AFFIDAVIT

CONFIDENTIAL INTEVIEW WITH ALEC G. KOUCHACJI
 
 

The following affidavit was conducted at the Law Firm of Wilkes, Artis, Hedrick and Lane 1666 K Street, NW, Washington, DC April 24, 1994

ALEC KOUCHACJI: My name is Alec Kouchacji, formerly ------ I was born as Melissa Weber. My name was changed to Melissa Carlson in 1975.

I’m here today to just tell the background of how I got involved with Bashir’s ( Gaby Kouchacji ) case and kind of validate what he has said and the conspiracy that’s been brought against him over the past several years.

So, first, I’m going to just briefly go over my background and then get to how I got involved into his case itself.

I grew up in northern Michigan. My mother remarried when I was about six years old. I went into foster care when I was eight after an abusive situation with my stepfather.

From there, I went to Canada to live with my father, who was working in Saudi Arabia at the time and coming back to Canada for citizenship reasons.

When he was preparing to go back to Saudi Arabia, I left his home. I ran away and was picked up by Tony Perricelli and subsequently put into a succession of heroin use and prostitution.

I had been away from home for six months before it was reported that I was missing by my stepfather. Shortly after that time, I was picked up the police and returned to their home.

Over the course of the next four years was back and forth in foster care, running away and their home. I ran away the final time at 14, when I went back with Tony Perricelli until I was 17.

At 17, I was sent to Rio with one of his men. And on the return trip, they had me bring heroin back into the country. And I was traveling on a passport that was illegally obtained by Tony in Canada.

When I got back to Miami, I had a few days there, and I left -- I ran away from there and went to Key West.

Since I was used to having them distribute the drugs to me, I wasn’t -- it was just a short time after I began to supply myself before I overdosed and went into the hospital.

At that time, I was encouraged to get in touch with a family member and to go into a treatment center. So, I called my grandmother, who, in turn, called my stepfather.

He sent my mother to Florida and agreed to give me a loan and placed me in a treatment center, Naples Research and Counseling Center, in Florida that he had chosen.

During that time, a friend of the family, Joseph Nault, was put in contact with me because he had gone through a similar treatment situation. And he remained a close friend for -- throughout the time I was there. And then I went back to Michigan after that to stay with my family.

To clarify the relationship with Joe Nault, like I said, he was a friend of the family. He had formerly been married to a cousin of mine. My parents -- my stepfather and my mother asked him to contact me when I was in the treatment center.

After a brief time in Michigan, things weren’t going very well. So, I -------- I’m sorry. So, Joe was at that point, moving to Washington, D.C. and asked me if I would like to join him. I was encouraged to do so by my stepfather, but not by my mother. She was upset about that.

I came to Washington, spent some time bartending, odd jobs like that. During that time, I got my GED. And Joe at that point asked me to marry him, which I did, we were married in Alexandria, Virginia in June of 1984.

It was a very brief marriage, only about six weeks, before I started feeling that I had married him just to have someone to be able to depend on or something like that. But we remain friends. We remain very close.

And he was -- -- he advised me a lot on what to do. And he and my stepfather agreed to lend me money to go to travel agency school, which I attended. It was, I think, eight weeks long.

And at that time, Joe was working for a defense contractor in Arlington ----- or in Crystal City, Virginia. I’m sorry. And there was a job opening at the travel agency in the Pentagon. And between my stepfather and Joe, they helped me get that job.

While I was working at the Pentagon, I was approached by Colonel Robert Bowers. Innocently, he come in and started talking about being from the same town in Michigan and he knew my father very well, he said. He knew his nickname from childhood.

And since I was out here kind of alone, I attached myself to him, and he kind of took me under his wing. He would take me to lunch in the officers dining hail, and he became very much like a father figure to me, advising me in a lot or different situations.

During that time, I started college. I started at the community college first, and then I started in journalism at the University of Maryland.

I wasn’t too sure that I wanted to be in journalism, but everyone kept telling me that --- not everyone -- my parents and Colonel Bowers and Joe were encouraging me to continue to write because they felt that I had skill in writing and journalism was the way I should go.

So. I was very unsure of myself. And I decided to --- with the encouragement of Colonel Bowers --- take some time off and travel. And I went to Europe backpacking.

When I went over to Europe, I was in contact with Colonel Bowers more than I was with my family, updating him on where I was, what I was doing, things like that. I stopped and I worked in Greece. I found a job in a bar and stayed for several months.

While I was working in Greece, a girl from Missouri named Catherine Geers Came to work at the same bar --- actually, at the youth hostel next door to the bar. And we spent a lot of time together because we were the only two Americans there at that time.

She had been traveling for a lot longer than I had, and she had told me about working in Israel. If I continued to travel in the circle I was going around the Mediterranean, I would need to stop and work about that time so that I could keep going.

I spoke --- before I left Greece, I spoke to Colonel Bowers about that. And he encouraged me to go to Israel and work at the Moshav that she told me about, which was Moshav Podzael right outside of Jericho.

