97 – Cape Cod, Massachusetts
Judy Katz drove her battered green Honda Civic up to the gatehouse at Camp Edwards, wondering if she would be turned around and headed home within minutes. The guard at the camp gate didn’t know what to do when she flashed her Massachusetts Board of Bar Overseers registration card and said she was an attorney representing detainees and she intended to meet with her clients.
It took almost an hour for a sergeant in a humvee to drive up. He told her to park her car in a lot next to the gatehouse, then had her sit in the humvee’s front seat. They drove in silence down an empty, paved road that led to a large wood frame building with a freshly-painted sign in front declaring it to be Base HQ, Camp Edwards Detention Center. Below that was the camp’s motto, cloned from Guantanamo, “Honor Bound to Defend Freedom.” Katz shivered, thinking that “freedom” depended on which side of the razor wire you slept on. She slung her laptop computer case over one shoulder, hefted her briefcase strap over the other and, laden down and with no assistance from the young man, followed the soldier. Beyond the building was a twelve-foot-tall wire fence stretching in both directions, a coil of razor wire inside the fence at its base, another coil topping the fence. Wooden guard towers stood over the fence every hundred yards. The soldiers in the towers held rifles, fingers on the triggers, she noticed. They were all looking inward.
Katz spent another forty-five minutes in a wooden chair outside a door marked “Commander” until the door opened and a soldier ushered her in. An officer was sitting behind a wooden desk. Two other men stood with their backs against a wall. One wore a uniform, the other jeans and a tee shirt. They were both slouching in a decidedly unmilitary manner. The man behind the desk spoke first.
“Major Ted Dancer, ma’am,” he introduced himself. “You’ve thrown us for something of a loop here. Nobody told us you’d be coming down, you see, and, well, as you can imagine, we’re not much used to lawyers coming to visit our guests.
“In fact, you’re the first one. It’s a total surprise to me that such a thing could even happen.”
He smiled warmly at the young woman sitting demurely, knees together, in front of his desk, like a student called to the principal’s office for a chat. He was surprised at her response.
“Save the bullshit for somebody else, Major,” she said. “Ted Dancer? You’re the same Ted Dancer who was adjutant commander at Guantanamo, right? The same Guantanamo that played host to what, about 200 lawyers visiting their clients, right? So, get me an escort and a room and take me to my clients. Now, if you please.”
She smiled as if the principal had told her she’d won a National Merit Scholarship. Major Dancer turned to one of the two men leaning against his office wall.
“Lieutenant, escort the young lady around, would you please?” he said, then looked Katz directly in the eyes while he continued speaking to the soldier. “Listen to the rules first and make sure she complies. If she doesn’t go along with these rules, drive her to the gate.”
The man stood at attention and saluted, a smile on his face. The Major glanced at a paper on his desk and then spoke to Katz.
“First, you don’t get to speak with anybody, no detainees, not until somebody who outranks me tells me that you do. Understand?” he barked at her as if he were her drill instructor. He guessed correctly that she’d never done time in uniform, at least not since girl scouts.
“Next, we’ll give you a drive around so you can see that people are being cared for humanely. We’ll show you the dining hall, a barracks, the recreation area. You can look into the school, hell, sit in on a class if you want. We’re treating these people pretty damn good if you ask me. I don’t mind showing that off a bit.
“Finally, we’ve got a high security section, Camp Echo, troublemakers in every group of people, you know. You won’t be going anywhere near there. Now, if you agree with all that, we’ll give you the tour. If you don’t agree, we’ll show you the gate. Your choice, ma’am, what’ll it be?”
Katz realized she had no bargaining chips. She did what lawyers do reflexively.
“I’ll go to court,” she said. “I’ll get an order from a judge ordering you to let me meet with my clients.”
“I’m sure you will, ma’am,” Maj. Dancer replied, confident that for today, at least, he held all the cards. “And when you do, I’ll do whatever I am ordered to do. But for today, what’s your choice, my way or the gate?”
