Who is Leonard T. Bayard? Even The Oregonian is covering the story about the elusive sole-owner of Bayard Foreign Marketing LLC.

Bayard Foreign Marketing has recently purchase a certain Gulfstream V executive jet previously owned by Premier Executive Transport Services that has been used to transport suspected terrorists to countries where human rights are not as respected as they are in other places in the world — countries where torture is allowed. The Gulfstream is able to do so because it has permission to use US Military airfields worldwide.

The CIA justifies the practice, called “rendition,” as necessary to elicit information from suspects who would not talk if held in more humane conditions where torture is not an option. The CIA has authority to carry out renditions under a presidential directive first signed by the Clinton administration, and then renewed by the Bush administration.

Rendition is prohibited by the U.N. Convention on Torture.

The Gulfstream, currently assigned tail number N44982, has been spotted at Islamabad and Karachi, Pakistan; Riyadh, Saudi Arabia; Dubai; Tashkent, Uzbekistan; Baghdad; Kuwait City; Baku, Azerbaijan; Rabat, Morocco; Jordan’s military airport in Amman; and at airports in Frankfurt, Germany; Glasglow, Scotland; and Larnaca, Cyprus; not to mention Dulles International Airport.

Bayard Foreign Marketing’s address is listed as 921 SW Washington St., but Leonard Bayard apparently doesn’t work there. It’s the address of the company’s attorney. The telephone number on the company’s annual report is listed to a private residence in a less-upscale section of northeast Portland.

Leonard T. Bayard has no residence address, no telephone number, no Social Security number, no credit history, no automobile or property ownership records, no voter registration.

Does he exist? Scott Caplan, Bayard Foreign Marketing’s attorney, insists that he does but declines to say more. Public records show that Caplan filed the incorporation papers for Bayard Foreign Marketing in August, 2003. And somebody signed the name Leonard T. Bayard on the company’s annual report.

Knowingly filing a false corporate document in Oregon is a crime punishable by up to 6 months in prison and a $1,000 file. Perhaps it’s time to let Bill Bradbury and Hardy Myers know that we don’t take kindly to illegal CIA operations being fronted in Stumptown.