From Midnight to Guntown

by Hailman, John

  The Marshals agreed. It should be a good fit. The paperwork was done and a brand new Adnan Awad was ready for Charleston and happily flew away. When he landed, however, there seemed to be some mistake. It was freezing cold with snow on the ground. The sign at the airport said nothing about South Carolina. It said, “Welcome to Charlotte, North Carolina, banking center of the New South.” Someone had screwed up. That night, sad beyond belief, Awad drowned his sorrows in the nearest bar. An attractive blond accepted his offer of a drink. By then his English had become quite good and his knowledge of American culture, especially American women, was much improved. Wasting no time, he launched right into his story, which captivated the woman. She found him handsome, charming, romantic, a real gentleman. He found her beautiful and feminine.

  He decided right then he liked southern women better than the northern version. Their voices were softer, they paid more attention to their looks, and most of all they seemed to defer to men more than the aggressive women he’d known in the north. The woman told him her name was Lynn, and she was working in Charlotte but was about to move back to her native Mississippi. Lynn and Adnan quickly became a couple. The marshals learned that Adnan had blown his cover again, this time for the last time. By mutual agreement, he left the Witness Protection Program and moved with Lynn to the Tupelo area, where they were married.

  With this dramatic story as background, I drove to Tupelo for the interview with the psychiatrist. An employee of the Regional Mental Health Center, Louis Masur was impressive. Unlike most psychiatrists I’d known, he was able to explain esoteric psychiatric theories in plain English. The fact that he was Jewish surprised me a little. “Does Awad know that?” I asked him. Dr. Masur said that was one of the first things he told him, just in case, but Awad seemed sincere when he said he was not anti-Semitic. “We Arabs all want Jewish lawyers, so why not a Jewish psychiatrist?”

  After a couple of hours, we figured we were ready to take Dr. Masur’s testimony. While technically a witness for Awad and quite sympathetic to his situation, he could honestly find nothing the FBI or marshals had done personally to make things worse for him mentally. Adnan had even admitted it to him. His entire problem was with their anonymous bureaucratic superiors, who had failed to get him the American citizenship he’d been promised. They also refused to give him back his old Lebanese passport the Swiss had given him, substituting only a green card work permit, which Awad felt made him a second-class citizen. He wanted to vote and serve on juries and be a real American. There was some justice in his complaints. I just wished he hadn’t put the honest, hardworking FBI agents and marshals through such stressful personal legal hassles.

  We got the list of jurors, which looked good. Selecting jurors for such a case was trickier than it looked. Although Awad had been a member of the PLO, he had never really been a terrorist. He was a military man, and it showed. What some people might think would be a rural U.S. prejudice against a foreigner might not hold. For one thing, in this case he was the underdog, always an appeal to American jurors, especially Mississippians, who often feel put down by the government and the richer states of the North. Mississippi is also perhaps the most pro-military of all U.S. states, with an old warrior culture. Mississippi also has a long history of accepting Christian Lebanese and Syrian immigrants as exemplified by Robert Khayat, the grandson of a Lebanese immigrant who went on to be Chancellor of the University of Mississippi. Its provost was Carolyn Ellis Staton, also of recent Lebanese origin. A prominent state senator was Ali Mohamed, who knew enough of local sensibilities to change his first name from Ali to “Ollie” and take on a good old boy Delta accent. Especially in the Delta, Mississippi still has good traditional Lebanese restaurants, with everything from raw kibbeh to luscious baklavas. An elder in my own rural Oxford church, College Hill Presbyterian, is Samir Husni, a native of Lebanon and former chairman of the Journalism Department at Ole Miss. He and his wife have had two fine Lebanese restaurants in Oxford, one across the street from the federal courthouse. I suspected Awad might prove an attractive character to a Mississippi jury, contrary to what outsiders would assume.

  Islam was a different issue. Muslims were seen, even before the 9/11 plane bomb attacks, as foreign and strange. But Awad was not religious and was a witness against them, and had risked his life for us testifying against violent Islamists. In the end we decided just to pick a regular jury as if the civil trial were about a car wreck or a broken contract. What we wanted was enough intelligence to follow the evidence and people who did not have any grudges against the federal government. Interestingly, neither side challenged many jurors. We both felt we would get a fair trial of a unique case.

  Security for the case was like nothing I’d seen before. The place was crawling with marshals, seemingly one for every witness. Judge Davidson, a military veteran with great respect for security and order, had carefully researched handling such cases with judges from around the county. As a representative for U.S. district judges on the prestigious U.S. Judicial Conference, which met regularly at the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, he had access to the latest techniques in balancing openness of public trials with the need for security in terrorist cases and the anonymity necessary for the marshals who guarded them.

  To establish certain technical elements of the case, Bill Beasley had to call Witness Protection marshals to establish the time periods, places, signed documents, and cities where Awad had been under protection. Judge Davidson required opaque screens in front of those officials, hiding them from public view during their testimony. Black construction paper was taped over windows on the public doors to the courtroom, just enough to prevent viewing, but not enough to attract special attention. The day before trial, the file was unsealed and the parties’ names were revealed. But since it was a civil case and sounded technical, few people seemed to notice it. Federal files were not yet fully computerized under the current PACER system, which is now searched online daily by reporters and bloggers alike. As for the press, only one reporter that I recall covered the trial, Marty Russell of the Daily Journal.

