No way to treat a friend

It’s old news that the Bush administration cut legal and ethical corners in its post-9/11 war on terrorism. Now we know that the administration also misled Britain, its closest overseas ally and the most prominent member of the “coalition of the willing” that invaded Iraq. Last week, Foreign Secretary David Miliband apologized to the House of Commons for earlier -- and untrue -- assurances that British territory had never been used for CIA “rendition” flights transporting suspected terrorists.

Miliband spoke after CIA Director Michael V. Hayden confirmed that, contrary to assurances by the U.S. government, the agency had refueled two planes carrying suspected terrorists on the island of Diego Garcia, a British territory in the Indian Ocean, in 2002. Hayden blamed the earlier denials on a faulty records search and stressed that the prisoners were not part of the CIA’s “high-value terrorist interrogation program.” That is a euphemism for an operation in which suspected terrorists were taken to secret prisons in Eastern Europe and subjected to harsh interrogation techniques.

The foreign secretary went further, telling Parliament that neither of the prisoners was subjected to “waterboarding or other similar forms of torture.” (Note that, unlike some Bush administration officials, Miliband had no problem recognizing that waterboarding is torture.) But that qualification, which also relies on assurances from Washington, won’t placate critics within and outside the governing Labor Party who see this as another example of British subservience to a U.S. president widely viewed in Britain as a cowboy. Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who has yet to face a national election, has been forced by the furor to press Washington to establish procedures that would prevent future such incidents.

The historically close relationship between Britain and the United States will survive this episode, as it has survived other disagreements, but that is no reason for the United States to sow suspicion in a country whose cooperation is vital in legitimate antiterrorist operations. And it isn’t only in Britain that the rendition of suspected terrorists to secret prisons has alienated traditional U.S. allies. Last week, the European Union’s commissioner for justice and home affairs called on Poland and Romania to conduct judicial inquiries into whether, as is widely believed, their officials cooperated with the CIA program.

The administration’s high-handedness in the war on terror already has taken its toll at home, with a string of defeats in the Supreme Court, upheaval in the Justice Department and a criminal investigation into the CIA’s destruction of videotapes of “enhanced” interrogations. Sadder but wiser, the administration lately has been more cooperative with Congress and the courts. It should adopt the same approach in dealing with America’s allies.