Stephen Soldz

Several public accounts of abusive interrogations at Guantanamo have praised psychologist Dr. Michael Gelles for his opposition to these abuses. Similarly, the American Psychological Association (APA) has repeatedly pointed to actions of Dr. Gelles to instantiate their claim that psychologists played a crucial role in opposing abuses and protecting detainees. Gelles also has been a regular public presence, discussing the errors at Guantanamo while advocating for the APA’s “policy of participation” in interrogations. The APA policy encourages psychologists to aid interrogations to keep them “safe, legal, ethical, and effective.” But a recently released Defense Department document challenges Dr. Gelles’s role as an exemplar of psychological ethics in interrogations.

As reported by Bill Dedman, Phillipe Sands, and Jane Mayer, Gelles objected to the “harsh” interrogation tactics being used at Guantanamo. In particular, he strenuously objected to the plans to “reverse engineer” the tactics used by the military’s Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape (SERE) program to inculcate strategies for resistance to torture in US service members at high risk for capture.

In November 2002, the military planned to use these SERE-based techniques on prisoner 063, Mohammed al Qahtani, one of several US captives dubbed the “20th hijacker.” Gelles and colleagues from the Criminal Investigative Task Force (CITF), the FBI, and other agencies proposed an alternative interrogation plan for al Qahtani, one that did not involve use of SERE techniques. This plan was rejected. Instead, al-Qahtani was subjected to an interrogation that met the legal definition of “torture,” according to Bush Administration appointee Susan Crawford, convener of the Guantanamo Military Commissions. [Phillipe Sands detailed the development of the al-Qahtani torture plan in his book, The Torture Team, an extract from which was published in Vanity Fair. Sands also describes the alternate CITF/FBI plan as written by "Gelles' team" (p. 130).] Gelles reported his concerns regarding use of SERE techniques and the al-Qahtani interrogation up the chain of command, leading Navy General Counsel Alberto Mora to protest and force at least temporary change in official interrogation policy in early 2003.

A few weeks ago, in response to an ACLU’s years-long Freedom of Information Act Request, the alternative interrogation plan for al-Qahtani was quietly released, apparently unnoticed between other documents on FBI and CITF concerns about Guantanamo practices. According to the alternative plan document, it was drafted:

“by representatives of the FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Unit (BAU), and behavioral specialists, psychiatrists and psychologists with the Criminal Investigation Task Force (ClTF).”

Given the prominent roles of mental health professionals in its drafting, the alternative “rapport-based” plan should be examined for consistency with Gelles’ and the other authors’ ethical responsibilities as psychologists and psychiatrists.

At the time the plan was written, on November 22, 2002, al-Qahtani had been in isolation for three months and was exhibiting signs of severe mental deterioration to the extent of psychosis. An FBI agent described this deterioration in a report to headquarters:

“In September or October of 2002 FBI agents observed that a canine was used in an aggressive manner to intimidate detainee __ after he had been subjected to intense isolation for over three months. During that time period, __ was totally isolated (with the exception of occasional interrogations) in a cell that was always flooded with light. By late November, the detainee was evidencing behavior consistent with extreme psychological trauma (talking to non-existent people, reporting hearing voices, crouching in the corner of a cell covered with a sheet for hours on end).”

Gelles and the other authors on the CITF/FBI interrogation plan also noticed his psychological distress:

“#63’s behavior has changed significantly during his three months of isolation. He spends much of his day covered by a sheet, either crouched in the corner of his cell or hunched on his knees on top of his bed. These behaviors appear to be unrelated to his praying activities. His cell has no exterior windows, and because it is continuously lit, he is prevented from orientating himself as to time of day. Recently, he was observed by a hidden video camera having conversations with non-existent people. During his last interview on 11/17/02, he reported hearing unusual sounds which he believes are evil spirits, including Satan.”

After discussing whether al-Qahtani was faking his symptoms, without coming to a conclusion, the interrogation plan proposed exploiting al-Qahtani’s distress from his prolonged isolation:

“Although we are uncertain as to his mental status and recommend a mental evaluation be conducted, there is little doubt that #63 is hungry for human interaction. Our plan is designed to exploit this need and to create an environment in which it [is] easier for #63 to please the interviewer with whom he has come to have complete trust and dependence thus developing a motivation to be forthright and cooperative in providing reliable information.”

In order to exploit this hunger for human contact, the CITF/FBI plan recommended that he be kept in continued isolation for up to an additional year:

“The long-term strategy would be to create an environment in which total dependence and trust between #63 and the interviewer is established at its own pace. Such a plan should be given up to a year to complete although the actual time may be considerably shorter depending on how events unfold.”

Al-Qahtani’s hunger for human contact would be exploited by making his interrogator the only person he saw over this year:

“To help foster an environment conducive to the establishment of dependence and trust, we propose that the interviewer initially meet with #63 every other day. This should be his only contact with other people, and we believe he will anxiously look forward to these meetings.”

It was recommended that al-Qahtani be periodically subjected to additional stresses so that his interrogator could become his savior:

“Built into this plan will be periodic stressors such as the stripping of certain items of comfort from him by guards, such as the removal of his mirror or the issuance of a sheet, half the size of the one he likes to drape around himself. These and other stressors will be carefully and subtly introduced not by the interrogator, but by guards. We believe that #63 will likely look to his only human contact, his interviewer, in an attempt to gain help. The interviewer status as a caregiver and problem-solver will thus be increased…. [D]emands by #63 for restoration of things taken from him should be honored slowly so as to create the impression that the interviewer can ultimately help him although not necessarily quickly or with ease.”

This plan for prolonged manipulation to develop al-Qahtani’s complete dependency might or might not be ethical as an interrogation strategy. However, former police investigator and veteran Army counterintelligence operative David DeBatto, who has supervised many hundreds of interrogations, disparaged the use of isolation in the CITF/FBI interrogation plan for al Qahtani (personal communication, November 28, 2009):

“That [the initial three-months isolation] is an excessively long time and on the face of it, violates the UCMJ [Uniform Code of Military Justice] and international law. Two major problems I have with this is first, solitary is a punishment reserved for the worst kind of behavior by inmates in a prison, not for refusing to answer questions. Second, it is the worst possible way to interrogate anyone and will almost always produce negative results.”

At a minimum, there is no question that the participation of psychologists and psychiatrists in the development of this interrogation plan led to the recommendation of strategies that would be likely to cause severe psychological distress and clearly violated psychological and psychiatric ethics.

Prolonged isolation frequently causes severe emotional distress, including psychotic symptoms identical to those appearing in al-Qahtani, such as hearing non-existent voices and talking to non-existent people. Physicians for Human Rights summed up the psychological and psychiatric evidence regarding the harmful effects of isolation or “solitary confinement” in their Leave No Marks report on the US use of psychological torture:

“Findings from clinical research performed by prominent psychologists such as Dr. Stuart Grassian and Dr. Craig Haney, highlight the destructive impact of solitary confinement. Effects include depression, anxiety, difficulties with concentration and memory, hypersensitivity to external stimuli, hallucinations and perceptual distortions, paranoia, suicidal thoughts and behavior, and problems with impulse control.

“According to Dr. Haney many of the negative effects of solitary confinement are analogous to the acute reactions suffered by torture and trauma victims, including posttraumatic stress disorder and the kind of psychiatric consequences that plague victims of what are called ‘deprivation and constraint’ torture techniques” (pp. 32-33).

