B4
Writing about the ultimate wrong
holocaust from B1
in her critique of him. Wiesel, she charges, has removed
theHolocaust fromhistory—which is to say, from the human — and trans- formed it into metaphysics. “The re- sult has been the casting of a kind of mystic spell upon the Holocaust. . . . There is something priestly about Wiesel’s insistence in guarding the Temple against thosewhowould dese- crate it, but there is also something totalitarian about it.” It is time, Frank- lin writes, to stop regarding imagina- tion as a formof sin, analysis as a form of blasphemy, criticism as a form of denial. Franklin argues, too, against the
equation of suffering with insight or goodness. In this light, she is repelled by some of the writings by children of Holocaust survivors, who, she charg- es, have cannibalized the torment of their parents and have created a literature of didactic kitsch. She is almost apoplectic in her discussion of the writerMelvin Jules Bukiet, who is guilty, in her view, not just of bad writing but of taking an “outrageous . . . deranged pride” in his parents’ trauma. There are a fewplaceswhere Frank-
lin falters. She makes the odd, easily refuted claim that “no memoir can be at once an unerring representation of reality and a genuine artistic achieve- ment.” Shewrites thatHannah Arendt was “incredulous” that the seemingly prosaic Adolf Eichmann “could have been responsible for such extraordi- nary crimes” — when it is precisely this incredulity that Arendt scorned and upon which, she believed, the Eichmann trial faltered. (Nor did Eichmann mount a Nuremberg-style defense, at least in Arendt’s telling.) And Franklin’s observation that litera- ture can restore the victims “to life — although in somewhat different form” is strangely evasive, for nomatter how many books arewritten, themurdered remain murdered, forever unre- deemed. But Franklin explicates her central
ideaswith a piercing, graceful lucidity. Fiction, she insists, contains its own kind of truth, one that connects us — or at least begins to connect us — to each other’s histories and each other’s pain; to write novels after Auschwitz is therefore anything but barbaric. Great literature is always specific, yet it negates the concept of the unique, for “literature . . . ultimately makes a case for universality. Art makes com- parisons; it encourages empathy.” “A Thousand Darknesses” demands
thatwe remove the artistic and critical do-not-enter signs that have been erected around the Holocaust. Frank- lin has written a beautiful book that addresses the ugliest of subjects, prov- ing, oncemore, that it can be done.
bookworld@washpost.com
EZ BD
KLMNO
SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 28, 2010 He’s been exonerated, but not redeemed condit from B1
year and examine the entire case in 2007, wetried tokeepanopenmindaboutwho may have killed Levy. First, therewasCondit,whohad never
W
been publicly exonerated by D.C. police. Some detectives thought he had motive, means and a cast of loyalists around him who might have wanted tomake a messy situation for a married man disappear. Guandique was also worth another
look. He had attacked women in Rock Creek Park around the time Levy van- ished on May 1, 2001. When his name first emerged in the news media in connection to the case in 2002,Washing- ton Post reporters spoke to his landlady — before the police interviewed her — and she recalled that he had scratches and bruises on his face about the time of Levy’s disappearance. Other possibilities merited attention:
a man Levy met in Washington; associ- atesfromherConnecticutAvenuegym;a man convicted of killing a jogger in the Maryland section of Rock Creek Park. Or maybe the killer had never surfaced on the radar of the police or prosecutors; perhaps he or she was a confidante or a stranger, someone Levy met in a bar, in her building, in her neighborhood. Yet, from the beginning, D.C. police,
federal prosecutors and the national press corps had been consumed with Condit. Days after Levy donned her gym clothes, left her Dupont Circle apart- ment and was never heard from again, police sources began leaking to reporters about the congressman’s months-long affair with the intern for the Federal
BureauofPrisons.BetweenMay 11, 2001, when the first stories about Levy ap- peared, and Sept. 11, when the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon wiped the case off the front pages and the evening news, the phrase “law enforcement sources” was cited at least338times innewscastsandnewspa- per stories about Levy and Condit. In public,D.C. police officials—mind-
ful ofhowRichard Jewellwaswrongfully accused of setting off a bomb during the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta—were careful to emphasize that Condit was not a suspect. But behind the scenes, he was very much their prime target. Police searched the woods behind his
