Activist 'plane spotters' try documenting Aero flights

SMITHFIELD -- Laura Marks stood before a group of about 20 people alongside U.S. 70 on Saturday and gave them a brief lesson on how to spot planes coming and going from nearby Johnston County Airport.

"Look for the tail number. Be able to identify the type of plane. Use your scanner. Any information you can get will be great," Marks told the group, many of whom had cameras and binoculars dangling from around their necks.

"Piddle around with the scanner," Marks brightly added. "Get to know it. Have fun with it."

For Marks, of Ayden, and the rest of the group, the Saturday afternoon plane spotting lesson was not a leisurely activity. Marks and her cohort, volunteers with N.C. Stop Torture Now, hope to glean information that can be passed along to other groups around the world that want to stop the use of planes they say are used by the CIA to whisk away terror suspects to countries where they can be legally tortured.

The owner of the planes, Aero Contractors, a private flight company at the airport, has drawn national and international attention over the past year because of reported ties to the CIA.

Company officials were unavailable for comment Saturday.

For two years, N.C. Stop Torture Now activists have tried to hold Aero accountable for what they describe as human rights abuses by gathering thousands of petition signatures, making formal appeals to government officials, lobbying for state and federal legislation and civil disobedience.

"We have been going at this for some time, pursuing it from every level we can," said Roger Ehrlich, another volunteer and organizer of the plane-spotting lesson.

But Saturday was the group's first go at plane spotting. The group plans to make it a regular activity but, in cloak-and-dagger style, won't disclose when.

Before settling about 500 yards from the airport, the volunteers put up a banner that read, "First In Flight, Not In Torture." A smaller sign read, "Tarheels Against Torture" while another asked, "Who Would Jesus Torture?"

The signs prompted some motorists to yell things like "Go home Yankees!" and profanities.

Large vultures flew over the runway as Marks continued her lesson.

"That seems appropriate," Ehrlich said.

The group does not think any terror suspects are flown out of Johnston County. Instead, they think the flights most likely depart for Washington Dulles International Airport in Dulles, Va., to pick up CIA operatives. From there, they think, the planes head around the globe to snatch terror suspects before taking them to places where torture is legal, or to secret jails run by the CIA in places like Poland and Romania.

Marks handed out a brochure, "Torture Flight Watch Orientation," that instructed volunteers to keep an eye out for any plane movement around certain hangars.

But spotting planes trolling for the CIA in Johnston County may be about as easy as catching Osama bin Laden.

After nearly four hours in stifling heat waiting for a Gulfstream jet or some other suspicious aircraft, the volunteers spotted a small cropduster taxiing on one of the runways.

The members grew silent. Some peered through binoculars that turned upward as the plane took to the skies.

"He came in kind of low," Mia Austin Scoggins, the group's media director, said later. "I thought he was trying to intimidate us."