The American Psychiatric Association, concerned about the conflicts inherent in such interrogation assistance, in 2006 explicitly condemned any direct involvement of their members in interrogations of specific detainees or prisoners, in domestic or national security settings. The Association stated in May 2006:

“No psychiatrist should participate directly in the interrogation of persons held in custody by military or civilian investigative or law enforcement authorities, whether in the United States or elsewhere. Direct participation includes being present in the interrogation room, asking or suggesting questions, or advising authorities on the use of specific techniques of interrogation with particular detainees.”

Until the membership forced a change in APA policy in September 2008, psychologists were allowed to aid interrogations as long as they did not participate in torture or “cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment” and followed the APA’s ethics code. Psychologists like Michael Gelles are subject to the APA ethics code, if they are members of the Association, as is Dr. Gelles. In addition, the military requires psychologists consulting to interrogations to be licensed by a state as health providers and most states require adherence to the APA ethics code as a requirement of licensure.

According to the APA, the prolonged use of isolation to aid interrogations, as was clearly the case with al-Qahtani, constitutes “cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment.” In August 2007, the APA, under member pressure, banned psychologist participation in a number of interrogation techniques as constituting either “torture” or “cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment,” including

“the following used for the purposes of eliciting information in an interrogation process… isolation… used in a manner that represents significant pain or suffering or in a manner that a reasonable person would judge to cause lasting harm.”

After this resolution was passed, it came under withering criticism from dissident psychologists and the press. As a consequence, the APA’s Ethics Director was forced to issue a clarifying statement in response to reports of four weeks mandatory isolation for new detainees at Guantanamo:

“[T]he 2007 Resolution should never be interpreted as allowing isolation, sensory deprivation and over-stimulation, or sleep deprivation either alone or in combination to be used as interrogation techniques to break down a detainee in order to elicit information.”

In February 2008, in response to criticism, the APA amended its 2007 Resolution to unambiguously condemn psychologist involvement in the use of isolation. The revised resolution proclaimed:

“An absolute prohibition against the following techniques…: … isolation…. Psychologists are absolutely prohibited from knowingly planning, designing, participating in or assisting in the use of all condemned techniques at any time and may not enlist others to employ these techniques in order to circumvent this resolution’s prohibition.”

The CITF/FBI interrogation plan for al-Qahtani indicates that Gelles clearly engaged in a prohibited activity: “knowingly planning, designing… the use of … condemned techniques… and may not enlist others to employ these techniques….” Interestingly, when I raised concerns about the loophole regarding isolation in the 2007 Resolution at the APA convention the day after its passage, Gelles said to me “Steve, you have to understand that isolation is often used only very temporarily, only for a few hours” [quote from memory]. He did not mention its use for months at Guantanamo nor his team’s recommendation that it be used for up to a year on al-Qahtani.

Another ethical concern arises from the reported psychological distress that al-Qahtani was experiencing prior to the CITF/FBI interrogation plan being developed. The interrogation plan notes al-Qahtani’s psychotic symptoms, but, other than suggesting a mental evaluation, they simply view his vulnerability as an opportunity for exploitation. This ignoring of al-Qahtani’s mental distress violates the fundamental Principle A undergirding the entire APA ethics code:

“Psychologists strive to benefit those with whom they work and take care to do no harm. In their professional actions, psychologists seek to safeguard the welfare and rights of those with whom they interact professionally and other affected persons…. When conflicts occur among psychologists’ obligations or concerns, they attempt to resolve these conflicts in a responsible fashion that avoids or minimizes harm.”

There is simply no evidence that Gelles and the other authors of this plan sought to “avoid or minimize harm.” Rather, as the plan makes clear, their intention was to systematically increase and exploit distress and disorientation experienced by al-Qahtani, in violation of the ethics code.

The entire plan, with its emphasis on “exploit[ing]” al-Qahtani’s need for human contact violates the ethic’s code’s ban on exploitation:

“Psychologists do not exploit persons over whom they have supervisory, evaluative, or other authority such as clients/patients, students, supervisees, research participants, and employees.” [Ethics Standard 3.08]

Clearly Gelles and the other mental health professionals had, at a minimum, “evaluative authority” over al-Qahtani as they developed their plans to exploit his weaknesses.

Counterintelligence operative DeBatto also expressed concerns regarding the plan’s proposal to impose additional stressors on al-Qahtani in order to render him more dependent upon the interrogator. As expressed by DeBatto:

“Depriving him of sheets, a mirror and adding other `stressors’ is utter nonsense and counterproductive. He has already endured months of stressors. Forcing him to endure more as a form of a ’stick and carrot’ approach will produce nothing of value. It also violates the interrogators’ ethical training and is blatantly in violation of U.S. and international law.”

Gelles’ proposals in the al-Qahtani case must be deemed unethical and, if executed, would have constituted gross violations of the APA Ethics code, as the APA itself asserted in detailing unethical conduct in detainee treatment in its resolutions of 2007 and 2008. The APA’s parading Gelles as a “heroic” upholder of ethical standards for military interrogations must be revisited. Gelles now joins the ranks of other APA psychologists, including Morgan Banks, Larry James, and Bryce Lefever, whom the organization upheld as models for ethical military interrogation processes, but who subsequently appeared sympathetic to or may have aided abusive practices.

As psychologist Jeffrey Kaye pointed out last summer in two articles [see my commentary here] ethical concerns about Gelles’ pre-Guantanamo interrogation actions had already been raised with the APA long prior to APA’s lauding him as the standard-bearer for psychological ethics in interrogations. Attorney Jonathan Turley reported filing an APA ethics complaint against Gelles for abuses in the prolonged isolation and interrogation of Navy Chief Petty Officer Daniel King, following an ambiguous polygraph result. As described by Turley in testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee, King requested a mental health consultation because he felt he was losing his grip on reality. Dr. Gelles met with King for a consultation and, according to Turley, ignored King’s reports of suicidal thoughts. Instead, Gelles made help for King contingent upon King’s confession to espionage charges he had denied. Turley, who represented King, reports that the APA did not respond to his ethics complaint against Gelles. To our knowledge, the APA has never commented publicly on Turley’s charges, or on the ethics of Gelles’ treatment of King.

In any case, it turns out that Gelles was well aware of the potential ethical conflicts involved in his work with the CITF. In a 2003 paper in the Journal of Threat Assessment, apparently written at about the same time, Gelles and colleague Patrick Ewing argued that psychiatrists and psychologists involved in national security work should not be subject to professional ethics codes:

“Given the grave dangers faced by the United States and its allies post September 11, the government can ill afford to lose the input of psychologists, psychiatrists and other mental health professionals in cases involving national safety and security. Such input has been and will continue to be vital to protecting the lives of many Americans, civilian and military, at home and abroad. In order to maintain the ability and willingness of these dedicated professionals to continue in these roles, we cannot continue to place them in situations where the ethics of their conduct will be judged, post hoc, either by rules that have little if any relevance to their vital governmental functions or by professional organizations or licensing authorities based upon the weight the members of these bodies chose to afford competing interests…” (p. 106).

In 2005, two years after this article appeared, Gelles, along with James, Banks, and Lefever, was appointed by the APA, to the seminal APA Presidential Task Force on Psychological Ethics and National Security (PENS). This military- and intelligence-dominated group gave the ethical go-ahead for psychologists to aid detainee interrogations at Guantanamo and elsewhere.

