In Ron Suskind’s new book, Suskind describes a disturbing case
in Washington, D.C., where security officials detained and interrogated
Usman Khosa, a Pakistani U.S. college graduate, because he was “fiddling”
with his iPod near White House gates. Officials took Khosa to an interrogation
room “beneath” the White House:
He turns as a large uniformed man lunges at him. The backpack!”
the man yells, pushing Usman against the Italianate gates in front
of Treasury and ripping off his backpack. Another officer on a bicycle
arrives from somewhere and tears the backpack open, dumping its contents
on the sidewalk. […]
Usman is trundled from the SUV, escorted through the West Gate, and
onto the manicured grounds. No one speaks as the agents walk him behind
the gate’s security station, down a stairwell, along an underground
passage, and into a room — cement-walled box with a table, two
chairs, a hanging light with a bare bulb, and a mounted video camera.
Even after all the astonishing turns of the past hour, Usman can’t
quite believe there’s actually an interrogation room beneath
the White House, dark and dank and horrific.
“Usman Khosa is a Pakistani national in his early twenties, a
graduate of Connecticut College now working for the International Monetary
Fund,” Suskind notes.
