Extraordinary Rendition

20

THEY MET MANY TIMES over the next three weeks. Simeon Black had immediately recognized the name Byron Carlos Johnson when he first heard the voicemail message late on a perfect autumn afternoon: “This is Byron Johnson. I’ve read several of your articles, The Atlantic especially, on terrorist detainees. I think we might have a common interest. My cell phone number is (917) 928-0111. Please call if you have a chance.”

Ever since he had started his first job in journalism in 1964 at the Washington Post when it was still in the dreary building at 1515 L Street, Simeon had made it his daily life’s work to know what was happening in the world. He read six newspapers each day, listened to CNN, the BBC, and even Pacifica Radio, and had mastered the art of seeking out information on the Internet. He instantly recognized Byron Carlos Johnson as the New York lawyer who had stepped out of the confines of corporate law firm practice-a rarified world-to represent a terrorist prisoner who had been taken to the United States for criminal prosecution. Just two months after the 9/11 attack, Simeon Black, who had won his first Pulitzer Prize in 1971 for articles about the secret invasion of Cambodia, published his first article on arrests of Arabic men in the United States and Europe on suspicion of terrorism. He had steadily and slowly published other articles over the years of the endless wars in Iraq and Afghanistan on the subject of imprisoned Islamic men.

But he could never gain access to anyone held in Guantanamo or Bagram or the other places around the world rumored to hold men arrested overseas by the United States and transferred, by extraordinary rendition, to other countries. The lawsuits Simeon filed under the freedom of information laws were all dismissed on national security grounds without yielding anything. His stories for the New Yorker, the New York Review of Books, and the Atlantic were based on thirdhand and even more remote sources, such as two former private government contractors who gave him what he believed was reliable information about the dark prisons around the world where Islamic men were held. He knew these were “weakly sourced” stories. Had he not been Simeon Black, had he not been proved absolutely right in the Pulitzer Prize stories about the Cambodian invasion also based on weak, attenuated sources, and had he not been given the benefit of every possible editorial doubt, the magazines in which his stories appeared since 9/11 would never have published any of them.

Simeon recognized that the most he could ever expect was to get information through the conduit of a lawyer representing one of these men. Lawyers, he knew, had the incalculable advantage of face-to-face contact with the ultimate source of information, the detainee himself. A lawyer would have been in the presence of the prisoner, would have heard his words, would have seen his clothes, and would have looked at his client’s hands and face.

But until Byron Carlos Johnson left a message for him, Simeon had not succeeded in speaking to a single lawyer who had represented any of these men. Most of the defense lawyers, including those who represented prisoners at Guantanamo, were JAG officers. And JAG officers had never, in all of his years of experience starting in Vietnam, changed: they were the keepers of the secrets, they formed a green wall of secrecy, a cone of silence. Simeon had approached three former Army lawyers over the last seven years. Not one word from any of them, except “no comment” in one case and simple silence in the others. These were men to whom the name Simeon Black probably meant nothing or was associated with someone who had done damage in the past.

It was Byron who suggested that they have their first meeting in the old Viand Diner at the busy corner of 86th Street and Second Avenue. Simeon had met people for interviews in so many places over the decades in which he had been writing stories-from luxurious rooms in the Brown Hotel in London to a Motel 6 in New Mexico for a recent story for the New Yorker on a violent polygamist sect-that he didn’t find Byron’s choice strange or surprising. He was focused on the fact that Byron Johnson, who was at the center of a story that fascinated Simeon, apparently wanted to establish some sort of arrangement with him. “I want to explore,” Byron had said when they spoke by cell phone to arrange this meeting, “whether we can help each other.”