In an open letter in 2007, psychologist Uwe Jacobs posed a series of questions to Dr. Gelles including:

“[W]hat were the techniques used that you did not find objectionable? To cite a few examples, did you believe it was ethical to transport prisoners to Guantanamo under conditions of sensory deprivation, i.e. wearing hoods, goggles, earmuffs, and other devices designed to create sensory deprivation and isolation, along with very restrictive shackling? Did you believe it was ethical to keep prisoners in solitary confinement for very long periods of time? Is it ethical to deprive prisoners of sleep? Is it ethical to subject them to severe heat and cold, constant noises or lights, stress positions, short shackling, screaming abuse etc.? You know the list I am referring to. Do you agree that these techniques have long been proven to produce severe nervous system dysregulation and often lasting psychological damage? Do these techniques not by definition constitute torture, just as stated by the UN?”

Gelles refused to answer Jacobs’ questions. We can surmise, from his earlier statements, that Gelles simply did not believe that intelligence psychologists should “be judged, post hoc, either by [ethical] rules that have little if any relevance to their vital governmental functions….” The APA has yet to explain why it appointed to the PENS task force someone who had already expressed disdain for the APA ethics code and why it continues to extol Gelles as a paragon of psychological ethics in interrogations.

Note: I would like to thank Jeffrey Kaye for pointing me to the Ewing and Gelles paper.

PsySR president-elect Stephen Soldz is a psychoanalyst, psychologist, public health researcher, and faculty member at the Boston Graduate School of Psychoanalysis. He edits the Psyche, Science, and Society blog and is a founder of the Coalition for an Ethical Psychology, one of the organizations working to change American Psychological Association policy on participation in abusive interrogations. Stephen can be reached at ssoldz@bgsp.edu.

Ozawa returned to the interrogation room, booting Terahara from his seat.

“If you don’t mind,” he said, opening up his notebook computer, “could you tell me why you got divorced?”

A more appropriate question would have been: what in the world was I thinking when I married Yuko, and how did we ever manage to stay together for eight years?

“I don’t have a simple, ready-made answer, I’m afraid. Whenever I hear about other couples breaking up, it seems the reason is fairly simple: someone cheated, or the husband’s a drunk, or they’ve got financial problems, or there’s been domestic violence. You know, I’m not perfect, but we didn’t have those kinds of problems. I mean, even after we broke up, we’d still go on dates, have dinner together or go to the movies. We’re still friends and I still spend a lot of time with her family. Her grandmother and I are particularly close . . . “

“So why did you break up?”

“I’m a very neat person. You know that already. You’ve seen my place. I’ve always got to have things just so. When I take a shirt out of the closet, I always return the empty hanger to the very right of the closet. Plastic hangers to the right, metal hangers to the left. So they won’t get all tangled up, see? When I take a shirt off, I hang it back up, or throw it in the hamper if it needs washing. I know where everything is. ‘Everything has a place, and everything in its place,’ I always say. Yuko threw things higgedly-piggedly into her closet. Used to drive up the wall. She rarely bothered to clean or straighten the rooms up. It’s not that she was a slob, she wasn’t. Compared to me, she’s probably normal.”

“And this your girlfriend of yours, Azami, she’s neat?”

“I’m sorry, this conversation is got off on the wrong foot,” I said. “If it was only a matter of neatness, Yuko and I’d probably still be together. It was more than that, but that, I don’t know, that was the first of many bricks.”

“The first brick?”

“The first brick, you know, in the wall that grew between Yuko and me, and eventually separated us.”

“Uh-huh,” he said, shutting his notebook computer and leaning back in his chair.

“Like I said, Yuko wasn’t a slob, but she was more, let’s say, ‘tolerant of untidiness’ than I would have liked. She never did much cleaning or helping around the apartment. And it wasn’t because she was busy. I worked much more than she did, ten-plus hours a day, six days a week. I’m no pimp. I was more than happy to, you know, bring home the bacon. The thing that galled me was that after working all day, if I wanted to eat dinner, I would have to run to the supermarket before it closed, get the groceries, and then cook it myself.”

“Really?”

“There was one time, about five years or so ago that I bumped into a student of mine at the supermarket. Nice woman, a few years younger than myself. She had been married a couple of years. It was about ten or so in the evening and she was there doing shopping for the night’s dinner. She was surprised to see, basket full of fruits and veggies and chicken and whatever hanging from my elbow, just like a proper housewife. It made her laugh. ‘Where’s Yuko,’ she asked. My wife was, of course, back at home watching a drama on TV. This student of mine found it so odd that a husband would be doing the grocery shopping. And well, personally, I don’t think it’s a revolutionary idea. Men should do it from time to time. But I was doing it everyday. And as I was walking home, I started thinking, what the hell am I still married for? I liked and respected my wife, but if she had been, say, an employee of mine, I would have fired her long ago. As I walked home from the grocery store, it started to dawn on me how unhappy I was. I could have cried. Let me tell you, that was like a wheelbarrow load of bricks.”

“Bricks?”

“The wall. The wall just got higher and higher from then on.”

“The wall again?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Incidentally, that woman, that student of mine at the supermarket divorced her husband a few months later when she discovered him having an affair.”

“And that’s when you got divorced?”

“No, no, no. That was, I don’t know, maybe three or four years before the divorce. I recall asking for a divorce at the time, but Yuko wouldn’t even consider it. She had a pretty good deal and knew it.”

“So?”

“So, I started to send Yuko away every year.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’d send her away for a couple month every year, just to get her out of my hair. I sent her to the States, to my parents’ home in Oregon, first. About a month. Then, the next year she went for three months. Half a year later she went to Canada for about a year.”

“A year?”

“Well, not exactly a year. Ten months.”

“When was this?”

“2001.”

Ozawa started to look at his converter.

“Heisei 13,” I said.

“Thanks.”

“Anyways, Yuko saw traveling to Canada as a chance to study English; I saw it as a chance to reclaim my life.”

“I don’t get you.”

“Ozawa-san, ageing is like being caught up in a giant, unrelenting whirlpool.”

“You and your metaphors.”

“When you haven’t got much of a vocabulary, you have no choice but to lean heavily upon a metaphor.”

“The whirlpool?”

“Bear with me. When you’re a kid, it feels like you’re floating in an infinite, ocean. The sun shines brightly above, the water is warm and comfortable. You feel as if you’re going be there forever, floating without a worry in the world. Each day passes slowly. A week feels like a month; a year, like an eternity. Then when you’re in your teens, clouds appear, the waters get rough, it feels like something is about to happen, but you don’t quite know what. It’s scary. You’ve got this belief in your heart, though, and it’s really a strong belief, so strong that you start to build dreams upon it. This hope keeps you afloat. Then, when you’re in your twenties, there’s no mistaking it, you’re moving now. A current pulls you forward, faster and faster and faster. But, by your mid thirties, it starts to dawn on you that the direction you’re being pulled might not exactly be the direction you want to go. If you’re lucky and strong enough, you might be able to swim against the current and change the course of your life. Trouble is, most of us aren’t strong, or lucky, or clever, or independent enough. Most people have got kids by then, and, well, all you can do is try to manage the best you can for your kids’ sake, so forget about what you want to do for yourself. And so, you just get pulled into this vortex, going round and round, faster and faster. The years start feeling as if they’re getting shorter and shorter, because, you know they really are. And the ability to change the course of your life becomes increasingly impossible. And then you’re sucked in. You disappear into the darkness. Where did all the time go? What happened to all the things you wanted to do? The dreams? You and all of those dreams and aspirations are pulled under and it’s like you never were that child floating on the surface of a calm warm ocean, the sun shining in your face . . . The game is over, Ozawa-san. There is no reset button.”

