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“Yes, he was.”
Lonsdale felt suddenly vindicated, but she wanted to make sure her opponents on the committee were clear on this point. “So you admit to striking him?”
“Yes.”
Lonsdale glanced at her notes. “And choking him?”
“Yes.”
“Was he restrained while you were choking him?”
“Yes,” Rapp said.
Lonsdale paused for a second to let the gravity of the admission sink in. “I see in one of the reports here that there was an electronic stun gun found in the interrogation room. Did you use that stun gun on the prisoner?”
“Yes,” Rapp answered without hesitation.
Senators began mumbling to themselves.
“Madam Chairman,” said Bob Safford, the chairman of the Intelligence Committee, “I would like to remind the witness that at any point he may still invoke his Fifth Amendment right.”
Lonsdale shot Safford a look that said, Shut the hell up, and said, “Maybe the senator didn’t hear, but the witness has already said he does not wish to invoke his Fifth Amendment right.”
“Senator Lonsdale is right. I have no intention of invoking the Fifth.”
Lonsdale turned back to the witness table and was surprised to find Rapp walking in front of it.
“Have any of you,” Rapp said, “bothered to ask yourself why I would risk running an operation like this?” Not a single one of the nineteen answered, so Rapp continued. “Several weeks ago I was contacted by a source who works for a foreign intelligence agency. He informed me that two terrorist cells had been intercepted en route to the United States. One was headed to Los Angeles and the other to New York City.”
“Why are we only hearing about this now?” asked Senator Safford, the chairman of the Intelligence Committee.
“That’s a complicated answer, but the short version is that this ally no longer trusts us on this particular issue.”
“What particular issue would that be?” Lonsdale asked.
“Enhanced interrogation methods.”
“You mean torture,” Lonsdale said.
“Call it whatever you’d like, ma’am, but please do not delude yourself into thinking it doesn’t work.”
“Mr. Rapp, I…”
“Please let me finish, ma’am. This is very important. This intelligence asset has reason to believe tha
t a third cell may exist and might already be in the United States.” Rapp slowly looked from one end of the long bench to the other. Not a single senator made an effort to speak.
Lonsdale exhaled a heavy sigh and said, “I find the timing of this phantom intelligence to be entirely self-serving.”
“I thought you would say that, Senator, so I am prepared to make a deal. I would like to repeat what I just said in an open session. Hopefully, this afternoon. If you want to investigate and prosecute me for striking Abu Haggani, a man who is responsible for murdering over one hundred U.S. service personnel…a man who specializes in attacking grade schools filled with children…a man whose contribution to terrorism is that he was the first to recruit mentally retarded people to become suicide bombers…If that is the case you would like to put before the American people, then I welcome it. I am more than willing to publicly stand behind my position.”
“And what exactly would that position be, Mr. Rapp?” Lonsdale said with derision. “That you think it should be the official policy of the United States of America to torture prisoners of war?”
The conversation had been brought to the crossroads that Rapp had been hoping for. Rapp watched as a good third of the panel snickered at their chairman’s quick retort. He took the hatred he felt for them and doused it with pity just as Kennedy had told him to do. “My position, Madam Chairman, and members of the committee, is that it should be the unofficial policy of this government to reserve the right to use extreme measures in instances where we are threatened from terrorist attacks.”
“Extreme measures,” Lonsdale said with a disappointed look. “No doubt a euphemism for torture.”
“Ma’am, about ten years ago I spent a week in the custody of the Syrian Intelligence Service.” Rapp spoke without malice or dramatic effect. “I can tell you from firsthand experience that there’s a big difference between torture and extreme measures.” Rapp looked to the most liberal members of the committee as Kennedy had advised and said, “Ladies and gentlemen, I respect your position on this issue. No one who I work with likes torture. None of us enjoy inflicting pain on a prisoner, and it is not something that we do because we are bored and have decided to satisfy our sadomasochistic streaks. We do it in the rarest of instances, and we do it to save American lives.”