  There was one near mishap. By pure coincidence, a vanload of political science students from Mississippi State stopped by to visit the federal courthouse. The judge told the marshals to let them in. Fortunately for security purposes they came during a particularly boring time in the trial while Bill was putting in a series of documents. Finding nothing interesting in the case, the students moved on to their next visit and never inquired further about it.

  The main witness at trial would of course be Awad himself. I had learned a lot about him from our frequent chats in the hall during the many recesses that make up federal trials. I always made sure Awad’s attorney Bill Beasley was around when we chatted, and we talked about everything else in the world but the case. We swapped stories about Morocco, where we had both spent considerable time and had similar experiences. We talked about the Sultanate of Oman on the Persian Gulf facing Iran, where I’d done missions and where he had always wanted to vacation. My interest in him was sincere, and although there was an obvious tactical advantage to us in my knowing something of his character and temperament, the personal empathy was sincere on both sides.

  Adnan was a complex, colorful, and emotionally volatile character. In movie terms he would have been more at home in Casablanca than in Lawrence of Arabia. He looked like a Turk, with a shaved head, military bearing, and was always impeccably dressed. He was both aggressive and humorous. One of our discussions concerned what I should call him. My practice as a prosecutor was always to be formal and correct with defendants, invariably calling them “Mr.” whatever their name was. A rare exception was chief deputy sheriff Ray Bright of Marshall County, whom we prosecuted three separate times for various acts of corruption. By the time of the third trial, we knew him so well we called him “Cousin Ray.” Naming Awad was a challenge. Having had at least ten different official aliases as he moved from Baghdad to Athens to Geneva to Morocco and several U.S. cities, he was a ma
n of not only many names, but many identities. One day, as we bantered about how we should address each other, the issue came up as to which of us, under Arab rules of courtesy, was due more respect. He said prosecutors were high officials. I reciprocated by saying that patriotic witnesses were just as worthy. Finally, he asked for my date of birth. Agreeing that we both looked younger than our real ages, we determined that I was senior by two months and entitled to be senior man in terms of etiquette and precedence. “What then will I be to you?” I told him his witness status was better left unspoken for security seasons. He asked me, quite seriously: “How do you perceive me as a man, Sir, truly?”

  Considering his appearance and attitude, I told him to me as an American he looked like a retired military officer. Recalling his last rank in the PLO and the easiest to remember of his aliases, I suggested I call him “Captain Joe.” He liked it right away. “It is respectful and also sounds American. It will be our little secret what sort of captain I was. From now on, I am Captain Joe. But what should I call you?” Relying on old southern ways, I proposed that because I was his elder, he should call me by the friendly but deferential southern phrase “Mr. John.” He liked it. “I love your southern ways. Now we are friends.”

  Later, when the trial was over, I handed Captain Joe a Xerox copy of Stephen Emerson’s book about him to autograph. His spoken English was very good, but he’d never bothered to learn to write English. He therefore inscribed the inside cover of the book for me in Arabic and had his wife Lynn translate it into English right below it. The inscription read: “To John, my enemy in court, but my friend in life.” He had captured perfectly the spirit of the case and our relations. When the trial ended, I looked for Ed Needham and the U.S. Marshal defendants to inscribe the book as well, but couldn’t find them, which I still regret.

  Joe Shur had been so good to me as a partner in the trial that I was tempted to ask him the favor of letting me cross-examine Captain Joe because I felt I knew him better. Joe had already asked me to cross-examine Lynn Awad and psychiatrist Louis Masur, so taking Captain Joe too was asking a lot. I tiptoed up to the subject. “John, I’m sure you’d do a great job, but Washington would have my head if you took all the main witnesses. In our case, you prepare and take Ed Needham, and I’ll take the marshal. I’ll plan to take Adnan, but just in case, you be prepared for him, too.” I’ve never had a better Washington trial partner than Joe Shur.

  Bill Beasley did the best he could on direct with Lewis Masur, bringing out the significant psychological pain and suffering Adnan had endured. But my cross was more like a direct. I never had to confront Lewis at all, just asked him what caused all Adnan’s problems. It was simply the trauma which his life had inflicted on him, much of which he brought on himself. None of it could fairly be blamed on the federal agents. The only stress Lewis thought the government brought on was the long delay in giving him his promised citizenship and their refusal to get him a U.S. passport or return his old Swiss-issued Lebanese one.

  Captain Joe himself hurt his case on the stand. Despite valiant efforts, Bill simply could not control his volatile client. Captain Joe the American turned back into Adnan Awad, Damascus shakedown artist and womanizer. He erupted on the stand into angry fits of temper, at times admitting what to Americans were serious mistreatment of his wife and other women. As if cross-examining himself, he rebutted his own case. Every time Bill got him to make a point, Adnan would ramble on about it, undermining the good points with volunteered bad points of his own. Finally, Bill said, “No further questions.”