I unscrewed the cap of my green tea and took a sip. Looking out the door, I noticed a wooden household Shinto altar, known as a kamidana, above a steel filing cabinet. An offering of water, washed rice and a branch from a sakaki tree had been placed before it.

How odd it was to picture the cops bowing and clapping their hands before the altar, praying to the kami at the start of each day for protection.

Outside, the shadows were lengthening and, judging from the leaves that had grown still on the trees, the strong breeze I enjoyed in the park in the afternoon had died down. I wondered how much longer Ozawa and Nakata were going to keep me there. Were they ever going to let me go? Were they going to give me my cell phone and computers back?

“By the time I was thirty-five,” I told Ozawa, “I knew I had to get out of the marriage. Either that or forfeit my claim on happiness.”

“Your claim on happiness?”

“Yes, we all have a right to be happy.”

“So, your girlfriend, what was her name again?”

“Azami.”

“Azami, right. So, she’s neat?”

“Ozawa-san, I really wish I hadn’t said that. I was just talking from the top of my head. But, yes, yes, Azami is neat. It’s so much more than that, though. Azami isn’t confrontational the way Yuko could be. If I told Yuko to put the unused plastic hangers to the left of the closet she’d make some off-hand derogatory comment about my being too anal, that I’d never make it in life being so particular about things. Which is true, but with Azami, she just accepts my idiosyncrasies. She understands the concept. Doesn’t always follow through with action, but she sees the logic in what I’m saying. With Yuko, I never quite felt we were on the same team. We were always pulling in opposite directions. Azami pulls with me. She often forgets to pick up the rope, so to speak, but she’s always tries to pull in my direction.”

“She cooperates, is what you’re trying to say.”

“Cooperates, yes. And, she’s a lot of fun to be with. Azami and I, we’re always in stitches when we’re together. The other day, she held up a burning match and said, Rémy, this flame is a symbol of our eternal love. This flame . . . ‘ And right as she when she said ‘flame’ again she accidentally blew the flame out and then pretended to panic. Well, I guess, you had to be there to, but it was really quite funny at the time.”

“How did Azami take the news?”

“Not well. I don’t think our relationship is going to survive this. I’ve assured her that it’s all a terrible mistake, and I think she believes me, but still it’s been too much of a shock for her.”

I sighed heavily. A tear fell from my eye.

“Azami is my rudder,” I said. “She keeps me on course.”

“And your wife?”

“She was the rocks I nearly crashed upon.”

_

注意：この作品はフィクションです。登場人物、団体等、実在のモノとは一切関係ありません。

© Aonghas Crowe, 2009

I know I haven’t written anything in about a month. Many things have been going on. First off, I hope everyone had a really happy Thanksgiving. I know I have much to be thankful for.

On the downside post production has been a little scattered but it’s ok as it helped lead to not only some good ideas for music but also the initial planning stages for a big announcement. Before I get to that …

The short film I co-directed and produced, ‘The Interrogation’, is completed which is where some of the time has gone. I wanted to make sure it was done before I moved on from it. Pretty soon we’ll be submitting it to festivals. More information on that coming soon.

Shot from 'The Interrogation'.

Post production is almost done on ‘Distortion’. A few visual effects left to finalize and the music is being completed. Then it will actually be done. Or at least festival ready. I’m sure there will be things I’ll want to tweak but overall it will be done. Hopefully the next post will be the official announcement that it is 100% completed.

Speaking of announcements. I did decide on the next film. Granted many things may happen which could come into play which would delay this but barring that I will make another film summer of 2010 called ‘Killer Talk‘. Unlike ‘Distortion’ which was a very complicated film on several levels this one will be done very quickly and easily. Although I say that loosely since making a film is never easy. However, the new film doesn’t have any visual effects or overly complicated sequences. It’s more of a character based thriller. So it’s mainly finding the right actors. I plan on writing the script very quickly and then start shooting. My goal is to have it done to submit to Sundance next fall. I won’t be stopping for anything. I’ll just go off of instinct and my gut. That’s why I won’t spend two years writing the script or a year in post production. So quickly that I have to go with my first thought and not spend forever debating over every little thing. Should be interesting on every level. If it works I think it will be the best thing I’ve done. If it fails then I know I shouldn’t go off my gut feelings. heh

Here is a quick teaser poster I put together.

Killer Talk Teaser Poster

No more long breaks between posts. I will be updating regularly. And at some point this will become the blog of ‘Killer Talk‘.

When I returned in the afternoon, Ozawa was sitting in the cramped interrogation room still typing up everything I’d written down earlier. Anytime he needed to confirm something, he’d look up from his notebook computer and ask me.

“You’ve lived in Daimyo, how long?”

“Since ninety-eight, so about eight years. It’ll be eight years in October.”

“Right,” he mumbled to himself. “Nineteen ninety-eight . . .” Dragging a ruler down a sheet of paper with a conversion chart of Japanese and Western calendars he found what he was looking for: the tenth year of Heisei, and typed it into his report.

The Japanese, as it happens, base their calendar on the reigns of their emperors. The current emperor, Akihito, succeeded the throne in 1989 upon the death of his father, emperor Hirohito, whose reign was known as Showa (Enlightened Peace). There was hardly anything peaceful or enlightened about the first two decades of Showa, but never mind that. I don’t think anyone was really paying attention.

Keizo Obuchi announces the name of a new era, "Heisei", for the new Emperor Akihito.

We were currently in the 18th year of Heisei (lit. Peace and Prosperity), or Anno Domini 2006. There hadn’t been much prosperity in Japan for most of the emperor’s reign what with the bursting of the bubble and the lost decade that followed. And despite an absence of war, the present era with its devastating volcanic eruptions, tsunamis, and earthquakes, the sarin gas attacks by the Aum Shinrikyo cult, and a string of sensational murders by juveniles could hardly be called peaceful.

I asked Ozawa what year came to mind first whenever he thought of something that had happened in the past, his high school graduation, for example. He stopped typing to consider the question, then said, “I’ve never thought about it, but now that you ask, I’d have to say the Japanese calendar.”

“I suppose if you grow up with it,” I said, “it’s only natural to use it, but, um, isn’t it confusing?”

“How do you figure?”

“Well, if I were to say something happened twenty-one years ago, you would have to go through some mental gymnastics to figure out what the Japanese year was. Twenty years ago was nineteen eighty-six. What year was it in Japan?”

“Um, it was . . .” Ozawa glanced down at the conversion chart.

“Don’t cheat.”

“It was um . . . “

“It was Showa sixty-one.”

“Okay. If I told you I was born in Showa forty-six, how old would I be?”

“Ah . . . ” his eyes rolled to the back of his head as he tried to do the math in his head.

“I’d be thirty-five,” I said after a moment.

He looked down at the chart. “You’re right. It is confusing. But, like I said, I never really thought about it.”

_

注意：この作品はフィクションです。登場人物、団体等、実在のモノとは一切関係ありません。

© Aonghas Crowe, 2009

At around eleven-thirty in the morning, having completed the form at last, Ozawa told me I was free to go out and have lunch somewhere so long as I returned by, he checked his watch, by twelve forty-five.

I wasn’t exactly famished, but I jumped at the opportunity to get out of that sickly illuminated, smelly little room and as far away from the narcs as possible.

