"the guantánamo military commission for accused uss cole bombing mastermind [defendant] had its...

7/28/2019 "The Guantnamo military commission for accused USS Cole bombing mastermind [DEFENDANT] had its first, but

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"The Guantnamo military commission for accused USS Cole

bombing mastermind [DEFENDANT] had its first, but certainly

not its last, secret session last Friday, June 14.

According to ...[MEDIA], the hearing was 78 minutes long,

and was closed both to the public and to the defendant.

The subject of the hearing, and the title of the government

motion being argued, were also classified. Defense counsel

were permitted to attend but [DEFENDANT'S] attorney... told

[MEDIA], There was a secret session. Thats all I can

say.

----------------------------------------------------------

When the public found out what was in Motion 92, there was

so much outrage that of course the protests began, and the

letter writing campaign, and the talk shows, and the

indignant editorials which almost nobody read, but theywere indignant. The outrage rose and rose and the protests

dominated the nightly news, and it was clear that somebody

was going to have to resign.

Or not, because the other idea was to arrest the reporter

and charge her with treason, and so that was done.

The reporter was arrested in the middle of the night as her

children watched from the top of the stairs, charged and

held without bail as a flight risk because she had oncebeen to Portugal, held until she named her sources which

she did not, and so she was summarily executed, which would

have been expected to cause further commotion but for the

fact that the execution was disguised as a suicide, a plan

so brilliantly pulled off in the details, right down to the

suicide note written in a reasonable facsimile of the

reporter's own penmanship, that the public did not get any

more incensed.

With the suicide of the reporter, it was claimed that

Motion 92 was not in fact even a real thing, and it was

likely that the reporter had fabricated the entire idea

that there even WAS a Motion 92, and after several press

conferences to explain this, the matter died back down, and

finally even the few straggling protesters who were camped,

day and night, outside the White House's South Lawn fence,


2/46

went on to other matters.

Everything in the preceding paragraphs is true except for

the things that are not.

Things that are NOT true include

1. the public outrage over Motion 92. There was no public

outrage because there was no public Motion 92.

1a. Even if Motion 92 had been made public the

outrage itself would likely still have been missing.

Things that ARE true include:

2. There was a Motion 92. That much we know. Or maybe wedo not. We know that we think that there was a Motion 92,

and if Motion 92 existed, then maybe its story might be

like this one.

Or maybe not.

Maybe this story is pure fiction.

Maybe this story is pure fact.

How can you tell!

The use of that exclamation point was intentional. Nobody

uses question marks anymore.

...THE.....................................................

...........................................................

.... DEFENSE

...........ATTORNEY........................................

...........................................................

............

She was not sure, until that day, whether she was what her

old law professor with his bald spot and his too-short tie

and his habit of calling on her when she wasn't paying

attention would have termed a 'plumber' or a 'lawyer.'


3/46

'Plumbers make the water go where the customer wants it to

go!' the man would say to the class, and then he would call

on someone who had been paying attention, allowing the

others (including the defense attorney who was not yet then

an attorney) to develop a false sense of security and they

(including her) would, eventually, stop paying attention.

Then he would call on her.

(Plumbers make the water go where the customer wants it to

go, the professor would explain. Lawyers give advice.

Plumbers just take instruction. "Be a lawyer!" he would

tell them. Some students wrote that down.)

The defense attorney sat up late that night, the night

before she wrote Motion 92, reading the same three sheetsof paper over and over again.

They weren't even that long to read!

They were three 8 1/2-inch by 13-inch long sheets of paper

that had rolled out of the secure fax machine somewhere,

probably Langley Virginia, she knew, and she spent a

moment, the night before she wrote Motion 92, contemplating

the journey the papers themself had made: from their birth

as indiscrete parts of a tree, probably in the PacificNorthwest, to sawmill, to paper pulping company near Green

Bay, Wisconsin, separating from the mass of soupy gulp that

had been a tree into three individual sheets of paper,

eventually.

Bundled into a ream with thousands of their brethren, the

three had sat quiescent as they rode a semitrailer truck

carrying them to an office supplies warehouse in Maryland,

only to then sit on a pallet for several months, in the

dark hot dusty quiet, until a government procurement truck

had the pallet forklifted onto it, to drive the whole crowd

of papers down the highway across the Chesapeake and around

the Beltway, making stops at a series of nondescript

buildings with windows that you could see out of but not

into.


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At each stop, the compatriots were thinned out, until the

box with these three in it was set underneath the secure

fax machine.

One day, their sleeve was opened, and they lay, in the

middle of a group of friends, waiting until the three of

them were pulled, headfirst, through the wringer and

received only a nominal amount of printing on them, coming

to rest, slightly curled and hot, in a receiving tray that

was closely watched by a dedicated secretary with second-

level clearance, whose sole job it was to make sure that

none of these papers sat untouched and unseen for long,

lest they be picked up by people who had no business

picking them up and/or seeing them.

Before the three papers had even cooled off, the lawyer

knew, the sheets had been scooped up into a manila envelopewhich was sealed, and carried by hand down the hallway. The

elevator would have been required; these three sheets of

paper, which had heretofore spent their entire existence

(as separate cells in a tree, as part of a pulpy froth, and

then as thin layers in a box) in a nondescript fashion, had

risen in importance once they were tattooed with their

message, brief though it was, and had therefore earned the

right to be carried in that manila envelope down the hall,

by personal escort (the escort was pretty, in the

businesslike way that such women are, women who are willingto go through the privations of obtaining and working in a

classified job they cannot discuss at the clubs they go to

on Fridays, without obtaining at the same time the

accompanying higher pay and importance that usually goes

with such classified jobs. A security clearance, once a

thing of importance that marked its bearer as a person of

some significance, not to say also some wealth although

that was true, too, no longer meant such things. These

days, it simply meant that one could park outside of the

nondescript buildings on weekdays without a pass, and also

that one was not allowed to take one's work home, which

generally meant longer hours in the nondescript buildings

because the work multiplied and multiplied.)

The papers rode with the pretty, businesslike, second-tier

security-classified secretary whose job it was to do this,


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on the elevator, to a level reachable only by a key, which

the secretary possessed. There were only 11 such keys in

existence and they could not be copied because they did not

leave the building.

The secretary turned her key in to the security guard whose

own classified level she did not know, but who she

suspected must have one higher than her own because he kept

the keys. The papers sat quietly in their envelope, not

knowing the elevator they rode in had a security camera

with a fisheye lens in two separate corners and when the

doors opened the papers were not aware that they were

carried into a small lobby with three doors leading off of

it, and an armed guard at a desk.

The guard checked the secretary's badge and waited untilhis computer said it was okay and then motioned her to the

left, where the secretary walked through a door that slid

open to find a man standing with his back to her and

talking on a headset.

The man looked at her and saw the manila envelope, and he

took the three papers out of it, glanced at them briefly,

then glanced at them with more concern.

He would have sighed, but men who occupy that office do notsigh.

Why should they! Even bad news is not ever bad news!

And so he did not sigh but he told the secretary that the

papers should be taken to the Sergeant for delivery.

From there, the defense attorney knew, the papers had been

put into a different sealed envelope, transferred from

person to person and never left alone or unattended or

sitting on a desk, until they had made their way to...

...her.