When he entered the coffee shop, Simeon recognized Byron from pictures that appeared on the Internet, on television, in the New York Times, and in the New York Post. In turn, Byron recognized Simeon from photographs on the dust jackets of his books. In the day between the first telephone call and the meeting, Simeon, a tireless worker even though he was now in his early seventies and could have simply lived out his long and illustrious career teaching journalism somewhere like Columbia or Missouri, had navigated through all the Yahoo and Google entries for Byron. Most were dated after the announcement that Byron was representing an indicted detainee facing the death penalty. Simeon knew scores of people. He was able to call lawyers at prominent firms to ask about Byron Carlos Johnson, and the word he got back from that very self-protective world was that Byron was a hard worker, a stand-up guy, a straight-shooter. Two of the partners he spoke to-one at Shearman & Sterling and the other at Sullivan & Cromwell (two of the whitest white-shoe firms)-let drop a note of bewilderment that Byron would have elected to represent an accused terrorist. “If Byron Johnson was out to change the world,” one of Simeon’s contacts said, “he managed to do a good job not letting on about that for years.” The partner at the other law firm said, “Word has gone around for years that Byron was next in line for a federal judgeship whenever those openings came up, as they do three or four times a year in New York. But he never got the nod. Now that’ll never happen.”

Dressed in a white shirt open at the neck, Byron ordered a coffee and a slice of apple pie from the hairy, harried Greek waiter. He said, “I read your articles about Cambodia and the war as they were coming out in the early seventies.”

“That was a scene. The bar at the Intercontinental in Saigon. Every thrill-seeker in the world-generals, gun-runners, spooks, diplomats, writers, drunks, mercenaries, hookers, picture-takers, senators on junkets-all in one place. It was like the bar in Star Wars, every improbable character in the world.”

Simeon Black had that look Byron associated with David Halberstam-receding hairline, domed forehead, glasses, and handsome eyes, nose, mouth, and chin. The air of academic elegance, New York intellectual aristocracy. Byron also sensed something dedicated, engaging, and honest about Simeon Black.

Byron said, “I haven’t spent a great deal of time in my life with journalists. Until recently, at least.”

“I like to think of myself as a reporter, not a journalist. One of those gumshoe reporters who walks around with a felt hat and a Humphrey Bogart trench coat. Hard-drinker, gruff, seen-it-all exterior. But I don’t drink, never wear a hat, and am always amazed by everything I see, day after day.”

“I think,” Byron said, “that I have amazing things for you.”

And he did. Simeon listened, taking notes in the compact flip-up reporter’s notebooks he had started using in the early 1960s, as Byron at the diner and then over the course of many days described the arrest of Ali Hussein in Bonn, his years in locked rooms in still unknown countries, the time at Guantanamo, the waterboarding, the hundreds of hours of interrogation, the hitting, and Ali’s elusive reaction to the fact that he faced the death penalty. Simeon knew-because, like all old-fashioned reporters, he was wedded to the need for skepticism-that there was information that Byron simply omitted, and he suspected that Byron might not make available documents that might help give authenticity, or the appearance of authenticity, to the long article he was writing for the New Yorker and planned to develop into a book.

And Byron also told Simeon in detail about his conversations with Hamerindapal Rana, that imposing Sikh, and the government’s approach to prosecuting the case. There were also Byron’s almost verbatim descriptions of the hearings before Judge Justin Goldberg, those hearings during which Goldberg repeatedly said that everything that was discussed was confidential. “He reminds me,” Byron said, “of that little mandarin Irving Kaufman, the judge who sentenced the Rosenbergs to death.”

“I remember him,” Simeon said. “He was a member of the Harmonie Club and a friend of my parents.”

“I don’t mean to offend the memory of your parents,” Byron answered, “but Kaufman was one of those ambitious Jewish boys who was absolutely devoted to serving the interests of the privileged WASP class. After Kaufman sentenced that pitiful couple to death, he was rewarded with a promotion to the appeals court, where he acted like a hopped-up vigilante for the next forty years. Justin Goldberg is following the same career path.”

Simeon smiled, his writing hand poised over his notebook. “The WASP ruling class?” Simeon asked. “Isn’t that you?”

During their hours of conversations, Simeon began to consider Byron a friend. He was urbane and well-spoken and sincere; there were times when Byron effortlessly quoted Francis Bacon, Camus, and Seneca, references that Simeon readily understood and appreciated. And yet, of course, there were aspects of these long, on-the-record conversations that Simeon detected were not complete. Byron never, for example, let Simeon know where he lived or whether he was married or had children or held political views. Over his long career, Simeon had learned that he needed to cultivate important sources over extended periods of time to build up confidence and elicit more information, just as an interrogator over time gradually induces someone to disclose more and more. And just as a lawyer gradually develops the confidence of a client.

It was only after seven meetings that Byron mentioned the Koran.