CIA Aircraft Registrations and Photos??

Does anyone know or can post a link on where I can view photos of CIA aircraft or registration information?

Thanks.

Nope sorry that's secret... ha ha

Actually a friend of mine is a first officer for Emirates. He routinely overflies Afghanistan. A few months ago he was surprised to see a Tower Air 747 flying underneath him.

This airline performed many military charters, but went out of business in 2000. My thought is that it was involved with the secret shuttling of Taleban prisoners out of Afghanistan.

Another member and I actually have a pretty good list of CIA companies and a few of the aircraft they operate. There's not really anything you can see right away that says "This is CIA!" You have to dig, and frequently only find tiny little clues that you have to put together to figure it out. CIA aircraft are frequently operated under registration to someone else.

As for the Tower plane, it's possible that it was one of their planes that was pressed into service in the old colors and hadn't been repainted yet. I've seen that happen a couple of times, where an airline will take over a plane, and they'll paint over the name, but not the colors until after they send it in for a maintenance period.

For information on aircraft used in extraordinary rendition, Wikipedia keeps a page moderately up to date on some of the more well known aircraft. This page includes registration numbers and some images. Link

The aircraft used in rendition generally are owned by fairly poorly set up shell corporations and shuffled around between different ones as soon as they get too much publicity. This technique goes back to the old proprietary airlines CIA has had since after World War II, where a large number of corporations were set up under a larger parent company, Pacific Corporation.

Several additional aircraft not mentioned on that page are owned by Devon Holding & Leasing, a shell corporation from Lexington, North Carolina. The actual company at their address is a legal firm that refuses to answer any questions about Devon. Their aircraft include N196D, N187D, N219D, and N168D.

Oh, and one other thing about Devon. Their executive officers all have social security numbers issued in the 1990s. Which would make them teenagers now, and toddlers when they started the company.

Actually there is a New Jersey company which owns a fleet of C-7 Caribou freighters in Malta which often leases to the UN in Africa. It's called New Cal Aviation. Anybody know more about it ?

I don't know what you already know about them, but I'll post what I've found. NewCal Aviation has eight aircraft registered: N1446Z, N285L, N3262W, N383EX, N400NC, N5482J, N68DE, and N84897. They are located at 14 Riser Road, Little Ferry, New Jersey. (The FAA pages list it as Little Fery, but the town is actually Little Ferry) The New Jersey corporation search engine unfortunately charges for any information, so I was unable to find anything on the people involved with the company.

Regarding photographs, there are two for N285L (the only non-de Havilland, but it's been in Malta as well, and, according to this page, used to belong to Air America), one for N383EX, one for N400NC (which crashed in 1992), and several for N84897 (more here)--which doesn't look to be in very good condition.

[Addition: A former vice president of NewCal Aviation plead guilty to exporting aircraft parts to Lybia in 2005. Also, in 1995, an individual claiming to be from the U.S. Embassy in Mexico attempted to purchase an aircraft from NewCal, in a case that sounds very much related to drug smuggling. In 2004, an employee of NewCal was accused by the South African government of having ties to terrorism.]

[edit on 12-6-2007 by LoganCale]

ngoht20: I'm curious as to how you got the opinion that NewCal operates for the CIA. From what I've seen, there are some interesting events and connections, but nothing indicating any sort of connection to the CIA. Yes, they do operate in Malta, which is a common stopping point for rendtion flights, but that's pretty weak if it's all there is.

So if you do have more information, I'd be interested in seeing it.

I've written a couple of articles that cover CIA and USSF aircraft and extraordinary rendition that you might find interesting - you can view them here:

CIA aircraft

Extraordinary Rendition

Heimdall

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reply to post by LoganCale


NTSB Identification: CHI70A0032
14 CFR Part 91 General Aviation
Event occurred Monday, November 10, 1969 in NORTHLAKE, IL
Aircraft: PIPER PA-32, registration: N3262W

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- FILE DATE LOCATION AIRCRAFT DATA INJURIES FLIGHT PILOT DATA F S M/N PURPOSE----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------3-3317 69/11/10 NORTHLAKE,ILL PIPER PA-32 CR- 1 0 0 MISCELLANEOUS COMMERCIAL, FL.INSTR., TIME - 1250 N3262W PX- 0 0 0 FERRY AGE 23, 989 TOTAL HOURS, DAMAGE-DESTROYED OT- 0 0 0 46 IN TYPE, INSTRUMENT RATED. DEPARTURE POINT INTENDED DESTINATION W CHICAGO,ILL CHICAGO,ILL TYPE OF ACCIDENT PHASE OF OPERATION COLLISION WITH GROUND/WATER: UNCONTROLLED IN FLIGHT: UNCONTROLLED DESCENT PROBABLE CAUSE(S) PILOT IN COMMAND - SPATIAL DISORIENTATION PILOT IN COMMAND - IMPROPER IFR OPERATION FACTOR(S) WEATHER - LOW CEILING WEATHER BRIEFING - BRIEFED BY FLIGHT SERVICE PERSONNEL, BY PHONE WEATHER FORECAST - FORECAST SUBSTANTIALLY CORRECT SKY CONDITION CEILING AT ACCIDENT SITE UNKNOWN/NOT REPORTED 400 VISIBILITY AT ACCIDENT SITE PRECIPITATION AT ACCIDENT SITE 2 MILES OR LESS NONE OBSTRUCTIONS TO VISION AT ACCIDENT SITE TEMPERATURE-F FOG 40 WIND DIRECTION-DEGREES WIND VELOCITY-KNOTS 100 12 TYPE OF WEATHER CONDITIONS TYPE OF FLIGHT PLAN IFR IFR REMARKS- CONTROL LOST AFTER RADAR CONTROLLER ADVISED PLT TO CHG HEADING AFTER OVERSHOOTING LOCALIZER.

Actually the University of California at berkely featured the work of Trevor Paglen who uses extreem zoom photography to photo US recon satelites. He also looked into CIA prisons and flights.

In his newfound role as gadfly, Paglen presented his files to investigative journalist A.C. Thompson, whom he knew from the Oakland music scene. The artist and the reporter co-authored an article for the San Francisco Bay Guardian that was picked up around the world. A book deal for what would ultimately become "Torture Taxi: On the Trail of the CIA's Rendition Flights" soon followed. Published in September 2006, it was the first book to focus on extraordinary rendition - when the CIA takes terror suspects to countries where they can be tortured or jailed without due process. The New York Times called it "the real thing ... and not on the evening news. Go figure."
www.sfgate.com.../c/a/2008/05/30/DD6R10US53.DTL

The siaplay had numerous pictures of CIA fronted a/c moving people around the globe