She was a bit hazy, when it came from the man in the office

telling the Sergeant to deliver them, because ordinarily


6/46

they would then go to the prosecutor who would be able to

look at them at his leisure, day after day (although they

were only a few days old, according to the time-stamp)

until one day he would have leaned across the table

where he sat every day to hand them to her, and then she

would have been allowed to keep them from when they were

given to her until she had to give them back, an hour,

maybe, or the afternoon, or even a night, but probably not

a whole night.

These three papers that had never been left alone in their

entire life, she felt certain, but she also know that the

papers had not come to her from the prosecutor, had instead

been in a sealed envelope in her trailer, this morning.

The defense attorney knew the three papers were not hers tokeep, and so she created her own set of three DIFFERENT

papers. Unlike the three papers she had known so briefly,

looking at them in her trailer on the edge of a rocky bay

on the side of Cuba, the three papers the lawyer brought to

life had a name.

The name the papers had is not known to us anymore.

The name the papers created by the defense attorney, in her

trailer on the edge of Guantanamo Bay, a trailer thatserved as an office and part-time living quarters for her,

had once, was typed onto the three newpapers and whispered

by the defense attorney as she typed them on her laptop

(for she was allowed a laptop provided it did not have an

Internet connection, and this laptop was not allowed to

leave with her when she took the plane back to her home in

Florida every Friday) whispered by her as she typed it up,

and then after being typed, and whispered, was never spoken

again, and that name did not matter because the

three newpapers were given a new name the very next

morning, when the defense attorney took them in and handed

them to the prosecutor.

As per protocol, the papers were not copied in advance. The

defense attorney did not have a copier.


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The papers were not saved to her hard drive. She was not

allowed to save documents on her computer without advance

permission from the Tribunal.

She had not printed any copies of the papers, as she was

not allowed to print multiple copies without permission.

The tribunal watched as the defense attorney handed the

three newpapers to the prosecutor, and handed back, too,

the three papers she had been given the day before,

She watched as the prosecutor looked at the three NEW

papers he had been handed, then at the three OLD papers,

which he looked at, looked at again, looked away from, then

back again, and only after all of that were they handed to

the assistant prosecutor, who filed them in the box on thetable.

All of this doneunder the watchful eyes of the two

military policemen who stood behind the defense counsel's

table at all times.

The prosecutor looked at the threenewpapers, read through

them, then read through them again, and only after he had

read them, and only after he had handed them to his

assistant to read, did he turn to the tribunal, who waspatiently waiting for the prosecutor to begin the day's

proceedings, and say:

"There's a motion we may need to hear."

The tribunal looked interested, and the prosecutor's

assistant walked the three newpapers up, carefully hiding

their name from the others in the room -- the others being

only the prosecutor himself, the tribunal, the defense

attorney, and the two military policemen. Today's

proceedings in the trial of the defendant would not require

the presence of the defendant.

The tribunal looked at the three papers, and, having read

them through only once, handed them back to the

prosecutor's assistant, who bore them back to the


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prosecutor, who tucked them carefully into a manila folder

near the back of the banker's box on his desk.

"Motion 92 will be scheduled for hearing," the tribunal

said.

......................................THE..................

............PROSECUTOR.....................................

...........................................................

..................

Motion 92 sat, untouched, in its own section of the file

folders maintained by the prosecutor throughout the

remainder of the day's proceeding. The prosecutor that day

argued the minutiae of what would happen the next day, when

the defendant might be present at the defendant's trial.Almost one hour was devoted to the question of whether the

additional security detail -- three other military police

and an enlisted man -- would be allowed to stand before the

bar and behind the defense table or if they would have to

stand behind the bar, in the row of chairs that was never

filled by anyone other than military police and enlisted

men.

There were five chairs, each identical, behind the half-

wall that was traditional in courtrooms and so one had beeninstalled here, a bit of tradition in an entirely

nontraditional setting. It was traditional to have a half-

wall -- the bar -- separate the public from the

participants in court. Hence, the people who had built the

courtroom had put in a half-wall, stained it dark brown and

installed a swinging gate through which the lawyers could

walk when they entered from the main entrance at the back

of the courtroom, passing by the five plastic chairs, three

on the left and two on the right, that had been taken from

the enlisted men's mess and which, as noted, had never been

sat in. There was never a public to sit in them, making the

bar irrelevant.

Eventually, the tribunal decided that the prosecutor was

right and that for security reasons, the military police

men on security detail for the defendant, as well as the


9/46

enlisted man, would stand before the bar and behind the

defense table.

"What about attorney-client privilege!" the defense

attorney demanded, but the tribunal merely shuffled the

papers on the bench and moved on to the next order of

business, a request to increase the time delay on the

broadcast of proceedings to the press corps by 5 seconds,

to 40 seconds. This was argued for 20 minutes, with the

prosecutor insisting that it was necessary for protection

of classified material and that it would not impose a

significant burden on the reporters who attended the

proceedings, as they likely would not even realize the

additional delay was present.

When asked whether she took a stance on the motion, thedefense attorney attempted a smile that did not quite come

off as such, and said "The defense continues to request

that there be no delay in publication to the press and

notes its continued objection to the delay as well as to

the silencing button."

The tribunal no longer, when the defense made such

objections, reflexively looked to where a stenographer

would sit if there were a stenographer in the courtroom.

"Objection noted," the tribunal said, and moved on to the

next order of business.

The trial proceedings that day lasted only six hours and

fourteen minutes and so when the prosecutor and his

assistant walked out of the courtroom, just behind the

defense attorney, the air was still hot and bright in the

way that air only seemed to be in Guantanamo Bay.

The prosecutor squinted as he saluted the military

policeman who held the door for him, waited in the sunlight

for his eyes to adjust but they never quite did, he

squinted everywhere he went here in the base, the light

almost an assault on the eyes. It was as if there wasn't

enough here to absorb all the ambient sunlight: the absence

of trees, and grass, and the few people here -- less than


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200 prisoners, only about 1,500 soldiers, with less than a

hundred support staff, all in an area about the size of one

of those new suburban communities where all the houses were

shaped like Frank Lloyd Wright knockoffs and there was a

bakery and a hair styling salon in the small commercial

building at the entrance to the area -- but none of that

was here, of course, there were only barracks and wooden

buildings bleached by sun and wire fences topped with coils

that would slice your hand off from twenty feet away,

seemingly -- the sunlight waiting around, aimlessly, as if

the lack of things for the it to land on and be absorbed by

had left an overabundance of sunlight drifting around,

unattached, and the effect was not pleasant, not at all:

all that extra sunlight glinted off barbed wire fences and

corrugated-metal walls and gun-gray vehicles and it

bleached everything, whited everything out, made everythingseem sanded down and duller, not reflective anymore, made

metal seem like rock and wood, where there was wood, seem

like metal and made rock seem like... whatever was coarser

and duller than rock, the prosecutor finally decided, his

own imagination having been beaten into submission by the

ambient light.

"Put that there," he said to the assistant, motioning to

the small table across from his desk in his office, which

was next door to the courtroom. He looked out the windowwhere he could see the defense attorney opening the door to

her trailer office/home, the military policeman going

before her to inspect it while she waited.

The assistant complied, and the prosecutor motioned him out

of the room. He glanced at his watch and then riffled

through the folders until he found Motion 92, which he then

pulled out.

