The Oregon State Bar is investigating a Portland attorney who represented a company that owned an executive jet the CIA reportedly used to transport terrorist suspects to foreign countries for interrogation.

The inquiry deals only with whether the attorney, Scott D. Caplan, was representing an actual person as a client — and not with the CIA's so-called "extraordinary rendition" program. It resulted from a complaint filed by a retired political science professor who had been tracking sightings by media and human rights groups of a Gulfstream V jet owned by a company based in Portland called Bayard Foreign Marketing.


"I'm suggesting it may be moot if a client does not actually exist."

Michael Munk, a former Rutgers professor who now lives in Portland, said the company was registered on behalf of a man who apparently does not exist — Leonard T. Bayard. "My major point is that, while an attorney has an obligation to protect the privacy of a client, I'm suggesting it may be moot if a client does not actually exist," Munk said.

The state bar has taken the first step to determine whether there was any professional misconduct by Caplan, who insists he followed the law but has yet to produce the mysterious Leonard Bayard.

Previous efforts by news organizations and human rights groups to find Leonard Bayard have failed.

Caplan declined comment on the case this week. But in a letter to the state bar dated Oct. 20, he wrote that "at no time have I communicated to any person, agency or organization facts regarding this matter contrary to what I truly believed them to be."

Munk said the Gulfstream jet was recently listed for sale on the Web site of U.S. Aircraft Sales Inc., a McLean, Va., aircraft broker, but the listing has been removed. U.S. Aircraft Sales officials returned neither a phone call nor an e-mail asking whether the plane had been sold.

Bayard Foreign Marketing acquired the plane in November 2004, shortly after the British Sunday Times reported U.S. intelligence was using the jet to transport terror suspects to countries that use torture in their prisons.

The Gulfstream was previously owned by Premier Executive Transport Services in Dedham, Mass. The complaint against Caplan has been forwarded to the bar's disciplinary counsel, a first step in determining whether it has merit and should be further investigated, said Kateri Walsh, a spokeswoman for the state bar.

"We could find nothing there or nothing provable and dismiss it," she said. "But if we find enough to warrant formal prosecution, we have to take it to the state professional responsibility board, and they kind of function like a grand jury for us."

Human rights groups have raised concerns about the "rendition" of terror suspects, some of whom have charged they were tortured in the countries where they were sent. The United States has said it does not send anyone to countries that torture. (...)

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