men.style.com/gq/toc
TERRORISM
In February 2003, the CIA kidnapped and detained suspected terrorist Abu Omar. But the mission was botched, and now the agency finds itself facing criminal charges. Matthew Cole delves into a profound American embarrassment
Matthew Cole lives in New York City.
This is his first story for gq.
TUTTO L'ARTICOLO:
www.matthewacole.com/pdfs/Blowback-GQ.pdf
STRALCI:
BOB LADY
“The agency has told me to keep quiet
and let this blow over,” Lady says. “But
it’s not blowing over for me. I pay $4,000
a month on a mortgage to a house I can’t
live in.” Each month he has to go to Langley
for update meetings, but he’s not allowed to
have a lawyer. “No one’s called me for sup-
port. No one has helped. I keep thinking,
Fuck it, I’ve got nothing to lose.”
Yet another former CIA officer, who
knows Lady well, says the agency threw
Lady under a bus. “Bob got screwed be-
cause he was a good soldier, a perfectly sub-
servient CIA o8cer. The agency could have
given him some funds so he could get his
own lawyer. He’s retired, so they didn’t have
to do anything. But they could have done
something. He got fucked big-time.” One of
Lady’s former superiors agrees. “To leave
Bob hanging in the wind—that’s not right,”
he says. “He deserves more than that.”
Lady sips espresso from a plastic cup
and shakes his head. “Leaders used to pro-
tect those below from the top as they went
up,” he says. “It’s a way of harnessing the
loyalty of those they led. Now they protect
the top. They manage down and step on
anyone below. What happened to me—and
it happened to many good people—is that I
worked too hard. I was decent. The agency
is dying. Even bureaucracies must die.”