Getting a bottle of water from the minirefrigerator beside

the table, he sat down on the threadbare, spartan loveseat

and read it.

It took less time to read it the second time than it had

the first. Motion 92 was economical in its use of wording,

and similarly thrifty in the references to supporting


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arguments it made, not only because of the short length of

time between when the defense attorney had been able to

read the three papers that had prompted it, but also

because of the lack of precedential cases upon which a

motion like Motion 92 could be based.

The prosecutor read it a second time,and then laid Motion

92 down on the couch next to him for a second and took a

sip of water.

"Well, shit," he said.

He got up and buzzed the secretary and told her to send in

the assistant prosecutor.

In moments the assistant was there.

"Well, shit," the prosecutor said again, and waved Motion

92 in the air for him.

"We need to respond to this," the prosecutor told him, "And

we need to do it quickly. I want something on paper by

tomorrow morning."

He thought for a second, and then changed his mind. "By

tonight. You get me a response by tonight, and I'll mark itup so that we can file it first thing tomorrow morning."

The assistant did not reach for Motion 92, not sure if he

had the proper clearance levels. The prosecutor looked at

it again, read the first page or two of the motion, and

then put it back in the folder.

"Here's what it says," the prosecutor said, sitting back

down on the couch, but before he began speaking, he got up

and looked out the windows, then closed the blinds so that

nobody could see in. He then walked to the doors, one on

each end of the office. He opened the one that led outside,

and glanced at the military policeman standing guard out

there.

"Five feet," he told the man.


12/46

The guard nodded and walked forward the requisite number of

feet. At the other end of the office, the one that led

into the staff pool, he saw that nobody was in the room.

He closed the door, and turned back to the assistant,

detailing quickly and efficiently what was in Motion 92.

In less than 2 minutes, he had outlined the basic idea of

Motion 92 and what he wanted to do in response to it, at

least in court and at least for now. He then told the

assistant to get what he could by 1900 hours and ushered

him out the door. He watched until the assistant sat at

his desk and had opened up the secure laptop prosecutors

carried back and forth with them from the mainland to here.

"Turn that away from the window," he reminded theassistant, who complied, his back now to the inner wall and

his eyes on the laptop screen.

The prosecutor closed the door and went back to his desk.

He picked up the secure line and told the security detail

that tomorrow the defendant's presence would not be

necessary in court, and that there would be no hearing.

Then he hung up, and picked up again, dialed a different

number.

This number caused the line not to hook up to another phone

there on the corner of the island, but to instead link into

a cable that went underneath billions of gallons of ocean

water, a cable that had been buried in the rock of the

island, which had been dug up and carved out and laid open

enough to put the cable down inside the crust of the earth

itself, and which had then had concrete poured over it, new

rock replacing natural rock, hardening until there was an

as-near-impenetrable barrier between the sky and the sun

and the less-than-2000 people who lived here, only a few

of whom had anywhere near the necessary amount of freedom

of movement to even approach the cable, and fewer of whom

knew the cable was there.

From the rock, both manmade and God-made, that the cable

began its journey in, the cable went directly underwater,


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beginning with the wave-tossed deep edge of the ocean that

abutted directly onto the island, and moving downward

quickly to lie on the ocean floor, from a depth of only

forty feet near the rocky cliff where it left the island to

joint the sea to a depth of nearly a mile, until the cable

reached the mainland, where it traveled through a small bay

underwater until it rose up near a dock on a military base,

to leave the sea and begin again to live in the air and

land. From there it ran into a large box that was entered

and left by dozens of identical cables, not all of which

had any real purpose: some of them were extras in case they

were one day needed, and some of them were decoys, in case

someone were to get into the box and decide to try to

interrupt the cables' job, which was to convey information

from one place to another without interruption.

The cable ended at that box and another cable began, this

journey again diving into manmade rock until leaving the

ground some miles away from the military base in a

nondescript area near the Everglades, rising out of the

swamp amidst turtles and snakes and the odd feral housecat,

to seemingly join the network of cables and wires that were

strung all over the country. This particular cable did not

actually touch any other cable anywhere else in the

country; it did not associate with lesser brethren, the

types of wires and devices that would help send a phonecall from a little boy in Oklahoma to his grandmother in

Connecticut, or which would forward a list of funny cat

jokes from Los Angeles to Milwaukee. This cable was part of

a separate cadre of lines that was devoted solely to the

most important, most secret, most serious communications,

communications that were so significant and which carried

with them such potential for disaster if they reached the

wrong hands, that as few as approximately (for nobody konws

the exact number of people who hold security clearances) as

few as about 1,100,000 people in the entire country could

be cleared to know of the EXISTENCE of such information,

let alone to know what the information actually said.

These cables buzzed and hummed, day and night, with

information too dangerous, too new, too important, for

anyone but those (probably as few as) 1,100,000 people to


14/46

be aware of, and they carried that information from

Guantanamo Bay, to Washington D.C., to Des Moines, Iowa, to

Las Vegas, Nevada, to Austin, Texas, to Butte, Montana, and

to 32 other places around the country, but 90% of the words

and images these cables carried went to nondescript office

buildings in Virginia, where the prosecutor's phone call

went.

"We need a courier," the prosecutor said to the man who

picked up the phone.

That was not what the cables carried. That was what the

prosecutor SAID, but the cables carried those words

scrambled and rescrambled and rescrambled on top of that,

and then when they reached their destination they were

unscrambled and unscrambled and unscrambled below that, themixing and remixing and unmixing having the curious effect

of flattening out the tones of the words, making them more

monotonous even than they had been, this low-uttered

sentence coming from the sunbeat rocks of Guantanamo Bay

and being said into the ears of a man sitting in a

windowless office in a nondescript building in Virginia.

---------------------------------

SIDEBAR-------------------------

Beauty is truth, truth is beauty, and neither is fact.

-----------------------------------------------------------

------

THE........................................................

...COURIER.................................................

...........................................................

..........................................

He stops exactly two feet from the elevator door. It is a

habit the courier has cultivated in hopes that someday,

someone will ask him "Why do you stop exactly two feet from

the elevator door?" If they do, he will answer them:

"Because if you stand too close to the elevator door, when

it opens, you can be surprised by someone just on the other


15/46

side of the doorway, and they can get the drop on you

before you realize how close they are."

This questioner, having then mulled it over for a second or

two, would then say "Why don't you stand farther back,

then? That way they can't get you at all, even if you don't

know how close they are standing?"

To which he would reply:

"If I stand farther back, I can't see into the corners of

the elevator in case someone is hiding."

He would pause, and then add:

"And if I'm too far from the door, people can get out ofthe elevator quickly and I have no chance to stop them, so

they can spread out in the hallway before I know even how

many there are."

He would not add that two feet is the perfect distance:

close enough to block the door, grapple with an assailant,

or fall back -- but far enough to not be immediately

subject to attack. That part would be clear enough from

his statements, and the questioner would realize that the

courier was a man to be reckoned with.

Nobody had yet asked him, and the two-foot rule was not

part of his training -- not basic training, not Navy SEAL

training, not the three years of virtual doctoral classes

at a nondescript building almost identical to this one but

three blocks away and on the left, and not the five years

he had been on the job. It was of his own devising. He

often toyed with the idea of writing up the two-foot rule

in a memo and seeking to have it added to the training, but

(A) memos were discouraged in his division and (B) he

wasn't sure he wanted others to know about the two-foot

rule, in case they used it against him. He would likely --

likely!-- someday need to get the drop on someone coming

off an elevator.

