A former employee of a San Jose aviation company that is accused in a lawsuit of helping the CIA fly prisoners to overseas torture chambers said a company executive told staff last year, "We do all the extraordinary rendition flights ... the torture flights," according to a statement released Friday by the prisoners' lawyers.

American Civil Liberties Union attorneys offered the statement in court documents opposing the Bush administration's attempt to dismiss a suit filed in July against Jeppesen International Trip Planning, a San Jose subsidiary of a company owned by Boeing Co.

The suit accuses Jeppesen of violating international law by arranging clandestine CIA flights in which five men were taken to prisons in foreign countries to be interrogated and tortured. The U.S. government moved to intervene in the case in October and asked a federal judge to dismiss the suit, arguing that allowing it to proceed would risk disclosure of national secrets.

The ACLU replied Friday that the CIA's program of extraordinary rendition - transporting terrorism suspects to countries beyond the reach of U.S. law for interrogation and detention - is widely known and has been publicly confirmed by President Bush and other top officials. CIA Director Michael Hayden provided numerous details about the size and scope of the program in a public speech in September, the ACLU said.

The lawyers also said Jeppesen's role has been well-documented, citing a Council of Europe report in June that identified the company as "the aviation services provider customarily used by the CIA." Jeppesen also spoke openly about its work, the ACLU said, as shown in Friday's declaration by Sean Belcher, who worked as a technical writer for the San Jose firm in July and August 2006.

Belcher said he attended a breakfast for new employees on Aug. 11, 2006, and heard a welcoming speech from Bob Overby, a company director. While describing Jeppesen's work, Belcher said, Overby told the employees, "We do all the extraordinary rendition flights." Later, he said, Overby added that these were "the torture flights," and explained, "Let's face it, some of these flights end up this way."

Belcher also quoted Overby as saying that the flights paid well and that the government spared no expense. Belcher said he quit his job five days later.

"Jeppesen participated in the rendition program in full knowledge of the horrific consequences of its action," the ACLU said in its court filing.

A Jeppesen spokesman was unavailable for comment. The company said when the suit was filed that it does not violate international law but would not discuss its arrangements with clients.

Jeppesen provides a variety of flight planning services, including routing, weather forecasting, fueling, obtaining landing permits and arranging ground transportation. The suit claimed the company had arranged at least 70 flights at the CIA's direction since 2001, including renditions of the five plaintiffs.

Three of the men, all still in prison, were tortured in Morocco and Egypt, the suit said. The other two were allegedly abused at a U.S. airbase in Afghanistan and later released.

The Bush administration has acknowledged the existence of the rendition program, which began on a smaller scale under the Clinton administration, but has denied taking prisoners to countries where they were likely to be tortured and says it has been given assurances of humane treatment by each foreign nation.

In seeking dismissal of the Jeppesen suit, government lawyers argued that the case could not be litigated, and the company could not defend itself, without risking exposure of classified information about CIA operations.

A similar argument won dismissal of a suit by German citizen Khaled el-Masri, who said he was abducted by the CIA in 2003, flown to a secret prison in Afghanistan for five months of interrogations and beatings, and then set free in Albania after his captors realized they had the wrong man.

Government lawyers have also cited secrecy concerns in asking a federal appeals court in San Francisco to dismiss a suit by AT&T customers accusing the company of illegally giving the government wholesale access to phone calls and e-mails for a surveillance program aimed at foreign terrorists.