Chapter 47
Had he known the truth, and he probably did, Cully Pratt would not have been the least surprised that the Americans were doing exactly what he had warned against. From the moment he walked away from Pascal Goff the day before on the bench in Paris, until the moment Goff and his two colleagues left the Clemency International offices, U.S.
intelligence scrambled to identify the twenty-seven “enemy combatants” whose Gitmo cases were handled by Cully Pratt and CI.
On average, each had spent seven years and two months in captivity, a number that crept up each day since four of the men were still there.
None of the twenty-seven had ever been put on trial because none had ever been formally charged with anything.
As Pratt had been roaring for years, his clients were not terrorists and had no ties to Al Qaeda or any other troublesome gang, group, or army. They were innocent!
Of the twenty-three who had been released, seven were from North Africa—Libya, Algeria, Tunisia, and Morocco.
There was one Egyptian, a doctor who had been doing relief work in Pakistan when he was sold for a bounty and grabbed by the CIA.
Waterboarding produced nothing useful, and the CIA found no evidence of terrorist leanings, but they didn’t like the guy because he spoke four languages and cursed his interrogators in all four, so he was sent to Gitmo.
Luckily for him, he served only three years before Pratt successfully bullied the State Department into pushing for his release.
The other sixteen Clemency International clients were from Afghanistan, Iraq, and Pakistan. One was a British citizen, born in Manchester.
When released from Gitmo they were flown, usually blindfolded and in chains and with destinations always unknown, to countries they had never seen.
Virtually none were sent home. Most were simply dumped on the streets of Damascus or Baghdad, with no money, no contacts, no support whatsoever.
Two Libyans were sent to Tripoli, where they were promptly arrested and accused of spying for the United States, the last country they would want to help.
Before Pratt could get to them, they were executed.
He was arrested entering the country, with a valid British passport, and spent two weeks in jail before the diplomats worked things out.
The U.S. government wanted the detainees to simply vanish.
There was no effort to keep track of them; indeed, the U.S.
closed and buried their files. They were mistakes, collateral damage in the war on terror, innocents who got caught in the crossfire.
(Though, viewed as shiftless Arabs, it was assumed they were guilty of “something.”) Trying to locate them now was all but impossible.
They certainly wanted no contact with the United States.
There was also strong pushback from the intelligence brass.
Those who had dealt with Cully Pratt, especially at Justice, knew he was quite influential amongst the Gitmo lawyers, especially the foreign ones.
His sentiments against the United States bordered on hatred.
He was cunning and strategic and seldom made a mistake.
It was quite unlikely that he would risk the safety of one of his Gitmo clients by getting involved as a go-between.
Thus, the argument went, why bother beating the bushes trying to track down his former clients?
What would the CIA do if they found a few?
As the arguments raged through the night and day and spread as far as the White House, the spooks continued scouring forbidden lands in the desperate hope of locating Pratt’s clients, especially those from North Africa. The search produced nothing useful.
—
It wasn’t long before Pratt caught wind of the expected overreaction by the Americans.
He had figured as much. After two days of silence and no acknowledgment of any kind from Washington, he decided to shake things up.
His high-profile work had led to many acquaintances with journalists.
His stories were colorful and unique, his cases a far cry from the usual work of stodgy, buttoned-up lawyers billing by the hour in tall buildings.
Pratt traveled the world looking for danger and often finding it.
He was aware that the story of the three Americans kidnapped in Paris had so far been buried by the U.S. government. It was too sensational to be hidden, and to Pratt this meant the CIA and probably the Pentagon had threatened the press. He relished such threats.
On November 10, he met his current favorite reporter for a sandwich lunch in a London pub.
His name was Alistair Bacon and he was a senior foreign correspondent for The Guardian, Pratt’s favorite paper.
The Guardian was still a much-respected broadsheet with standards far above the sewage of the tabloids and most other dailies.
Over forty million Americans read it each month.
The agreement was that Pratt would hand over a two-page memo that summarized the story.
Bacon could dig for more, but too much digging would alert the competition in the United States; best to go hard and fast with the basics and beat the pack to the punch.
The details, and denials, would come later.
For his part, Pratt would get nothing, certainly nothing more than being an “unnamed source.” He neither wanted nor needed anything more, at least not from the newspaper.
His motive for the leak was to put enormous pressure on the CIA, something he always enjoyed, and to hopefully force the Americans to pay up and get the boys back.
Pratt knew enough about the dark side of terrorism and hostages, and the seething hatred of America in much of the world, to appreciate the danger facing Stockman, Snyder, and Tanner.
There would be no mention of his involvement with the kidnappers, nor the ransom demand. Such details would immediately identify him as the source.
Bacon’s quandary was whether to rely on Pratt as his sole source and run with the story. He desperately wanted to break it, but what if he got it wrong? Digging, though, would raise red flags on both sides of the Atlantic.
After lunch, he wrote a five-hundred-word story, then wrangled with his editors until the deadline approached. At midnight in London, the story broke online. Five hours later it was front-page across the country.
—
Amy Rowe of the Journal was having tacos with her boyfriend and preparing to spend another Thursday night with earbuds and a movie while he watched college football.
A colleague at work called and ruined everything.
The Guardian headline made her curse. She zipped through the brief story, then called Jock Buchanan, editor in chief.
She wasn’t supposed to yell at her boss, and Jock was not accustomed to being yelled at, but through the histrionics they at least made their feelings known.
She’d had the story for three months, did all the digging herself, then he, and the entire newspaper, had buckled under pressure from the government and held the story.
Now they had been scooped! And by the Brits!
Amy forgot about the tacos, the movie, the game, and her boyfriend. She ignored Jock’s second call and touched up her report, which, at 1,800 words, was much richer than Bacon’s.
Jock was ready to run the story but had promised to first contact Dexter Maceas at the CIA.
Two attempts to reach him by phone were not productive, so Jock said too bad.
At 7:40, the story was posted on the Journal’s site.
Forty minutes later, the printing presses began running the story front-page, with large photos of the three men.
An hour later, Chelsea got a call and went online. She had not encountered Amy Rowe in months. The families had been convinced, primarily by the government, that any publicity was dangerous.
Publicity? Her phone blew up, as did her message boards, then social media. Some of her friends were incredulous, even cruel. Why had she lied for so long? After an hour, the deluge was overwhelming, and she pulled all the plugs.