Perhaps when he retired.


16/46

The elevator door opens and he pauses for only a fraction

of a second, scanning the elevator, which has only one of

the standard-issue pretty, but slightly too short to be

'hot', secretaries who work in these buildings. Pretty

tall girls become models, beauty pageant contestants,

doctors. Pretty SHORT girls go to work in nondescript

office buildings where they can rise to the level of HR

director but no further.

He does not talk to her.

He gets off the elevator, and the remainder of his trip to

his destination is not worth talking about. Nor can he

talk about it at all, not to anyone, not even to his wife,

if he had one. He does not have one. She divorced him 7years ago, before he was promoted to his present position.

It was a perk of his present job that he was prohibited by

law from disclosing his position, his place of employment,

or his income, and so his child support and his alimony

remained unchanged, and when his ex-wife's lawyer wrote

letters to him seeking that information again, he provided

the letters to the in-house counsel whose office was on the

third floor of this very nondescript building with shaded

windows behind trees that had obviously been planted only

five years ago, and the in-house counsel would write backthat the information could not be provided because

[REGULATION] made it classified.

[REGULATION] is not a published regulation. You cannot

look it up online or in the printed versions of the Code Of

Federal Regulations. It exists only in administrative

directives issued by Secretaries, and when challenged a

version of the directive with an agency seal is provided,

but only for viewing. The citation for [REGULATION] is by

administrative decree not written down. It can be cited by

number only orally, not in writing. Challenges to refusals

to provide information under [REGULATION] may only be done

by petition to the District Court For Regulation Of

Security, pursuant to [RULE].

...........................................................


17/46

.....THE.................................REPORTER..........

...........................................................

..........................................

When the defense attorney gets off the plane, she is tired

and somewhat bewildered.

She had left her trailer that morning to go to court and

arrived there only to be told by the military policeman

standing outside the door that the day's session was closed

to her.

"We are supposed to have a hearing today," she said. She

did not tell him that the hearing was about whether her

client could be force-fed during his hunger strike, as the

government insisted it had a right to keep her client aliveuntil he was found guilty and deported or executed.

She had thought about telling the tribunal that it would be

less expensive for the government to ship her client back

in a body bag, and that every version of the ending of the

trial would be the same, because whether her client

succeeded in starving himself to death, or whether the

government executed him, or whether it sent him back to one

of the countries it believed he should live in, the result

was the same; it was only the manner of achieving thatresult that was in doubt, but she had decided that such an

argument might be pushing it.

"The proceedings are closed," the military policeman said,

again.

"Not to me," she told him and reached for the handle.

"I'm sorry, ma'am. The proceedings are closed." The

military policeman nearly-imperceptibly moved, the smallest

hint of a shift to block just the barest edge of the door.

She had stood there, stymied, staring at him, for only a

few seconds, until the door had opened from inside. The

assistant prosecutor came out, glanced at her, and then

began walking to the office building. She spun after him


18/46

and grabbed his arm.

"What's going on!"

"Closed hearings for the remainder of the week," the

assistant told her. Looking at her insignia on her

uniform, he belatedly saluted her. "Ma'am."

She could not get into the courtroom and waited outside the

door for a half-hour. The assistant prosecutor did not

come back. Nobody else came out. She went and sat back in

her trailer and watched the courtroom door, all day,

through the small slit of a window on that side. She did

not work on anything. She did not read her book that she

had brought with her to help her fall asleep at night. At

lunchtime, she ate some microwave popcorn and a warm rootbeer from her cupboard.

At four p.m., the prosecutor left the courtroom and she ran

out the door and intercepted him.

"What is going on!" Pause. "Sir!"

The prosecutor would not meet her eyes.

"Closed proceedings," he said.

He fumbled in the file he carried, and pulled out a sheet

of paper. He showed it to her. She read it:

------BY ORDER OF THE TRIBUNAL: COURT WILL BE CLOSED TO THE

PRESS, THE DEFENSE, AND ADMINISTRATIVE STAFF FOR THE

REMAINDER OF THE WEEK----------

When she reached for it, he said:

"[Regulation]" and put it back in his file.

And so she took the plane back to the mainland that night,

strapped to a seat in the cargo hold, with three enlisted

men and some administrative staff with accumulated leave

time and a reporter from the press pool who knew better


19/46

than to ask her questions.

As she walked down the cargo ramp at the back of the plane

onto the tarmac, feeling the dense humidity of south

Florida wrap around her like a sweaty aunt's hug on the

Fourth Of July, a strange man walked up to her.

"[Name]" he said to her and she nodded.

The man took her by the wrist and with a glance at the

others coming down the cargo ramp to make sure they were

not close enough to hear, said in a voice that somehow

seemed to hit her not in the ear, but directly between her

shoulder blades:

"You are under arrest."

And looking as though he was escorting her off to dinner,

he led her to a car that was just off to the right of the

ramp. He opened the back door for her and allowed her to

start getting in and betrayed himself and his true purpose

to any onlookers only at the last moment, when he somewhat

roughly bent her head down to keep her from hitting it on

the car roof, as policeman have done since car roofs were

invented.

The door closed with the tight soft whisper of extreme

luxury and the car turned a quick, tight half-circle and

drove off.

The reporter stood on the bottom of the ramp coming off the

plane and felt his breathing get shallower. His chest

actually tightened.

He realized his mistake and started walking again, trying

to keep his gait normal. He walked over to the edge of the

tarmac, the wire-fenced gate manned by seven different

military policemen. He nodded to them and fumbled with his

credentials, proving who he was so that they would let

him out, even though the fenced-in place could only be

reached by airplane directly from Guantanamo Bay and this

was the only place from which planes left to go to


20/46

Guantanamo Bay, so it was improbable to the point of

impossibility that he was not supposed to be there, but he

did not even joke about that.

Once outside he looked neither left nor right but went

directly to his car, wondering if he was right about what

he had seen and what it meant that he had seen it and what

it might mean if it meant that he was right about what he

had seen and then he drew a deep breath and told himself to

just have the one thought at a time or things were going to

get weird.

Going to!

He realized he was just sitting in his car and started it

up and did everything that he could to simply drive offwithout seeming as though he was in a hurry.

----------------------------------------

SIDEBAR------------------

Fingerprints on a bag containing detonating devices, found

by Spanish authorities following the Madrid commuter train

bombings, were initially identified by the FBI as belonging

to [ATTORNEY] ("100% verified").

According to the court documents in [TRIBUNAL]'s decision,

this information was largely "fabricated and concocted by

[AGENCY] and [AGENCY]". When the [AGENCY] finally sent

[ATTORNEY]'s fingerprints to the Spanish authorities, they

contested the matching of the fingerprints from [ATTORNEY]

to the ones associated with the Madrid bombing. Further,

the Spanish authorities informed the [AGENCY] they had

other suspects in the case, Moroccan immigrants not linked

to anyone in the USA. The [AGENCY] completely disregarded

all of the information from the Spanish authorities, andproceeded to spy on [ATTORNEY] and his family further.