Popping into a convenience store across the street, I picked up some onigiri (rice balls) and a bottle of green tea, and walked to a small park next to the station. Near the entrance was an empty bench bathed in the bright noon sunlight. I plopped down hard on it and sighed heavily.

I’d been with the narcotics agents for about three hours and so far so good. I had my doubts, however, that the afternoon would be as easy. We hadn’t even touched the reason why I was being investigated. There wouldn’t be any more softball questions when I returned for the afternoon session. Ozawa and Nakata hadn’t asked me to leave the whole day open for the sole purpose of writing down my resume. No question about it. The gloves were going to come off.

The urge to flee had its grip on me again.

What the hell am I doing? I’m still a free man, aren’t I? I haven’t been arrested . . . yet. And didn’t Ozawa tell me the morning of the raid to come in for questioning not only today, but tomorrow afternoon, as well? So, they are going to let me go home today. I could be on a train to Kagoshima this evening. Yeah, I could. Then, I could catch the ferry from–where was that again, oh yeah–Shibushi. I could be in Okinawa by tomorrow afternoon . . .

What little appetite I’d had quickly dissipated when warmed over by the dismal prospect of being arrested. I tossed the onigiri to the pigeons that were cooing and mooching about my feet.

Before long, it was twelve-thirty and time to head back. I looked up at the blue, cloudless sky.

“What a waste,” I said, standing up. It was the first Sunday that wasn’t overcast or rainy a month. “I should be at the beach checking out the peaches rather than cooped up in that room with those sons of bitches.”

On the way back, I rang Azami up from a public phone. I knew she had to be sick with worry.

“Everything’s going fine,” I told her. “Much better than I expected.”

“Oh, Rémy, I’m so relieved to hear that.”

“Azami.”

“Yes?”

“I don’t know what time I’ll be back,” I said. “It might take some time yet. Wait for me, though, will ya?”

“I’ll wait for you . . . Rémy?”

“Yeah?”

“I love you.”

“Thank you . . . I, uh, I love you, too. Bye.”

I hung up the phone, pocketed the postcard with Azami’s photograph and telephone number on it and reluctantly made my way back to the office of the Narcotics Crime Squad.

__

注意：この作品はフィクションです。登場人物、団体等、実在のモノとは一切関係ありません。

© Aonghas Crowe, 2009

And speaking of threesomes, those two narcotics agents and I had one going all morning long.

Terahara had left the interrogation room and Ozawa was now sitting right across from me at the desk, typing up the information I had already written down into a notebook computer.

Having spent a good hour and half answering questions about my family circumstances, and filling in the boxes with my educational background and work history, my writing hand started to cramp up. I pushed on to the next page just the same, hoping that the sooner I finished up, the sooner the cops would let me go.

On the third page, I bumped up against a Chinese character I couldn’t read.

As good as everyone claimed my Japanese to be, there were still many things I didn’t know, hundreds upon hundreds of kanji I couldn’t read, even more I couldn’t write. Like a cripple leaned on his crutches, I depended heavily on my electronic pocket dictionary.

Whenever you come across a Chinese character you can’t read, the first thing you’ve got to do is count the brush strokes, or the number of lines required to write the kanji. For example, the kanji for “person”, 人 (hito), is written with two strokes. “Big”, 大 (dai), is written with three strokes, “heaven” or “sky”, 天 (ten), is written with four, and the character for “beauty”, 美 (bi, etc.), with nine. Once you know how many strokes it takes to write the kanji you can then look it up in a Japanese dictionary where the characters are listed according to, among other things, their stroke number and components called as radicals.

This is the word that stumped me: 勲章. I knew the second character could be read as “sho”, but I wasn’t familiar with the first character. I tallied the stroke number–fifteen–then, looked it up. When the search came up with over a 100 characters written with fifteen brushstrokes, I added the radical for “strength”, 力. That narrowed the results down to eighteen characters. 勲 was at the top of the list and was, I now understood, pronounced “kun”.

Putting “kun“ and “sho“ together and got ”kunsho”. I didn’t know what that meant, but I was almost there. Looking up the ”kunsho” in the Japanese-English dictionary I discovered that the word meant “decoration”.

I was being asked if I had ever been decorated. “Decorated? Like a Christmas tree?”

“No,” Ozawa said, looking up from his notebook computer. “Have you ever been decorated by, for example, the emperor or a governmental official.”

I was tempted to ask Ozawa whether he thought I would be here if I had, but replied that I hadn’t.

“Just write ‘no’ on all these places,” he suggested.

Yeah right. I wasn’t about to take anything for granted, not when it meant the possibility of getting thrown in jail.

I continued to answer each question as thoroughly as possible–something that must have been driving the man up the smoke-stained wall. The last thing I wanted to do was tie the knot that they would hang me from.

Missing. Page 3.

In this page, the detectives think Liam is innocent. The District Attorney pushes hard to get a confession.

Visit my site when you get a chance

EXCLUSIVE: CIA Secret ‘Torture’ Prison Found at Fancy Horseback Riding Academy in Lithuania

ABC
November 19, 2009

The CIA built one of its secret European prisons inside an exclusive riding academy outside Vilnius, Lithuania, a current Lithuanian government official and a former U.S. intelligence official told ABC News this week.

Lithuanian officials provided ABC News with the documents of what they called a CIA front company, Elite, LLC, which purchased the property and built the “black site” in 2004.

KSM’s children tortured with insects

Raw Story
April 17, 2009

Fenton has two questions: “Did the Khans invent the allegations or garble them in some way and then ‘get lucky’ two years later, when it was revealed the CIA was, at least, contemplating the techniques they alleged it used at the time in question?” and “Given that nobody heard of the CIA using insects for another two years, why would they invent these specific allegations, which sounded bizarre when they were made?”

By Con George-Kotzabasis

It’s amusing to see all the passionate and incorrigible haters of Cheney to have a jab at him even “posthumously” Out of Office. Emily Bazelon on Slate Magazine speaks for all these haters but the context with ‘revenge’ belies what she says about Cheney. The latter did not say at anytime that the documents on torture should be ‘declassified,’ but once they were, they should not have been declassified selectively without also revealing the positive aspects of the harsh interrogations.

The Bush-Cheney administration prudently–knowing thy enemy–unlike the imprudent Obama who apparently lacks rudimentary knowledge of the kind of enemy America is fighting, were unwilling to disclose to their Islamist enemies some of the methods by which the key holy warriors held as enemy combatants were “spilling the beans.”

Halliburton says

Since the memos thus far released were all part of FoIA filings, it was not up to the administration to release them. Based on the Obama administration’s own FoIA policies, the memos had to be released. I might point out that Cheney’s own FoIA request is selective, listing only two documents, and then only some of the pages from those documents.

The “disclosing of interrogation methods” meme is claptrap. All of the methods the Bush administration sought to use are centuries old; SERE-derived methods are duplicates of torture used by the Chinese and North Koreans during the Korean War. There’s nothing new to disclose.

Kotzabasis says

Certainly you are right that the memos according to President Obama’s FoIA policies had to be released since in January 21, 2009 he loosened Bush’s Executive order of November 2001 pursuant to national interests by repealing some provisions of the order. Cheney’s selectivity is consistent in this respect with the political acumen of the previous administration in being determined not to reveal to the enemy—even out of office– unlike Obama in office, its secret procedures in this matter.