She knew she’d lost this round. Katz stood, hoisted her briefcase strap on one shoulder, her laptop strap on the other.
“Let’s start the tour, for today,” she said.
The uniformed man sprang from standing at attention and raced for the office door, holding it open for her. Before she could leave the office, however, the other man, the one in jeans, cleared his throat loudly.
“Major, what we discussed?” he said.
“Right. Forgot,” Maj. Dancer said. Looking at Katz, he said, “Ma’am, no electronic devices, cell phones, cameras, cell phones with cameras, tape recorders or ...” He looked at the black nylon bag with Katz’s laptop computer. “No computers. Security, you know. Captain Howard here will take all that from you for safekeeping.” He nodded to the man in jeans. “And of course you’ll be searched, thoroughly. We’ll try to find a female to do the search, if we can.”
Katz looked at the man skeptically, then handed over her computer and, reaching in her briefcase, extracted a cell phone.
“Want to check my shoes for hidden cameras?” she asked the man. She was not smiling.
“Already did, ma’am, already did. Passed with flying colors,” he said, a grin on his face. He reached for her bag and phone and took them from her. Katz and the uniformed soldier left the room.
“Good thinking there,” Major Dancer said to the man after the door closed. “You Echoes do have your tricks, don’t you? So what’s your plan for that?”
“First thing, I’ll do a mirror image of the hard drive,” he said. “Whatever’s on the computer will be captured in the image. Then I’ll download the memory from the phone. Should give us every number she’s ever dialed and every number that has called her, at least in the last few months, depends on how much memory the phone has.”
“Nothing like having a good lawyer around,” Maj. Dancer laughed. “And a good interrogator, too, I suppose. Take care of her things, now.”
The Echo interrogator carried Katz’s phone and computer to the Echo office, located behind the internal razor wire enclosure at Camp Echo. He linked Katz’s laptop to a powerful HP server and started the mirroring of her hard drive, creating an identical copy of every keystroke on the laptop.
Just as he was finishing, and before he could work on her cell phone, the telephone on his desk rang.
“Echo office,” he said tersely.
“Lieutenant Williams here, sir,” the voice on the phone said. “Major Dancer said I should let you know. This lawyer woman. Seems like she’s had enough. She’s pretty pissed at being given the celebrity tour. She’s pulling the plug. Wants her stuff back. Major said to get it all back to HQ now, sir.”
“Thanks for the call. Tell the Major I’m on my way.”
The interrogator disconnected the cable from the laptop to the server, checking to make sure the download had completed. Before shutting the power off on Katz’s computer, however, he walked to the office door and looked down the empty hallway.
Returning to the desk, he pressed the keyboard button marked “eject” on the laptop and waited for the compact disk drive door to open and the disk carrier to slowly slide out.
The man then walked to a rust-colored canvass barn jacket hanging from a peg on the wall. He reached into one of the pockets and withdrew an unmarked gold-colored compact disk, which he placed carefully on the disk carrier on Katz’s computer. He pressed the “eject” button once again and watched as the carrier withdrew into the computer, taking the CD with it.
He shut down the computer, returned it to its nylon case and walked quickly back to Major Dancer’s office, arriving just before a furious Katz and her escort.
The Echo interrogator watched as Katz snatched her computer bag, pocketed her cell phone and stormed from the office building without saying a word. The humvee drove her to the gate, where she jumped into her car and did as passable an imitation of leaving rubber on the asphalt as her Honda could manage.
The interrogator watched her being driven from the headquarters building, pleased with his quick thinking. The image of the young Israeli soldier mumbling a prayer before her mouth was taped shut continued to haunt his dreams. If anybody’s going to Leavenworth for killing a prisoner it won’t be me, the interrogator thought. All I did was follow orders. That CD will prove it. Nothing criminal about following orders, right?