As was discovered during the court case, even the

[AGENCY]'s own records show that this fingerprint, despite

the sworn testimony of [AGENCY] and [AGENCY] agents, was in

all reality not an exact match but only one of 20 "similar"

prints to the ones retrieved from Madrid. Based on that


21/46

list of people with "similar prints" the [AGENCY] launched

an extensive investigation of all 20 individuals using

Letters of National Security. The investigation included

medical records, financial records, employment records,

etc. on all 20 people and their families. It was during

this time that [ATTORNEY]'s name rose to the top of the

list.

The [AGENCY] arrested [ATTORNEY] at his offices in West

Slope, an unincorporated suburb of Portland. The arrest was

under a material witness warrant rather than under charge;

he was held with no access to family and limited access, if

any, to legal counsel. The [AGENCY] initially refused to

inform either [ATTORNEY] or his family why he was being

detained or where he was being held.

Later, the [AGENCY] leaked the nature of the charges to the

local media and the family learned of the charges by

watching the local news. He was at first held at a County

jail under a false name; he was later transferred to an

unidentified location. His family protested that [ATTORNEY]

had no connection with the bombings, nor had he been off

the continent in over 11 to 14 years.

...........................................................

...........................................................

...........THE..........................TRIBUNAL...........

..........................................

"Sign this, please," the prosecutor said to the tribunal,

presenting him with two pieces of paper stapled together in

the top middle.

The tribunal glanced at it, and then looked up at the

prosecutor.

Reflexively, he glanced at the red button that could be

used to turn off the sound feed to the press room before

remembering that this session, too, was closed to the media

and nobody was in the adjoining room watching their lips

move and hearing the attendant sounds 40 seconds later.

He turned his gaze back to the prosecutor, who held the


22/46

same rank as the tribunal, outside this room.

Inside this room, things were murkier.

The prosecutor nodded.

The tribunal read the pages again and then picked up a penoff his desk. He signed his name to the second of the two

pages and handed it back.

"[REGULATION]," he said.

The prosecutor nodded again, went back to his table, and

pulled out a sheaf of papers and notes. Thumbing through

them, he handed several over to the assistant prosecutor

and then took the remainder up to the tribunal.

"Offer Exhibit 1470-Prosecution," he said, pointing to the

sticker in one corner of the packet.

The tribunal had long ago stopped looking to the defense

table on such offers, even when the defense attorney was

there.

"Received," he said, and took the packet of papers.

"The whole thing." he said to the prosecutor who shook his

head.

"Start on page 3."

So the tribunal started on page three. It was a transcript

of a telephone call, with various words highlighted in a

manner that the tribunal now recognized as being search

terms; when a computer was told to search documents for

certain terms, it highlighted the ones it found and aprintout of those documents would have the words

highlighted on them. Page 3 was heavy with highlights.

The conversation itself was marked only as "Caller" and

"Recipient." He read through the transcript from Page 3

until the call turned to the subject of whether Strasburg

would be able to pitch the next day, and then looked up.


23/46

"Motion 92," he said.

The prosecutor nodded again, and the tribunal later that

day signed two other orders.

.........THE...............................................

...........................................................

.....................................DEFENDANT.............

..........................................

Was woken up and abruptly moved from the cell he shared

with two other men.

...........................................................

.............................................THE...........

...........DESK.......................CLERK................

..........................................

The reporter ALMOST used his cell phone to try to call the

defense attorney but stopped himself just before hitting

"SEND."

Instead, he walked up to the desk clerk and asked her if

the hotel had a payphone.

"A what." the clerk said back to him.

She was only 18!

"A... never mind." The reporter walked down the hallway and

saw that there was a 'business center' where people could

use hotel phones and plug in their laptops and otherwise

get a little work done while they were on the road. He

went into one of the little cubbies and took out his cell

phone, opened the "Contacts" and scrolled with one finger

until he got to the defense attorney's entry.

He picked up the phone on the tabletop and looked at the

instructions for use. "Dial 9 to get out," it told him,

and so he did, thinking that it should only be that easy!

"9," he dialed.


24/46

Then

"6-5-2"

Consulting his cell phone he went on

"9-3-1-1-0-8-8."

He waited.

The phone clicked twice.

Then it clicked once.

Then a voice said "The number you have dialed has beendisconnected."

Then the phone clicked twice.

He hung up the phone and looked around himself, suddenly

convinced that there were people following him.

He got up and told himself that was crazy.

He walked back up to the desk clerk and asked her if shewould mind dialing a number for him.

"Sir," she said.

He did not tell her that he was not a guest at this hotel.

He had not checked in yet, and would not check in.

"I'm a guest. I think my cell phone," he held it up "Isn't

working. Can I get you to dial a number for me to see."

She stared at him for a moment, wondering what kind of

trick this was. He stifled the urge to tell her that it

was not any kind of trick, because as soon as you tell

someone something you're doing is not a trick, they think

it's a trick.


25/46

"I should get my manager," she said, and added that he

should wait there.

He did not wait there, and as she went into the hotel

offices behind the desk he turned and walked away, going

out the lobby and out to where his car was parked.

A meter maid was ticketing his car, standing next to it and

writing on a pad. He glanced around, looking for signs

that would mean he had parked it illegally, and could not

see any. As he did so, the meter maid looked up at him and

beckoned to him to come over there.

How did she know it was his car!

And so he turned and ran.

........THE..............................LOCAL.............

.........................................POLICEMAN.........

...........................................................

..................

"So he's wanted for what, now," asked the local policeman.

The courier shifted from one foot to the other, staring.

"I can't tell you," he said.

"But you need us to go pick him up."

"We need you to find him, and if you find him, pick him up

and hold him and then call me. At the number I gave you."

"Which I can't write down."

"Correct."

"Is there a warrant out."

"No. Not a warrant."

"Subpoena, then."


26/46

"Not a subpoena."

"What's the authority for picking this guy up, then!" the

local policeman demanded.

The courier did not sigh. Instead, he looked at his hand,

studied the thumb for a second, where he had a slight itch,

and said, not for the first time in this conversation, "I

can't tell you."

"I'm having trouble understanding this."

The courier then finally opened his briefcase and took out

a letter. The local policeman was shown a copy of this

letter. When he reached for it, the courier shook hishead, pulled the letter back slightly.

"Read only."

The local policeman stared at him, then read.

The letter told the reader that the bearer of the letter

had the legal authority to require seizure of a specific

person to be named, and that any reader of the letter was

required by [ORDER] issued under authority of [REGULATION]to cooperate with the bearer of the letter, and that by

[REGULATION] issued by [AGENCY] in compliance with

[STATUTE] neither the bearer of the letter nor any person

reading the letter was permitted to reveal the existence of

the letter, the order, the name of the person to be seized,

or the fact of the seizure. It was signed by [OFFICIAL]

and had a seal on it.

The letter was then put back in the briefcase.

"Do not write down or give out my phone number," said the

courier.

The local policeman shook his head.

"Any chance I'll be told..." he began.


27/46

"No," said the courier and walked out.

....................THE

FAST.....................................

FOOD.......................................................

.......RESTAURANT'S ASSISTANT

MANAGER..................................

There were only three people in the entire restaurant, and

the fast food restaurant's assistant manager was one of

them. The other one was the drive-thru clerk, and the

third was a man who sat near the back, by the restrooms.