As for the “disclosing of interrogation methods,” the sting of the “claptrap” is in you. To say, as you do, that these “methods…are centuries old…duplicates of torture used by the Chinese and North Koreans,” says more about the fertility of your imagination than of the complexity of the situation. Is it conceivable to you that Pentagon and CIA Intelligence confronting a unique enemy such as suicidal fanatical warriors would be using the same techniques and methods of the past without innovating new ones? But I suppose your intellectually barren answer would be “there is nothing new to disclose.”

Halliburton says

It’s certain that Cheney wants to keep portions of the reports he wants released secret, but I don’t have your faith in his judgment. After all, we are talking about the man who helped create the 1976 “Team B” report on the capabilities of the USSR, which was wrong on every detail, notably the nuclear-powered laser beam weapons the Soviets were supposedly building. Cheney also thought it a good idea to undercut Gorbachev in 1989, and Brent Scowcroft and James Baker squelched him. I’d be more likely to believe that Cheney doesn’t want portions of those reports released because they might undercut his assertions.

My “infertile imagination” seeks exceptional proof in the case of exceptional claims. Nothing about Al Qaeda and its fellow travelers is unique in history. Your claim that the CIA has some “new” methods of torture – “enhanced interrogation” if you wish – is an exceptional one, and would require exceptional proof. Only disclosure would provide that. It’s far more likely, however, that your imagination is overheated.

Kotzabasis says

I don’t want to go back to the past, mistakes can be made and only the Pope is infallible. And just as someone can be ‘serially’ correct in the past he is not bound to be correct all the time in the future. The same logic applies in inverse to Cheney.

But your belief is misplaced as already the portions of the reports released have “undercut” The Bush administration’s “assertions.” Cheney therefore is more concerned to prove that the “enhanced interrogation” did work in preventing the jihadists launching further attacks and releasing those memos that provide this evidence while ‘clinically’ isolating them from the overall intelligence that would be invaluable to the jihadists.

All the professionals in matters of war in contrast to laypersons consider al Qaeda to be a UNIQUE enemy. Of course there have been fanatics and their “fellow travelers” in all ages. But just give one example from ‘your own’ history where the mortal foes of a nation were operating within it clad in civilian clothes and in the carapace of cutting-edge technology and armed with the most modern deadly weapons, including potentially with nuclear ones, and crashing airbuses into the sky scrapers of a metropolis. If you cannot provide such an example of an enemy then you too must logically come to the conclusion that the holy warriors of Islam are verily unique foes.

In view of this incontrovertible fact do you consider an “exceptional claim” that needs “exceptional proof” that the intelligence services of a superpower such as America confronting such a ‘supernally’ dangerous enemy in times of asymmetrical warfare would not have developed new interrogation methods that would be appropriate in extracting vital information from their captives   saving thousands of lives? It would take lukewarm imagination to have come to this deduction.

While his new book, Stripping Bare the Body: Politics, Violence, War discusses three different conflicts, Mark Danner focused his remarks on the “War on Terror” at the Council last Thursday. Danner described the torture of detainees at Guantanamo Bay, specifically that of Abu Zubaydah, the first of the “high-value detainees” to face interrogation and torture under the post-9/11 directives. The information was recorded by the International Committee of the Red Cross in a classified report that was leaked to Danner in 2008, and later published by him on the New York Review of Books’ website.  Danner urged all in attendance to read it to be better informed about these post-9/11 tactics sanctioned by the Bush administration. Danner does applaud the Obama administration’s reversal of numerous interrogation and detention procedures, especially the decision to close Guantanamo. Looking to the future, Danner is concerned about the current situation in Afghanistan, but is optimistic that Obama’s patience and unwillingness to be bullied will lead the president to make the right decision about Afghanistan when he’s ready.

To hear the entire program with Mark Danner, please visit our online audio archive. Read more about President Obama’s Afghanistan decision in an article from today’s New York Times.

Changing the subject
Why O nixed Ft. Hood probe

By DICK MORRIS & EILEEN MCGANN, New York Post

As he flew to Asia on Saturday, President Obama told the media in Alaska that he opposes a congressional investigation into the Fort Hood massacre, saying that we must "resist the temptation to turn this tragic event into political theater." Yet, even as he was posturing against political theatrics, he had just decided that the prosecution of 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed would proceed on the greatest of public stages — New York City.

With the strict evidentiary rules in force in federal civilian courts, it is easy to see how the prosecution of Mohammed could morph into an indictment of the Bush administration’s interrogation techniques and waterboarding. As in rape trials, the magnitude of the underlying crime (masterminding the 9/11 attacks) might well be lost as the defense puts the victim (in this case, the government) on trial…

Obama and his handlers know that the key to building favorable ratings is to control the agenda. And the more the national discussion centers on national security and terrorism, the more Republicans gain. So the Fort Hood terror attack comes at an awful time for an administration trying to turn the nation’s attention away from the terrorist threat…

Read full article here.
 

See Also Op-Toons Review’s :

Terrorist Reporters Provide Detailed Coverage of National Security Information Revealed in Open Court Criminal Prosecutions of 9/11 Terrorists

New York, New York–Haters of America around the world are hailing the terrorist press corps’ "comprehensive" coverage of the open criminal trials of the 9/11 terrorists being held in New York City.

Terrorist journalists are being praised for doing a particularly good job publicizing sensitive national security information revealed in court — information that will help tip off other terrorists and thwart their capture…

More here.

Law Enforcement Officials Replace "Good Cop, Bad Cop" Routine with "Good Cop, Super-Sensitive Hippie" Routine

Facing pressures to be more "politically correct" in its anti-terrorism investigations, law enforcement officials nationwide are increasingly abandoning the "good cop, bad cop" method of interrogation in favor of a "good cop, super-sensitive hippie" routine.

"The new interrogation style is more attuned to empathizing with a terrorists’ deep-seated angst," said one interrogator.

Continue here.

President Barack Obama’s senior adviser David Axelrod told CNN’s “State of the Union” that Obama’s promised closure of the Guantanamo prison camp will not happen in late January of 2010, but that “We believe we’re going to substantially meet the deadline.” Obama had announced in January of this year that “Gitmo” would be closed within a year.

However, resistance from opponents and numerous legal issues are holding-up the base closure. The biggest problem: where to send the approximately 200 prisoners being held without charge, legal recourse, or a declared state of war that would make them prisoners of war.

Obama wants to bring the prisoners on U.S. soil and hold some sort of legal hearing/trial that will hopefully legitimize the six-year existence of the Guantanamo camp, and the controversial interrogation techniques practiced there. Former Vice President Dick Cheney has been a strident opponent of closing the camp, citing secrecy and intelligence concerns.

The latest plan being floated is for the Federal Government to buy an unused maximum-security prison in Illinois and house the Guantanamo prisoners there as they await probable military “tribunals”.  There are opponents to the use of the military justice system who claim it does not have the same defendant rights and protections that the public justice system provides.

Those who oppose any form of legal prosecution seem to fear the possibility the Guantanamo prisoners will be released on technicalities stemming from the questionable legality of their six-year incarceration without due-process.

If these prisoners were members of the armed forces of a recognized nation or other governing body, then the use of military courts would make some sense. However, most of them are classifiable as civilians, which is why the Bush administration tagged them with the label “unlawful combatants” – a term with no legal referent, though it is similar to the term “enemy combatant“. As civilians it seems to make sense to try them in civilian courts under civilian procedures. But some fear our justice system isn’t up to the test in the cynical wake of show trials such as the O. J. Simpson and Robert Blake cases.