Adams Morgan condominium with ca- daver dogs. They bathed his apartment in ultraviolet lights, looking for evidence of foul play. They searched the car of a staff member for fibers, hair and blood, anything that might connect Condit to the crime. Each time, law enforcement sources alerted members of the media, who put the developments on their front pages and at the top of their newscasts. During the summer of 2001, years
before YouTube, Twitter and Facebook, the story went viral. Cable news shows updated the tale of the intern and the congressman every 10 minutes or so, even if there was nothing new to report. Rumors masqueraded as facts, and pa- rades of law enforcement experts who knew nothing about the case appeared on television to theorize about how Condit might have been responsible. The case captivated the nation; about two-thirds of Americans followed it
Our constitutional right not to be groped
screening from B1
tests. First, as European regulators have recognized, they could be much less intrusive without sacrificing effective-
ness.For example,Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport, the European airport that em- ploys body-scanning machines most ex- tensively, has incorporated crucial priva- cy and safety protections. Rejecting the “backscatter” machines used in theUnit- ed States, which produce revealing imag- es of the body and have raised concerns about radiation, the Dutch use scanners known as ProVision ATD, which employ radio waves with far lower frequencies than those used in common hand-held devices. If the software detects contra- band or suspicious material under a passenger’s clothing, it projects an out- line of that area of the body onto a gender-neutral, blob-like human image, instead of generating a virtually naked image of the passenger. The passenger can then be taken aside for secondary screening. TSA Administrator John Pistole ac- knowledged in recent testimony that these “blob” machines, as opposed to the “naked” machines, are the “next genera- tion” of screening technology. His con- cern,hesaid, is that “there are currently a high rate of false positives on that tech- nology, so we’re working through that.” But courts might hold that, even with
false positives, “blob” imaging technolo- gy that leads to a secondary pat-down is less invasive and more effective than imposing a choice between “naked” ma- chinesandintrusivepat-downs as prima- ry screening for all passengers. In the Netherlands, there’s another
crucial privacy protection: Images cap- tured by the body scanners are neither stored nor transmitted. Unfortunately, the TSA required that the machines deployed in U.S. airports be capable of
recording, storing and transmitting im- ages when in “test” mode. The agency promised, after this capability was re- vealed by a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by the Electronic Privacy Information Center, that the test mode isn’t being used in airports. But other agencies have abused the storage capa- bility of the machines.
TheU.S.Marshals Service admitted in August that it had saved more than 35,000 images from body scanners at the Orlando federal courthouse. In evaluating the constitutionality of
these scanners, U.S. courts might hold that the machines can’t be considered “minimally invasive” as long as images can be stored and recorded. In January, the European Commis-
sion’s information commissioner criti- cized the scanners’ “privacy-invasive po- tential” and their unproven effective- ness. And tests have shown that the machines are not good at detecting low- density powder explosives: A member of Britain’s Parliament who evaluated the scanners in his former capacity as a defense technology company director concluded that they wouldn’t have stopped the bomber who concealed the chemical powderPETNin his underwear last Christmas. So there’s good reason to believe that
the machines are not effective in detect- ing the weapons they’re purportedly de- signed to identify. For U.S. courts, that’s yet another consideration that could make them constitutionally unreason- able.
Broadly, U.S. courts have held that
“routine” searches of all travelers can be conducted at airports as long as they don’t threaten serious invasions of priva- cy. By contrast, “non-routine” searches, such as strip-searches or body-cavity searches, require some individualized suspicion — that is, some cause to sus-
JOHN MOORE/GETTY IMAGES
At the Denver International Airport, holiday travelers undergo full-body scans performed by the Transportation Security Administration. Though not all passengers are outraged, the scanners—and full-body pat-downs—may not be constitutional.