There were only ten minutes until closing time, and the

fast food restaurant's assistant manager was thinking about

breaking down the shake machine, a job he hated, when a carpulled up to the drive-thru speaker and he hear the drive-

thru clerk say into her headset, in that voice the fast-

food restaurant's assistant manager found so sexy -- so

sexy that he had to remind himself she was only

seventeen!-- "Thanks for stopping at [FAST FOOD RESTAURANT]

how can I help you."

He did not hear what was said back; the words spoken into a

speaker outside on the large menu went only to her headset.

He watched on the screen, instead, for the order so hecould begin to assemble it. He was head cook, inside

cashier, and all the other things that needed doing, this

late on a weekday evening.

A car pulled up outside the window and the drive-thru clerk

said "That's $17.50," and on the screen above the assistant

manager's head, the order appeared, burgers and fries

and damn it a shake so the machine would be gunked up more

than ever, and then as he shook his head and realized he

wouldn't be getting to bed before one a.m. that night, four

men walked into the door from outside and two of them stood

and looked at him as they flanked the door while two of

them walked over to the corner where the reporter, who was

the man sitting by the restrooms, was staring at the

entrants.


28/46

The assistant manager watched as the men spoke to the

reporter (who he didn't, keep in mind, know was a reporter.

To the assistant manager, this was just a man sitting in

his restaurant nursing a soda while other men came in and

talked to him in urgent low voices) and although he could

not hear what they said, he gathered it was serious as the

reporter (who he didn't know, etc.) was looking pale and

the standing men grew more serious. They took a piece of

paper out of an envelope in a briefcase, and said something

about it as the reporter reached for it.

From behind him, the drive-thru clerk said "How long is it

going to take for the burg..." and he turned briefly to

look at her and saw she was looking at the reporter (who

he... again, etc. etc.) and then he turned back and the men

and the reporter were gone, the door slowly closing behindher.

When he turned back again to the drive-thru clerk, she was

holding up her cell phone camera and had snapped a picture

of something.

-------

SIDEBAR---------------------------------------------------

"The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearanceof things, but their inward significance."

-- Aristotle

"NEW YORK -- Concluding that they suffer from "significant

constitutional infirmities," a federal district court judge

in [CITY] on Thursday struck down sections of federal law

that allow [AGENCY] to warrantlessly obtain private

information under a gag order in the name of nationalsecurity.

But U.S. District Judge... temporarily put her order on

hold to allow the government to appeal her decision,

recognizing that a higher court should first be able to

"consider the weighty questions of national security and

First Amendment rights" at issue in the case. The authority


29/46

of national security letters, government orders to

communications providers to reveal user information, was

vastly expanded in the post-9/11 [STATUTE]. The federal

government has made wide use of them in the name of the

fight against terrorism.

In May 2011, the non-profit Electronic Frontier Foundation

brought a lawsuit against the national security letter

statutes on behalf of an unnamed telephone service

provider, arguing that placing the company under a gag

order violated its First Amendment rights. EFF also argued

that the 2005 renewal of the Patriot Act provided too

little judicial reiew for the secret letters.

[JUDGE]'s ruling vindicated EFF's arguments.

"Basically the court declared the national security letter

statute unconstitutional on the grounds that it improperly

gagged the recipients," said [ATTORNEY], the group's legal

director. "Nothing changes in the short term, but it's a

very strong ruling."

Because the government still has 90 days to appeal the

ruling while it is on hold, [ATTORNEY] is still not able to

reveal her client's name."

-----------------------------------------------------------------

.....THE.............................................ASSIST

ANT.................................PROSECUTOR.............

...........................................................

..................

Having received the assignment of arguing Motion 92, the

assistant prosecutor opted to focus not on the merits, as

lawyers like to say, of the motion, but on the proceduralirregularities that meant that Motion 92 should not have

seen the light of day, let alone been typed up and printed

out and carried over to the courtroom and then presented

for filing through the prosecution's office.

"It is unclear to us how the information got into the hands

of the defense," the assistant prosecutor told the


30/46

tribunal. "While relevant to the case, in the broadest

sense of the word, it was not cleared for release to the

defense and likely would never have been."

The tribunal frowned down at his desk, working through

recollections of what had been in Motion 92.

"I'm not sure that I agree that it was only relevant in

'the broadest sense,' he ventured, and the Assistant

Prosecutor reflexively hit the red button in a box on the

prosecution's table, the one that cut the audio feed until

it was hit again.

There was no press in the press box. The military

policeman -- only one today, given that there were only two

other people in the courtroom -- already had sufficientclearance to hear this part of the argument.

The assistant prosecutor began to lay out why the matters

set forth in Motion 92 were not exactly relevant. His

argument boiled down to this:

A. "Relevant" evidence is that which tends to make

a fact of consequence i.e. a 'material fact' more or

less probable. (This is in fact the legal

definition of 'relevance' in the legal community,although probably not in the real community of real

people, where what is 'relevant' to one's life is

not necessarily the same as 'what is likely to prove

something one wants others to believe to be more, or

less, true', in that most people's lives, unlike all

trials in the American adversary system, are NOT

devoted to proving or disproving hypotheses.

B. The alleged facts set forth in Motion 92 were

not facts at all, in that they had not yet been

cleared for release by the various offices of

various securities of various portions of the

nation, to wit: The offices of national security and

the offices of defense security and the offices

related to the security of undercover, covert, or

other classified types of efforts/people, and so if


31/46

the facts had not yet been cleared for dispersal,

could they be said to be 'facts' at all?

C. Moreover, what the alleged facts in Motion 92

were allegedly attempting to prove was that the

alleged facts upon which the prosecution was

basing only the smallest portion of the current

case, and that portion of the case wasn't even

strictly speaking necessary to an overall finding of

guilt but bear with him here, the alleged facts in

Motion 92 were allegedly designed to show that some

small portion of the prosecution's case against the

defendant had been built upon information -- facts,

if you will -- which was obtained in contravention

of the United States' constitution and The Geneva

Convention and the Hague Evidence Convention but inpoint of fact -- real fact, not Motion 92 fact:

1. The defendant was not a citizen of the

United States and nor were his interrogators,

and so the U.S. Constitution did not apply

and

2. the Geneva Conventions apply only to

declared wars and the United States was not

at war with the defendant's homeland, whichanyway was unknown as the defendant would not

provide any information as to what state he

was a citizen of, and three different states

had at one point declined to declare him a

citizen, and

3. None of those three states were signatories to the

Hague Evidence Conventions, which are simply procedural

rules anyway and not substantive rights on parties.

The tribunal wished sometimes he could take notes on these

arguments, or at least have them read back. He sat a

moment and sorted through the mental stack of arguments he

had in his mind.

"So what you're saying," he asked the assistant prosecutor

"Is that the evidence isn't relevant, at all. The arguments


32/46

in Motion 92, I mean."

"That's exactly what I'm saying," the assistant prosecutor

said. "In part. The evidence -- I'm using that term

loosely"

"Understood," interrupted the tribunal.

"The evidence in Motion 92 is not relevant to the evidence

the prosecution has, which it seeks to attack and exclude

by attacking the method of which OUR evidence was obtained.

But OUR evidence, the evidence Motion 92 seeks to exclude,

is only marginally relevant to our case anyway, so the

methods by which the prosecution..."