The bottom line: something must be done to clean this mess up, as the Guantanamo episode has become a national embarrassment. We don’t need a replay of the sad situation with Haitian refugees that also played-out at Guantanamo under the Clinton adminstration. Perhaps we should trust our own system and get civilian trials underway.

Eric Holders former Law firm stands to make Millions of dollars with Civilian trials. His firm represents at least 16 of the detainees at last count. It was estimated that Military Tribunals would take 30 to 90 days. Well, now it will take years and years. A military trial would not have the U.S. supplying paid civilian lawyers,but you guessed it. We will now pick up the tab. Starting to get the drift? Plus, secret sources will no doubt be revealed during discovery

The New York case may also force the court system to confront a host of difficult legal issues surrounding counter-terrorism programs begun after the 2001 attacks, including the harsh interrogation techniques once used on some of the suspects while in CIA custody. The most severe method — waterboarding, or simulated drowning — was used on Mohammed 183 times in 2003, before the practice was banned. Appeal, Appeal, Appeal. ultimately, case thrown out years from now. You Betcha!

http://hotair.com/archives/2009/11/13/ksm-4-other-911-figures-to-be-tried-in-nyc/

http://bunkerville.wordpress.com/2009/11/13/holder-wins-terrorists-to-be-tried-in-nyc/

Moving on, I began writing as much as I could about my family background in the spaces provided. Terahara, I would learn, had a younger brother who was a salariman, living with his parents in Osaka.

My old man, Alain Boncoeur, was French, hailing from Avignon in the South of France where they pronouce their ouis as if they were coughing up a ball of phlegm. He attended the Universit d’Avignon et des Pays de Vaucluse, alma mater of Nostradamus of all people. After graduate work in law and Arabic at the Acadmie d’Aix-Marseille, my father entered the Ministre des Affaires trangres, France’s Foreign Ministry. He spent a number of years in Algeria from the mid fifties before being posted to Lebanon where he would meet his future wife, my mother, 6 years his junior and daughter from a prominent Maronite Christian political family.

After a few years back in France, my father was transferred to Washington DC which would become his final posting with the foreign ministry.

Thanks to the itinerant nature of my father’s work, my elder brother and two of sisters were born in Beirut, another sister was delivered in Paris, and my younger brother and I were born in the United States.

I spent the first ten years of my life growing up in Georgetown and attended the Lycée Rochambeau, a French international school in Bethesda. Until the mid seventies, most of my summers were spent in Chouf, a region southeast of Beirut where my maternal grandparents maintained a villa in the mountains. Life was good, very, very good.

When civil war broke out in Lebanon, however, everything changed. We kids were no longer trundled off on our annual summer pilgrimages to the Middle East. My father, after some twenty years in the foreign ministry, retired and took up a teaching position at a liberal arts college in what seemed like the edge of the earth to me: Portland, Oregon. He would remain until his retirement.

I was enrolled in St. Sharbel elementary, a parochial school run by the Marionite Church where growing numbers of Lebanese diaspora were sending their kids. Later, I went to one of the Catholic high schools in town, and spent my junior year in France as an exchange student.

Upon graduation from high school, I went away to university, studying at a private mid-sized college where I majored in international relations, with minors in French, economics, and recreational drug use.

“I can’t fit this all in,” I tell Terahara. “There just isn’t enough space.”

“Just write small, then.”

“I am. I am.”

They wanted to know everything about me, but summarizing a life as unorthodox as my own was like stuffing down pillows into ankle socks: facts from my life fluttered in the air like a feathery blizzard.

“You went to university, didn’t you?” I said.

“Yes.”

“What did you major in?”

“Pharmacology.”

“Really?”

“Most of us here did,” he added matter-of-factly.

“You don’t say!”

“You sound surprised.”

“I am surprised.”

-

My employment was mercifully straightforward. After university, I was employed at my older brother, Georges’ trading company in Seattle. All of my brothers and sisters had done fairly well for ourselves, a testament to my mother and perhaps the Phoenician genes we had inherited from her. We were all self-employed and comfortable. Some of us were more comfortable than the others, but none of us really had much to complain about when it came to what we earned.

I worked for my brother’s trading company, importing premium wines, cheeses, kitchen and culinary knickknacks such as the Le Cruset pots and pans which hadn’t yet made much of a splash outside of the French market. Georges was a real go-getter, always ahead of trends, always trying to find the next thing. At the time his company only employed a few dozen people, now he’s got a workforce over fifty and is constantly on the move. Georges is on his third wife. He always put more energy into his business than into his marriages.

I worked for him for a few years, precisely at a time when Japan was featuring prominently in the news. Armies of salarymen were invading the US, their companies buying up a bankrupt America up at fire sale prices.

When Georges suggested my going to Japan for a few years, mastering the language and making contacts that might benefit his business, I jumped at the opportunity. I was bored, to be honest, and besides he offered to pay my way. Well, I went, was promptly derailed and never returned.

After a year at the Fukuoka YMCA studying Japanese full time, I got a job teaching English and occasionally French at a small language school. The work was easy, the pay wasn’t bad and I was given quite a lot of time off to travel around Asia, which was quickly becoming my new passion.

When November rolled around, the owner of the school asked if I wanted to extend my contract for another year from April, forcing me into taking an inventory of what I had achieved over the past year and consider my options.

America in the early years of the Clinton administration was still in the doldrums, the IT revolution that would change everything had not yet happened.

Lebanon, too, was a mess despite the peace. As much as I missed the country–I hadn’t been since the mid eighties–there wasn’t much to go back to. Most of my aunts and uncles on my mother’s side fled the country with their children, some to the Gulf States, others to Europe, and many more to the U.S.

Asia, my corner of it at any rate, was enjoying a boom that had many in the west soul-searching. China, still something of a communist backwater, was predicted to become one of the biggest players on the world market. Anything seemed possible if I stayed on.

And so, year after year, I chose to remain. In addition to the work, I threw myself into my studies. Having grown comfortable with Japanese, I started to study Korean, and then Chinese. I read about the history of the region and continued traveling throughout Asia whenever I had the time and money.

And while I wasn’t rich–far from it–I managed to do alright, earning more than most of the guys I had graduated college with.

After five years in Japan, it was time for a change: I started up my own company, if you could call it one, teaching English and translating, and was raking in the dough. I dabbled in freelance writing as well. Then, in my early thirties, I got married to Yuko, my off-and-on girlfriend for two years, and the content which had been neatly wound up like a tight ball, started to unravel.

Looking back, I probably should have gone back to the States. Japan’s economy was about to tank. The Asian tigers were about to be tamed by the currency crisis and, despite all its promise, China was still dirt poor and wouldn’t really take off for several more years.

I could have gone to graduate school while Asia was slumbering, or gone back to work for my brother. Any number of American firms could have used someone with my skills and experience. For a while I considered following in my old man’s footsteps and going into the world of diplomacy. I even applied for a job with the U.S. State Department. And while I passed the written test, I’m afraid I didn’t shine during at the interview. For the first time since I had come to Japan, the grass was greener in America and that ball of content continued to unravel.

I stayed on, though. I was making reasonably good money. That had never a problem. There were ups and downs, of course, with the recession as bad as it was getting in Japan. I still managed somehow to make more than I spent and the taxman saw virtually none of it.

And then I met Jean.

