this month sought the extradition of 22 suspected CIA operatives believed to have been involved in the kidnapping of Egyptian cleric Osama Moustafa Hassan Nasr, also known as Abu Omar, allegedly abducted on a street in Milan in February 2003. His extraordinary rendition was to Egypt, where, according to news sources, he was tortured. His current whereabouts are unknown.
Germany is also investigating the legality of secret seizures of suspects in ways that typically bypass extradition procedures and the suspects’ legal rights.
Stevens Express Leasing was chartered in Tennessee in 1996 after an initial incorporation in Delaware in 1990, records show.
The Washington law firm of Zuckert, Scoutt & Rasenberger, which specializes in aviation issues, is the point of contact for three of the company’s original board members and its incorporator, Ralph L. Kissick. A firm representative said she would ask an attorney to return a reporter’s call about the company and the board members last week, but no one did.
A current Stevens board member, Philip P. Quincannon, is also listed as an official of both Crowell Aviation Technologies and Premier Executive Transport Services, both with the same address in Massachusetts. The New York Times reported in May that Quincannon may well be a “ghost,” noting that his name appears in no property or other public records and that his Social Security number was issued between 1993 and 1995 even though he was supposedly born in 1949.
Records on file with the Tennessee Secretary of State show Stevens Express obtained a corporate charter for the Cordova-based company via a February 1996 application from then-Memphis attorney Mark E. Klass, now a Superior Court judge in North Carolina.
Klass couldn’t be reached by The Commercial Appeal despite two calls to his Lexington, N.C., office.
At the time of the filing, Klass shared an East Memphis office with Beaty, who now appears on a list of Stevens officers as its assistant secretary. The company’s business address is Beaty’s Cordova law office at 8130 Country Village.
A lawyer for Memphis developers Rusty and Kevin Hyneman as well as businessman William B. Tanner, Beaty may be best-recalled as a co-defendant with then-Congressman Harold Ford Sr. in the Butcher bank fraud scandal.
Now a lobbyist, Ford was charged and eventually acquitted in 1993 of taking payoffs disguised as loans from Jake and C.H. Butcher Jr., who ran the now-defunct United American Bank.
As in-house counsel to Butcher accountant David Crabtree, Beaty helped set up a company called Tenn-Ford, an alleged funnel for payoffs, and was charged in 15 federal counts of helping cover up loans.
Along with Ford, a jury found Beaty innocent in 1993.
By 1996, Beaty was sharing an office with Klass in a secluded two-story building on Rex Road in East Memphis. Upstairs, another of the Butcher defendants, Karl Schledwitz, also acquitted, ran his development firm, Southland Capital Corp.
“He’s still one of my best friends,” Schledwitz said of Beaty. “When you go through what we went through together, you become blood brothers whether you want to or not.”
Despite their closeness, Schledwitz said he knew nothing of Beaty’s involvement with Stevens Express.
The company’s 2005 annual report, filed July 20, is signed by president James J. Kershaw. He could not be located in Shelby County voting or business records.
The Associated Press noted that Kershaw is also named as president of two other companies based in Massachusetts and North Carolina. Neither the AP nor The Commercial Appeal could locate Kershaw for comment.
Beaty, 57, a licensed pilot, declined an interview for this story. He did not respond to a written note left at his law office and, when a reporter called his home, a woman’s voice was heard asking if Beaty wanted to talk, followed by a man’s voice shouting, “No!”
The Times reported last week that one of the planes landing at Majorca’s international airport followed a route identical to one described by Binyam Muhammad, a suspect associated with Brooklyn-born and former Chicago gang member Jose Padilla, the American citizen suspected of plotting a dirty bomb attack.
Rep. Harold Ford Jr., D-Tenn., was surprised to hear that the company he has been reading about had an office about a mile outside his district. He also said he hopes the U.S. is not involved in torture.
“There should be a common set of rules that we follow and, if we’re knowingly shipping people to be tortured somewhere, it’s not a good thing. It’s not who we are.”
— Bartholomew Sullivan: (202) 408-2726. Marc Perrusquia: 529-2545
Staff library director Rosemary Nelms contributed to this story.
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