pect a particular traveler of wrongdoing. Neither virtual strip-searches nor intru- sive pat-downs should be considered “routine,” and therefore courts should rule that neither can be used for primary screening. Will the Supreme Court recognize the
unconstitutionality of body-scanning machines? It might have ruled against them five years ago, when the balance of power was controlled by Justice Sandra Day O’Connor. O’Connor was an eloquent opponent
of intrusive group searches that threat- ened privacy without increasing security. In a 1983 opinion upholding searches by drug-sniffing dogs, she recognized that a search is most likely to be considered constitutionally reasonable if it is very effective at discovering contraband with- out revealing innocent but embarrassing information. The backscatter machines seem, in O’Connor’s view, to be the
antithesis of a reasonable search: They reveal a great deal of innocent butembar- rassing information and are remarkably ineffective at revealing low-density con- traband. TheSupremeCourt might not viewthe
matter differently today,nowthat O’Con- nor has been replaced by Alito, who wrote the lower-court opinion insisting that screening technologies had to be both effective and “minimally intrusive.” Last year, the court struck down strip- searches in schools by a vote of 8 to 1. In many cases, furthermore, Supreme
Court justices are influenced by public opinion, consciously or unconsciously, andsomepolls suggest that opposition to these screening measures has grown in recent
months.That reflects a basic truth of the politics of privacy: People are most likely to be outraged over a particular privacy invasion when their own privacy has actually been violated.
By Sunday evening, a projected 24
millionU.S. travelers willhave flown over the Thanksgiving holiday, and although less than 3 percent of them will have received intrusive pat-downs, many more will have gone through the scan- ners, holding their handsupin surrender as detailed images of their bodies flashed across a government screen. It’s possible, of course, that the TSA
will respond to the backlash by rethink- ing its screening policies or that Congress will step in with regulations. But if not, the Supreme Court may be asked to hear a constitutional challenge to the body scanners before long. If the justices take the case, they should strike down the use of “naked” machines and intrusive pat- downs as an unreasonable search and a violation of what Justice Louis Brandeis called “the most comprehensive of rights” — namely, “the right to be let alone.”
hen Washington Post investiga- tive editors Jeff Leen and Larry Roberts assigned us to take a
the minutiae of the crime scene, many of the seats reserved for the press and the public in Courtroom320 inD.C. Superior Court were empty. That changed on Monday, Nov. 1, when word spread that Condit would be testifying as a witness for the prosecution. Reporters, lawyers and curiosity-seekers now filled every seat, and a waiting line stretched down the third-floor hallway. Prosecutors called Condit to the stand
hoping to blunt the defense’s argument that he might still be a suspect. After the former congressman railed against the police and the media for destroying his career and ruining his life, one of Guan- dique’s lawyers from thePublicDefender Service, Maria Hawilo, stood and began her cross-examination. “Mr. Condit, from the beginning of
J. SCOTT APPLEWHITE/ASSOCIATED PRESS
Gary Condit leaves theD.C. Superior Court building onNov. 1 after testifying in the trial of Ingmar Guandique, the man charged with killing Chandra Levy. Guandique was later found guilty of first-degree murder.
closely. The scandal became the talk of the summer — and the story couldn’t have been more wrong. While everyone was chasing Condit, Guandique was chasing female joggers in Rock Creek Park at knifepoint. He jumped Halle Shilling on May 14, two weeks afterLevy disappeared,andChris- tyWiegandonJuly
1.Bothwomenfought back and escaped. Arrested shortly after the assault on Wiegand, Guandique pleaded guilty to the crimes. Later that summer, an in- mate at the D.C. jail came forward to say that Guandique told him he had mur- dered the girl who was the subject of all those nightly newscasts. (This was nine months before a hiker would find Levy’s remains in the park, not far from where Shilling and Wiegand were attacked.) However, the inmate failed an FBI poly- graph in late 2001, while Guandique passed. That was enough for police and prosecutors to dismiss him as a suspect. The judge who sentenced Guandique
in February 2002 had serious doubts about his potential involvement in the Levy case. “This is such a satellite issue,” Judge Noel Anketell Kramer said from the bench before handing down her 10-year sentence. “To me it doesn’t have anything to do with this case.” The police, prosecutors and the press remained focused on Condit, and the congressman did little to help his cause. He brushed past the cameras. He threw away a box that once contained a watch given to him by a former girlfriend. He tried to avoid the media stakeouts at his Capitol Hill office and his Adams Mor- gan condo. Natural reactions, perhaps, but to the public and the news media, it seemed that he had something to hide. Although Condit was quietly cooper-