Chip Brown for The New York Times Magazine:

“And he showed me. He put his hand down near his groin and said, ‘You circumscribe the thigh with a knife here like this until you hit hard tissue you can’t cut, and then you twist it back and tear it off like a turkey leg.’ Now when I’m hearing this, I can’t jump up and say, ‘Jesus Christ, Robert, how could you do that?’ I have to say ‘O.K.’ like it’s something everybody does. I have to put the horror of it out of my mind. And when I walk out of the prison, by the time I get to the front gate, I’m not thinking about it, I’m thinking about getting some Mexican food. I never missed a night of sleep because of something Robert Browne told me.”

Anything else I say would only spoil it.

-bd

No sooner had Ozawa stepped out of the tiny interrogation room than that hard arse came in and took his place. He sat down heavily in the chair opposite mine, crossed his sinewy arms, fists tucked under his armpits, and glared at me, exhaling short, angry bursts of air out his nostrils.

What’s eating him, I wondered.

It was uncanny how much he resembled Ozawa. His mannerisms and looks right down to the buzz cut and stubble on his chin copied from pages torn from his boss’s book.

“Have you been working with Ozawa long?” I asked, looking up from the form.

“Excuse me?”

“How long have you and Ozawa been working together?”

The unexpected question had the same disconcerting effect on him as it had on Kuroda earlier: his eyes darted towards the door, his arms unlocked, then locked again.

“About three years,” he said hesitantly. “Why do you ask?”

“Just curious,” I said, putting the pen down. “You do judo, or something?”

His arms, while on the slender side, were muscular. He also had something of a cauliflower ear.

“No, I, uh . . . I, uh . . . I do karate.”

“Really? With the squad, or at a dojo?”

“At a dojo.”

“You don’t say. I used to go to one myself. Not karate, mind you, but kickboxing. It’s been ages, though. Too busy.”

When he replied that he’d been too busy to go himself recently, I apologized.

“Come, come, there’s no, there’s no reason for you to apologize to me,” he said and, for the first time, managed a smile. We chatted for a few more minutes during which I learned that his family name was Terahara. He had come from Osaka and had been working as a narcotics agent for about four years.

Now that Terahara was disarmed, and no longer breathing down my neck, I got down to filling out the paperwork.

It resembled a job application more than anything. There were sections for work history, educational background and so on. It also asked about my family: where the members had been born, where they currently lived, what they did for a living, and so on.

Background means a lot to the Japanese. The more stable, the better. If you are drifting in and out of jobs, or worse unemployed, meaning you weren’t attached to a group or organization that might keep you on the straight and narrow, then the cops will eye you differently. As a gaijin, I already had one strike against me going into the interrogation because so many Japanese, and the cops in particular, suspected that your typical foreigner was stoned out of his gourd half of the time.

I filled in the blank for my name: Boncoeur, Rémy Youssef. Sex: Male. Date of birth: Showa 41, June 13.

For each question I was being made to answer, I decided to shoot the same question back at Terahara. Marital status: single.

“Terahara, are you married?”

“N-n-no.”

“Word of advice: play hard to get.”

“Excuse me?”

“You’re what, twenty-seven, twenty-eight?”

“I’m twenty-eight.”

“Don’t even think about getting married until you’re in you’re early thirties. Play hard to get.”

“Um, okay.”

-

注意：この作品はフィクションです。登場人物、団体等、実在のモノとは一切関係ありません。

© Aonghas Crowe, 2009

Just seeing Hardarse again was enough to make me sick to my stomach.

What if my urine had already been checked? What if they found what I dreaded they would find? Why, the game would be over before it had even begun.

Even if, by the grace of God and Father Time they hadn’t detected anything in that urine sample of mine, they may still have found more than enough evidence of nefarious undertakings hidden among my computer files to keep me in the hot seat. Dredge the bottom of any placid lake and you’ll bring up all kinds garbage to the surface.

I tried to offer a friendly “Ohayo” as I entered the office, but my mouth had gone so dry “Good morning” came out like a pathetic little whimper, air pfffing out of a punctured bicycle tire. The greeting was repaid with stern looks and a brusque “Ohayo” from the men in the office. Ozawa’s demeanor, in particular, reminded me that this was no courtesy call I was paying.

Ozawa grunted something to one of the younger guys in the office who stood up and scuttled over to me.

“You speak Japanese, right?” he asked.

“Yeah.”

He led me to a small windowless room with a desk and two chairs.

“Take that seat,” he said pointing to a rickety old folding chair that I imagined had been chucked more than once at recalcitrant detainees.

Sitting down, the chair creaked and shifted under my weight.

He asked me if I smoked.

“Yes.”

“Have you got cigarettes on you?”

“No.”

“If you want to get some there’s a vending machine . . .”

“I’m fine.”

Christ, the last thing I wanted was to do was chain smoke in front of the cops, a trembling fag between my fingers.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, yes I am. But, thank you. Thank you for asking.”

He left me in the room alone, closing the door behind him.

The walls of the room had a sticky brownish-yellow film on it. The rubber desktop was scarred with burn marks. There was a portable air purifier on the desk, butted up against the wall. It purred quietly, but the room still reeked of cigarette butts.

There was a commotion on the other side of the door that sounded like Ozawa barking orders. The door opened and the young cop came in sullenly and took the seat opposite me.

Although we’d been having some lovely weather, the cop sitting before me couldn’t have been paler. His face was gaunt with dark circles under his lifeless eyes. His arms, thin, white and hairless, looked like decorticated twigs. If anyone could be suspected of being a junkie, it was this guy.

“Been doing this long?” I asked him.

“Excuse me?” he said, startled.

“Have you been working here long?”

“No, only a few months.”

“Since April?”

“Yes, since April.”

“Where you at my place Thursday morning?”

“Yes, yes, I was,” he replied. His eyes shifted uneasily, suggesting that he probably wasn’t supposed to be chatting with the suspect.

“Really?” I said. “I don’t recall you being there.”

“I had the video camera.”

“But that guy had long . . . “

“I had my hair cut the yesterday.”

“Aah. Well, it looks better this way.”

“You think so?” He said, straightening up.

“What’s your name?”

“Eh?”

“Your name. If you don’t mind, that is.”

“Ah, it’s Kuroda.”

“Kuroda,” I repeated, so I wouldn’t forget it.

Just then, Ozawa came in holding a piece of paper. He gestured coarsely for Kuroda to get lost then sat down in the vacated seat.

“Bon . . . Bon-koolu,” Ozawa said reading my name from a slip of paper. “Am I pronouncing your name correctly?”

“Close enough.”

“You know, we were all quite impressed the other day at your place. We didn’t know what to expect going in. Once we got inside, however . . . Well, let’s just say, you’ve got a nice place. Much nicer than a lot of us here.”

“Thank you.”

“Seeing how you lived and hearing what you said that day, well, a lot of us came away thinking, this isn’t a bad guy. Still, this is a very serious matter.”

“Yes, I know it is.”

“And, uh, we’d like to clear this up as quickly as possible.”

“Yes, so would I.”

“Right. You can read and write Japanese, can’t you?”

“I manage.”

“We need you to fill out this form,” Ozawa said, handing me a couple of sheets of paper. “Take your time with it. You’ve got all morning. If you have any questions, one of us will always be here to help you.”

“Okay.”

“Like I said, you’ve got all morning. When you’re done you can go…”

“I can leave?”

“Uh no. Not until we’re done, which won’t be until later this afternoon. But you’re free to come and go as you like. The toilet is just outside. There are vending machines if you want to get something to drink. Or smoke. You smoke, right?”

“Yes, but I’m fine.”

“Suit yourself. We’ll break at noon at which time you can go out and get yourself something to eat. Everything clear?”

“Yes.”