(It should be noted that in many cases, the prosecution isreferred to as "The United States" or "The state" or the

name of the state or at least the unit of government, as

the plaintiff. But in these cases, cases like the one in

which Motion 92 was filed, the prosecution or plaintiff is

referred to simply as "the prosecution." The meaning of

this would be interestingly discussed in the types of

classes that discuss philosophy, and law and the

significance of nomenclature, if the fact of how the

prosecution is referred to were known, but the people who

were allowed to know about the way the prosecution wasidentified in cases such as this one were either

uninterested in discussing why it might matter that the

prosecution was denominated simply "the prosecution," or

they were prohibited from identifying how "the prosecution"

was identified in court.)

(It should be noted, too, that the unintended consequence

of the rule that no reporter or other person disseminating

information about these proceedings be allowed to identify

how the prosecution was identified in court meant that the

reporters who were allowed to write articles about this

inevitably ended up identifying the prosecution simply as

"the prosecution," without being able to say that this was

in fact the official term of art for referring to the

prosecution.)


33/46

The assistant prosecutor finished:

"...by which the prosecution obtained its information is

itself irrelevant. So not only is Motion 92 itself based on

classified information that was not cleared for

dissemination and therefore cannot be considered "fact"

yet, but, in the end, because the information we obtained

via the methods Motion 92 complains about is of marginal

relevance, it does not matter how we obtained the

information that is sought to be excluded by Motion 92."

...........................THE.............................

................QUESTIONING................................

.............MAN.............................................................

"I really feel like I should get to call my lawyer."

Who is your lawyer.

"His name is... why, are you going to call him."

Have you already called him.

"No. Do I have to answer these questions."

Yes.

"Then I think you have to read me my rights."

Are you aware of [TRIBUNAL RULING].

"What? I think so. Maybe."

The United States Constitution does not apply

extraterritorially, nor to actors not employed directly by

a United States prosecuting authority.

"Why are you quoting [RULING]. Where am I."


34/46

You were booked into the Miami-Dade County Jail.

"You said extraterritorial. Am I in Guantanamo."

Who else knew you were going to the hotel.

"I don't think I have to answer these questions."

Fine.

"Where are you... Hello, where did you go."

...................THE.....................................

................NEW.........................DEFENSE........

......................ATTORNEY.............................

..................

"I don't want to talk to you," said the defendant, staring

at the ceiling after having briefly looked at the man in

the suit standing there.

"OK, I understand, you don't have to but I'm here to help

you," the new defense attorney said.

"I'm not interested," the defendant said.

"Honestly, like I said, I'm on your side. I'm your new

lawyer."

"I did not ask for a new lawyer. Or a lawyer. But not a

new one, either."

"Sure, but your old one was removed from the case."

"Why?"

"Classified."

"So you, my attorney, know something about my former

attorney, that you cannot tell me? How can there be secrets

between a lawyer and a client?"


35/46

"Honestly, all I know is it's classified. No secrets

between us. I just don't know why she was removed. But I

got the call two days ago and now I'm here, and I'm

representing you. So I'd like to talk to you."

"Not interested."

"That's not very helpful, and these are serious...,"

The defendant interrupted, saying something in a language

the new defense attorney did not understand.

"...I didn't," the new defense attorney stuttered. "I

don't... speak that."

*Language language language* came from the defendant, abrief downpour of musical syllables interspersed with harsh

interjections.

"This isn't... I can't," the new defense attorney sighed.

"This isn't helpful to me."

*Language language* came back at him, and he almost as felt

as though the man had parroted back that line, in his own

tongue.

He stood there a moment, then reached into his briefcase,

and pulled out some papers. He held them up and began to

say to the defendant that these were important matters,

that he might be executed or deported. He said: "Listen,"

but a voice interrupted him.

"You're new here," the voice, which belonged to the

prosecutor, said, and the new defense attorney looked at

the prosecutor, who had been standing next to him the

entire time, "So I don't want you to get in trouble. That

motion that you're holding" [which was not Motion 92, it

should be noted] "is classified eyes only. He can't see

the motion."

The new defense attorney looked at the prosecutor, who

nodded. The defendant suddenly opened his eyes and looked


36/46

up at them.

*Language language* he said, and the prosecutor grabbed the

papers out of the new defense attorney's hand, folded them

hastily and tucked them into his own jacket.

"Just helping you out," he said. "I'll give them back when

we're done here."

"So I can't show him the motion," the new defense attorney

said.

The prosecutor shook his head.

"I can discuss it with him, though," the new defense

attorney said.

The prosecutor nodded. "But you can't quote it directly,"

he said. "Not even excerpts."

The new defense attorney said "What if I accidentally use a

word in the motion without meaning to quote it?" He smiled

a bit.

The prosecutor did not smile back.

"Don't," he said.

--------------------------

SIDEBAR--------------------------------

A U.S. federal judge ruled Monday that she lacks the

authority to halt the force-feeding of prisoners on hunger

strike at Guantanamo Bay, while pointedly noting that the

practice appears to violate international law and that

[PRESIDENT] can resolve the issue.

District [JUDGE] said previous rulings already established

that the court lacks jurisdiction to stop the force-feeding

of prisoners during the ongoing protest, rejecting a motion

for a preliminary injunction sought by [DEFENDANT] held at

the U.S. base in Cuba.


37/46

[JUDGE] faulted the militarys response to the hunger

strike, noting a consensus of opinion that the use of a

nasogastric tube to feed the men against their will is a

violation of medical ethics as well as international

prohibitions against inhumane treatment.

It is perfectly clear from the statements of detainees, as

well as the statements from the organizations just cited,

that force-feeding is a painful, humiliating and degrading

process, she wrote.

[JUDGE] wrote there is an individual who has does have the

authority to address the issue, and then quoted a recent

speech from [PRESIDENT] in which he criticized the force-

feeding of the prisoners at Guantanamo as he said he would

renew his efforts to close the prison.

...........................THE.............................

.......................QUESTIONING ........................

............

MAN........................................................

......

"I'm hungry," the reporter said.

That's good.

"No, it's not. I have the right to be fed. It's been, like

10 hours since you last fed me."

22

"What, 22, how long have..."

You have three cell phones.

"That's not right."

You have more.

"No. I... look, this is all terribly effective, but do we

have to sit in the half-dark like this. I can barely focus


38/46

my eyes. I am pretty sure there are about four books full

of [STATUTES] that prohibit something like this."

ALL of your emails have been sifted.

"I want a lawyer."

No. In those emails you mention, forty-three times, the

bombings in Boston.

"I would like to speak to a lawyer."

No. Two of the mentions appear to predate or be sent at

the same time as the bombings occurred but before

widespread dissemination of the news there had been a

bombing.

"I'm not talking until I...that's not correct. Also, it was

INSTANTLY known that there had been a bombing."

In later emails you referred to inside sources as having

had knowledge of where the suspects might be located.

"What is it, exactly, you are saying..."

Do you know what this means.

"What is this?"

Do not pick it up.

"I can't hardly read it..."

In this motion there are references to a transmission, by

facsimile, to a classified location. The transmission

contained classified information. The fact that it had

been sent by fax, was, also, classified information. The

facts that the information existed, had been written down,

had been transmitted, had been transmitted by facsimile,

had been read by the recipient of the facsimile

transmission, and that the transmission had itself then

been destroyed, all these facts were every bit as


39/46


40/46

The other reporter shrugged. "Probably means it's not

news. Look, I gotta go."