  We took a recess, as is normal to prepare for cross of a key witness. Joe asked me if I wanted to take him. In a rare moment of uncertainty, I told Joe my adrenalin level was high and there was a lot to ask, but I didn’t know where to begin. I asked Joe what he thought. “I feel like you do, and when I feel that way, maybe it means there is nothing to ask. What if I just stood up and said, ‘No questions’?” I asked to think about it for a minute. A very few times in my entire career have I done the same thing with criminal defendants who made such wretched witnesses that I knew the jury didn’t believe them. But to this jury it might seem arrogant and overconfident. And yet, thinking back to the cases when I did ask no questions on cross, I recalled jurors nodding and even smiling, as if to say, “Thanks for not wasting our time.” I told Joe to go for it.

  “Your Honor, in light of the statements under oath of the plaintiff, we have no cross-examination.” The jurors looked at each other, some nodding as we’d hoped. There was really nothing we could have elicited that would have made our case any stronger. Hoping to recover quickly from a really bad moment, Bill Beasley immediately called Lynn Awad to the stand. She was an attractive woman but looked exhausted, totally worn down by the ordeal. Bill got from her the details of their courtship and marriage, the terrible fears and pressures she and her husband had been under, both inside and outside the Witness Program. She shared her husband’s suspicions that their phones had been tapped and that even their marital bedroom had been bugged, but had no proof of it. She seemed truthful, even sympathetic, but did not really help their case. She too had nothing but praise for Ed Needham and the marshals and other FBI agents with whom she had dealt personally, complaining only of the faceless people in Washington who had refused to keep their bargains with her husband.

  As I watched the jury look at Lynn, my impression was that they were thinking, “Why did this educated dentist’s daughter from Tupelo marry such a man? He has his good points surely, but a husband? What was she thinking?” My idea for cross was to treat her as a sympathetic victim of circumstances and a clash of cultures, not a victim of our clients, who had treated her better than anyone else. On direct she had mentioned several incidents, including Adnan being violently angry at the agents. I asked her about those. I asked her if any agent had ever hit Adnan or her. She said definitely not. They had never threatened them in any way at any time. What about Adnan? Had he ever threatened the agents when he was angry?

  Her reply caught me off guard: “No, he took it all out on me. When he was mad at them, he beat me. He told me it’s part of his culture. He was always sorry later, and we always made up, but it was hard. He blacked my eyes, busted my lips. He didn’t really mean it, that was just his way.” I asked her if she’d ever told Dr. Masur about this as part of their therapy. “No, that was strictly private between us.” The jurors first stared at her, then began looking away. Rather than pressing her, I sat down. Bill Beasley had no redirect. In my mind, the case was over. They never really had a case against these good men.

  Bill Beasley then announced he rested his case. After making a standard oral motion to dismiss the case, not expecting it to be granted, Joe Shur asked for a recess for us to decide the order of our witnesses. There had been motions to dismiss on file for years, which were always denied as to our clients, although many other defendants had been dismissed. To our surprise, Judge Davidson called on Bill to answer our oral motion for dismissal, a good sign, although many times trial judges do that just to make a record of reasons to deny the motions and to protect their rulings from reversal later on appeal. This time it felt different.

  Bill argued gamely that his case was proved. After Bill finished, Judge Davidson announced to our surprise that he did not need to hear from us. He explained succinctly that the plaintiffs had no case against these named defendants and ordered them dismissed immediately. He then raised his eyebrows as if to say, “Not so fast” and went on. “As to what might be termed contractual violations, however, the court finds that plaintiff Adnan Awad may have a case. That matter has not really been presented in the proper forum, however. Such claims may only be considered under the Tucker Act, the federal law under which the United States waives its sovereign immunity against suits on contract claims. This Court therefore orders the contract portion of this case be transferred to the U.S. Court of Federal Claims in Washington, D.C., under the Tucker Act.”

  Lynn and Captain Joe seemed, if anything
, relieved. Joe told me in the hall he thought the judge was a wise man and asked if I would follow the case to Washington. I told him normally not, that I knew little about that law and specialists from there would no doubt handle it. “They will not be like you,” he said.

  Captain Joe and Lynn divorced shortly after trial, and he moved to Gulfport and opened a little shop selling his drawings and colorful metal sculptures. I would have liked one as a keepsake, but before I learned of it from an old friend in Gulfport, the shop had closed. My friend, himself a graphic designer with his own ad agency, said, “Some of his stuff was really good. Too bad he left.” On the other hand maybe not, because if he’d stayed on, Hurricane Katrina would have gotten him a couple of years later.

  The Court of Claims also ruled against Adnan on fairly technical grounds, but since then his case has been taken up by others administratively. The best argument for his case appeared in the Stanford Law Review of November 2005. Written by Michelle Visser, then the law clerk for Judge Bruce Selya of the First U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, it was entitled “Sovereign Immunity and Informant Defectors: The United States’ Refusal to Protect Its Protectors.” The article makes an excellent case for improving our system for handling the sensitive issues of terrorism informants and witnesses. It also gives rich details, too long for me to repeat here, stressing how Adnan did finally receive a $750,000 reward for his assistance to the United States.