Stephen R. Kappes (born August 22, 1951) was the Deputy Director of the Central Intelligence Agency (DDCIA), until his resignation on April 14, 2010.[1][2] He had served in the CIA since 1981, with a two-year hiatus. A career clandestine operations professional, Kappes was well known for his supervisory role in the extraordinary rendition program, a non-judicial system of rendering persons suspected of terrorism to secret locations where most of them were interrogated.[3][4]Kappes was also known for his role in persuading Libyan leader Muammar al-Gaddafi to abandon his nuclear weapons program in 2003.[5] In 2009, Kappes was convicted in absentia by an Italian court for his headquarters-based role in the rendition and torture of an Egyptian citizen who was kidnapped from Italian soil by the CIA...
Dramatic departure in 2004[edit]
It had been widely reported in the press that Kappes quit the Agency rather than carry out a request by Goss to reassign Michael Sulick, his then deputy.[8] It is also reported that this incident occurred because the chief of staff admonished the then assistant Deputy Director for Counterintelligence, Mary Margaret Graham – who later worked for the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) John Negroponte – about leaking personnel information.[8] According to some news reports, Sulick had just engaged in a shouting match with Goss’s chief of staff.
For a brief period in between his senior appointments, Kappes worked in the private security industry. In April 2005, ArmorGroup, a British security firm, named him vice president in charge of global strategy, and named him Chief Operating Officer (COO) in November 2005....
Convicted of kidnapping, extraordinary rendition and torture[edit]
On November 4, 2009, in a landmark ruling, Italian judge Oscar Magi convicted 22 American CIA operatives of kidnapping Muslim cleric Osama Moustafa Hassan Nasr, known as Abu Omar, from the streets of Milan in 2003. Most of the top CIA officers had left the agency, with the exception of Kappes, who at the time was the assistant director of the CIA's clandestine branch.[12]
Role in hiding detainee death[edit]
Per official reports, Kappes was responsible for the alteration of records regarding the death of a detainee at the 'Salt Pit', a secret CIA interrogation operation in Afghanistan. A detainee froze to death, after having been showered with water, and left outside overnight. Kappes made certain that the death was retained 'off the books'. Two former officials who read the internal inspector general report made clear that the base chief was coached directly by Kappes on how to report the death as an accident. According to two former officials who read a CIA inspector general's report on the incident, Kappes coached the base chief—whose identity is being withheld at the request of the CIA—on how to respond to the agency's investigators. They would report it as an accident.[13]
Sudden retirement, no explanation[edit]
On April 14, 2010, CIA Director Leon E. Panetta reported that Kappes will be retiring in May.[14] The odd timing of the retirement, and lack of Presidential thanks for his years of service, led many to comment that this was a departure in disgrace.[2]...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Kappes
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