ating with detectives, he grewto despise the press and believed he didn’t owe the public an explanation. His private life was private; he thought that a public mea culpa about the affair with his wife by his side would be undignified. In 2008, after spending nearly a year
investigating the case, reviewing thou- sands of confidential documents and speaking with dozens of people involved,
we finally interviewed Condit in his lawyer’s office in Los Angeles. He had lost his congressional seat to his former chief of staff and relocated to Arizona, where he had opened—and then lost— twoBaskin-Robbins ice cream stores.He was trying to figure out his next move while keeping close to his children, his grandchildren and his wife, Carolyn, whom he had known since high school. We told Condit that our investigation
wascenteredonGuandiqueandthatThe Post was preparing to publish a series of articles that would exonerate the former congressman. But he remained bitter. “I regret that I did not sue TheWashington Post,” he told us at the start of the interview, and he spoke at length about how he felt he had been “raped” by the police and the press. Condit had a tougher time articulating
howhe feltaboutLevyandhermurder. In the course of the hour-long interview, he didn’t offer a personal or caring word about his relationship with her. He was more comfortable saying how hard it must be for Susan and Robert Levy to have lost their only daughter. In July 2008, The Post published a
13-part series titled “Who Killed Chan- dra Levy?,” which concluded that all the evidence pointed to Guandique, not Con- dit, as the prime suspect. Two months later, the new D.C. homicide detectives who had been assigned to the case — Kenneth “Todd” Williams, Anthony Bri- gidini and Emilio Martinez — visited Guandiquein prison. Itwasthe first time since 2001 that D.C. police had met with him. They then interviewed the two women who were attacked, as well as inmates at multiple prisons who said Guandique had confessed to the crime. Working alongside veteran prosecutors Amanda Haines and Fernando Cam- poamor, the detectives built what would prove to be a powerful circumstantial case against Guandique.
S
till, from the start of Guandique’s murder trial last month, Condit remained the star of the show.
Toward the end of the first week of the proceedings, when testimony turned to
this case, you have lied,” she began, in one of themost dramaticmomentsof the trial.HawilohammeredCondit, pressing him to describe the nature of his rela- tionship withLevy.He refused to answer, saying the question wasn’t relevant to the case. “Seems like in this country we’ve lost a sense of decency,” he said. Hawilo asked JudgeGerald I. Fisher to
order Condit to answer, but he declined, leaving it to the jurors to imagine how Condit felt about Levy. (They would later learn that a 2001 DNA test had linked him to semen found on a pair of Levy’s underwear in her apartment.) For her part, Levy had clearly been in
love with the congressman, even telling her friends that they might marry one day. When she spent Passover with fami- ly in Maryland before she disappeared, she showed her aunt a gold bracelet Condit had given her for Valentine’s Day. To her, it was a symbol of a meaningful relationship. In court, however, Condit testified
that the bracelet didn’t mean much to him.He said he had a drawer full of them in his congressional office, and he would frequently hand them out to constitu- ents.He couldn’t remember if the one he gave Levy was silver or gold. As Condit stepped down from the
witness stand and walked into the hall- way,hewassurroundedbypolice officers and U.S. marshals. They cleared a path through the pack of reporters, allowing him to avoid a crush of questions. Condit took an elevator to the courthouse base- ment and tried to slip out the back door, only to find more reporters and photog- raphers in wait. Without saying a word, he stepped into a car and sped away. With the guilty verdicts against Guan-
dique secure, the case of the congress- man and the intern is all but over. There is some measure of justice for Levy and her family, but no closure, a word Susan Levy loathes. Condit can try to win back his name with his book, but as long as people remember the name Chandra Levy, they will connect it with his. When Condit’s obituary is written, it
won’t focus on the former congressman’s legislative accomplishments or the ado- ration voters had for him in the swath of the Central Valley of California once known as “Condit Country.” Instead, it will be about his relationship with Levy, and how the pursuit of him as a suspect helped delay justice for nearly a decade. In the long, sad story of Chandra Levy,
Gary Condit will forever be a person of interest.
highams@washpost.com horwitzs@washpost.com
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