Back for my fourth trip to Guantanamo Bay. Apart from the
obvious huge importance of whether Khalid Sheikh Mohammed can wear camouflage
in court, whether the five detainees charged with the 9/11 terrorist plot have
to attend court and whether their experience in the hands of the CIA for three
years should be kept top top secret, this visit is also about Joe and Josh and
Jess and banana rats. The first three
are American reporters covering the pre-trial hearings of KSM and the four
others, and banana rats are big in Guantanamo. I mean big, because they are a big
nuisance and big because they are big, the size of an average cat but with more hostile intent.
First the guys, especially Joe and Josh. They are frontline
super reporters from the New York tabs (tabloids), friends but round-the-clock 352 days of the year rivals.
What one has got the other has to get, or else the editor is on the phone
screaming. I remember this from my tabloid days when the Daily Express and the
Daily Mail were the fiercest rivals in Fleet Street. If the Mail got the guy
(hoodlum, drug baron, wife-beater, adulterous MP), the Express would get the
wife. That’s the way it was, and sometimes the other way around.
Josh and Joe mix it, and it’s fun to watch. They're good guys. Take this conversation
in a bar the other night. Joe: “So in my view what the defence was saying today
about KSM was the bona fide statement that the judge took notice of.” Josh: “Look,
Julius Caesar, speaking Latin may impress some people but it sure as hell doesn’t
impress me.” We had arrived at the bar at 9pm and asked for food. We were all
desperate for food. “No,” says the barman, “kitchen closed at 9pm.” A lot of
ranting and raving but all we got was a basket of sort-of warm chips, all that
could be found in the empty kitchen. Josh: “Well, if you have a choice of food
or beer, it’s easy, right?”
Josh is short and
stumpy with legs like baseball bats, shown off because he is wearing shorts,
and of course the inevitable baseball cap. Loud mouth, big mouth, plenty of
teeth, head drawn back in super confidence though pretty short in stature. Joe,
much quieter and less brash, no shorts, so I can’t reveal the shape of his legs,
but somehow a good foil to Josh’s exclamations. The two New York tab reporters spend their
time in the Big Apple staking out doorways to wait for the arrival or exit of
key players in whatever the going story might be. We Brits call that
doorstepping. One famous Brit crime reporter once said: “I’ve been on more
doorsteps than a milk bottle.” Those were the days by the way when a milkman turned
up in a milk float and placed bottles of milk on the doorstep, a service almost
unknown in much of the UK these days I guess.
Bursting with
loudness, Josh says he has a deal with Joe. If they have been staking out an
address all day and, say, it’s 9pm, they agree to ring their news editors at the
same time and say the rival paper is “pulling out” and nothing is happening. “Then
we go to the nearest watering hole,” says Josh.
By now you’re asking
what about Jess. Well I only mentioned Jess, a reporter with an upmarket
newspaper, because for 48 hours I couldn’t remember who was which. I got Josh
pretty quickly but I kept on calling Joe Jess and Jess Joe. It was the bar
evening and the introduction of Julius Caesar which helped me finally to realise
that Joe was Joe, Josh was Josh and Jess, far less interesting with a rather
penetrating and boring voice, was Jess.
Oh, there’s also a John,
but he is set apart. He looks exactly like the tall thin comic who always
appeared with The Office star Ricky
Gervais. I think his name was Stephen Merchant. Anyway this guy John is Stephen
Merchant, so apart from risking calling him Steve, I generally am ok with
calling him John. Since the Julius Caesar intervention at the bar there has
been much mirth and jollity over the bona fide comment. Anything smelling of
Latin or over-cleverness brings back the bona fides. Just tab talk but great fun.
Banana rats come out at dawn and dusk in Guantanamo. They
attack in packs. A reporter jogging along the road the other night was
literally ambushed by these beasts determined to feed on him. He screamed and
shouted and they hesitated. He escaped but it was warning a to us all. One of
the defence counsel, a somewhat fierce lady, has told the judge the office she has been
given to do her research work at Guantanamo has been invaded by rats and mice.
As proof, she described how the floors and tables and walls were covered in
rat/mouse faeces and urine. Sorry if you’re reading this over breakfast. Now it’s
not clear whether she is referring to common or garden rats or banana rats. If
the latter, she is in serious trouble. As it is, she appears in court each day
covered from head to foot in a black robe, with only her pinched worried-looking face and her
high-heeled shoed feet visible. She claims she’s wearing the garb in respect
for her client, one of the 9/11 accused
who is a Muslim and is not allowed to see any other part of her frame.
But me and the New York tab reporters know it’s to protect her from the sharp
teeth of the invading banana rats. Grrrrrrrr.