She stared at the fast-food drive-thru clerk, until the

girl got the message and stood up.

"Maybe try one of those websites," the other reporter said,

"Like [OTHER WEBSITE]." The other reporter was packing up

her tablet computer. "Or something," she said.

The fast-food drive-through clerk left a minute later, and

had her cell phone stolen later that night. She told the

local policeman who took her report that she had locked her

car, and had left her cell phone in it, charging.

"I don't have a charger in my apartment," she told him. "Itbroke."

"Was there anyone who would want your cell phone, in

particular?" the local policeman asked.

"Well..." the fast-food drive through clerk hesitated and

then told the local policeman about the video.

The local policeman did not write down anything of what she

said. He wasn't stupid.

"You'll get a copy of the report," he said, but he never

typed up the report.

............................THE............................

........................................TRIBUNAL'S ........

............

DECISION...................................................

......

BY THE COURT, AN ORAL RULING NOT TRANSCRIBED:

The matter, Motion 92, having been argued, it is the decision

of the court that Motion 92 be denied.

No written order shall ensue. All extant copies of Motion 92

shall be destroyed.


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.......................THE.................................

.......................................PROSECUTOR..........

...........................................................

..................

"I told you," said the defense attorney, sitting next to

the new defense attorney, who now represented her and the

defendant, "that the fax was given to me. I assumed by your

office."

"And I told you that didn't happen," the prosecutor said.

"Our office didn't give you the fax. So where did you

really get it?"

The defense attorney looked at her defense attorney.

"I don't know how else I can say this."

The new defense attorney shrugged.

"Here is the deal," the prosecutor said. "If you reveal

your sources to us, you'll get only a dishonorable

discharge. Loss of rank. No retirement. But the records

will be sealed. You'll enter into a consent decree that

both sides will say simply that you left because of health

reasons."

"But I didn't do anything wrong. I was defending my

client."

"Your first loyalty was to the government. You're

military!" the prosecutor said.

"I was doing my job," the defense attorney said.

"Your job," she heard, as she closed her eyes and wondered

whether she could remain a lawyer if she took the deal,

"Was to protect America."

That was said by the new defense attorney, who took his own

job very seriously.


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He knew who he was defending, that is. He knew who he was

defending.

---------------------------

SIDEBAR-------------------------------

"It would just be an oddity that [AGENCY] let [DEFENDANT]

design a vacuum cleaner while he was held in a secret

prison...if not for two things: its reasons for allowing

the project, and the secrecy that surrounds it. Both fall

under the rubric of insanity.

By the time of the vacuum project, [DEFENDANT], the planner

of the 9/11 attacks, had already been waterboarded a

hundred and eighty-three times, and he and other prisoners

had been moved from a black site in Poland to one in

Bucharest, on their way to Guantnamo. The main, torture-

laced interrogations were over, but the government wouldnot bestir itself to actually try [DEFENDANT] and the other

alleged 9/11 conspirators for almost a decade. (He was

captured in 2003, and his military-commission trial at

Guantnamo is still in its preliminary phases.) We didnt

want them to go nuts, a former [AGENCY] official [said]."

"No one truly knows a nation until one has been inside it's

jails."

- Nelson Mandela.

....................THE....................................

..............................QUESTIONING .................

...........

..................................................MAN......

.....

The reporter was released on bond, $1,000,000, which he

only had to sign for and promise to pay if he violated any

conditions of the bond, some of which were not written

down. He was told that if further proceedings were

required he would be notified.

A letter which was read to him told him that he could speak

to a lawyer about this with prior permission only,

permission to be requested from [AGENCY], and that claims

for compensation must be filed in [COURT], under seal. He


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would be allowed to have legal counsel review, in person, a

copy of the letter spelling out his rights in these

proceedings, upon written notice, such review to be done at

[LOCATION] after security clearances were received.

He hugged his wife and asked how long he had been gone.

He changed his gmail address.

He began writing a book, about the history of the National

Hockey League and found a new job, designing websites in

Seattle.

.................EPILOGUE........

[ONE]...........................

...........................................................

...........................................................

............

In the western part of the country, there are vast groves

of long-ago planted trees that have spent their entire

lives waiting to be cut down.

One day, one of those trees is cut down. It is dragged

across the rough, vehicle-tracked ground, past its friends

and neighbors and distant acquaintances, past the truckswith other trees that it never knew, past the men cutting

down other trees.

It is taken to a place where it is ground up and pulped.

The tree doesn't mind this. It is a tree and the shape it

is in is the shape it is in. It doesn't matter to the

tree, which, insofar as it has consciousness, has it no

matter what you do to it. Each part of the tree contains a

tiny bit of the tree and so when the parts swirl apart and

swirl together and swirl apart and together again, they

retain that and join with other parts of other trees, some

of which it knew before and some of which it did not, but

it does not matter to any of them.

These parts of trees are now a paper, and this paper is

stacked, quickly and mechanically, on other sheets of


44/46

paper, some of which are made up of this tree, too, and

some of which are not. This is a tiny forest, now, a

symmetrical geometrical forest that rests quietly, the

stack of paper its new neighborhood replacing the old one

where it grew in a row with others who were like it but

unlike it, too, all the same but different. Now they are

all the same but the same, too, and one day this paper is

taken out of its sheath, put into a stack underneath a

machine that sometimes buzzes and hums and grabs paper from

the top of the stack to pull it away to a fate that can

only be imagined by pieces of tree from the western part of

the country.

Sometimes a tree becomes something huge -- a [DECLARATION],

maybe, of how [COUNTRY] is different from [EVERY OTHER

COUNTRY], a piece of tree carrying upon it [TRUTHS] which,though [SELF-EVIDENT] still needed to be explained in

writing, and having been so, will thereafter be enshrined

in [MUSEUM], carrying their [TRUTHS] which are [SELF-

EVIDENT] but need to be written down, maybe, as a reminder.

Sometimes, a tree becomes that, or it becomes a [WRIT OF

HABEAS CORPUS], or an [OPINION], a tree of action! A tree

of might! A tree whose humble existence soaking up the sun

has led it to this juncture, where it may bear words that

free a man, a woman, a nation, from bonds that held it.

This tree, then, this paper, waited patiently for its turn,

and one day, it was grabbed by the machine!

It was slid through!

It was printed upon!

WE HOLD THESE TRUTHS TO BE SELF-EVIDENT?

The paper was picked up by a receiving tray that was

closely watched by a dedicated secretary with second-level

clearance, who began to send it on its way.

..........................................EPILOGUE.........

...........................................................

.........................TWO...............................


45/46

..................

The title of this story is a near-direct quote from the

June 19 article on "The Constitution Project," a website

devoted to covering the military tribunal trials of

Guantanamo Bay prisoners.

The Brandon Mayfield story is true. The quote is from the

Wikipedia page about him.

The national security letter ruling story appearing just

after the Aristotle quote was the beginning of a Matt

Sledge article that appeared on Huffington Post.

The two paragraphs before the Nelson Mandela quote are from

an Amy Davidson article which appeared on The New Yorker'swebsite on July 11, 2013.
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-7vV56dSyf7A/UeWBVzmCanI/AAAAAAAA7KA/I91qQFW4ldY/s1600/0705131655c.jpg


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"the guantánamo military commission for accused uss cole bombing mastermind [defendant] had its...

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