So, I left Greece and went for a brief visit to Germany because my mother and stepfather were there visiting friends and told them of my plans. And although my mother wasn’t very happy about me continuing to travel, my stepfather said that I should go and do it.

So, I continued traveling through Turkey and, when I got to Israel, I went directly to the Moshav. Normally, when you arrive in Israel and want to work in that kind of situation, you have to go to Tel Aviv to go through some --- do a lot of paperwork and things like that.

I bypassed that and went to work directly for Itzak Gorman, who was the person --- he was the --- that was the name that was given to me by Catherine.

I worked there for several months. And during that time, Catherine arrived and she worked for one of the other farmers on the Moshav. And when it was getting towards the end of the season for what I was doing, I wanted to make some extra money to travel through North Africa.

Catherine first suggested selling one of my passports because I still had the Canadian passport that I had received from Tony. 

I spoke with Itzak about that, and he got me together with one of the other farmers named Rami, who took my passport and came back and gave me $2,000 for the sale. He told me he sold it.

Itzak wanted me to come back to work after I had traveled some more. So, he gave me a return ticket from Casablanca, which wasn’t a normal thing for a farmer to do to one of the workers, but I just kind of passed it off because he praised my work a lot while I was there. And I agreed to come back and work.

So, during the time I was in North Africa, I had sent my father a letter from Israel --- he was living in Libya at the time --- and asked him to meet me in Tunis.

So, we met at the airport in Tunis for a very brief lunch. I hadn’t seen him in several years at that point. During that lunch, he was very distant and he passed me a packet, a manila envelope that looked like it had documents in it.

He passed it to me and didn’t say anything about it. And then he got up and left, which was very suspect to me at the time. And all that was in it was a manuscript of a book that he was writing. It was just the circumstances that were strange.

So, I continued traveling to Morocco, and then I returned to Israel. And when I arrived at the airport, I was detained and taken into custody. I spent three nights locked up in a solitary area.

No one would speak to me about why I was being detained, but I could pick up from their conversations, which were all in Hebrew, that it was about my passport that had been sold.

I didn’t think at that time about calling the embassy or doing anything like that. I was very naive and didn’t know how to handle the situation. So, in turn, I called Itzhak, who came and got me from Tel Aviv.

When he picked me up from the airport, he took me to the King David hotel in Jerusalem first, where he had a meeting with several people. I waited there for him. I sat with him, but didn’t know what they were discussing. And then he took me back to the Moshav.

Once there, he moved me into his --- next to each house, there’s a bomb shelter. And instead of living with the rest of the workers, he moved me into the bomb shelter next to his house. And I ate with his family and remained very alienated from the rest of the people on the Moshav.

I started working exclusively with him instead of with --- as I had been working before --- with the Palestinians and with the other farmers.

And he made it very clear to me that he had saved me from a situation that could have been very serious with the sale of the passport. It could have been serious both in Israel and in the States. And he had basically taken me out of a big mess, and I was going to have to repay him at some point in time.

So, I worked for --- until December of 1988 for him. I had returned there in August of 1988 and worked until December and then decided to return to the States to return to school.

And when I discussed it with him, he recommended that I go to the University of South Florida. He had a friend there, whose name was Abdulwahab Hechiche, who was a professor there and could help me out and help me get started.

When was getting ready to leave Israel. Itzak took me to the airport and I had some trouble leaving the country. I was detained and missed fly flight and ended up taking a flight on the following day, which was December 22nd, I believe, 1988.

I arrived in New York -- I was supposed to fly into Detroit. I arrived in New York and found out that the flight that I was supposed to be on had been blown up over Lockerbie, Scotland.

I first went to Michigan to visit my family over Christmas and discussed with them my going to school back --- going back to school in Florida. I stayed in Michigan for about two weeks and drove down to Florida.

When I arrived in Tampa, I stayed with some friends of my parents for a few days until I found an apartment, and then I got in touch with Professor Hechiche. It was already into the semester. So, I wasn’t able to enroll at that time, he gave me some --- actually, let me backtrack a minute. My first meeting with him, he made a statement that talking to him was like talking to

Itzak and what I needed to --- the deal I had made with Itzak was that I was to do something for them at some point in the future, and Hechiche would be handling that situation.

He also told me that --- they informed me that they had a lot of power and that was proven by the plane that was blown up and the fact that I was detained at the airport.

At that point, the thought of that frightened me a great deal and intimidated me. At this point, I don’t know if they just used it --- if it was a coincidence and it was used or not, but it was used nonetheless.

So, Hechiche started --- I went to see him --- before I started classes, I went to see him about once a week. And it was just general conversation, nothing --- he wasn’t asking me to do anything. I did some research projects for him. I got enrolled in school that summer.

He strongly encouraged me to go into anthropology, which was fine with me because it was an area that interested me a great deal. And he encouraged me to go into Middle East studies and pretty much dictated the classes I took and the course of studies that followed.

I was having trouble finding a job that would go around my --- work around my schedule. He suggested that I speak with Joe Redner from Tampa, who owned several dance clubs. And I both bartended and danced in his clubs from then until, I guess, the beginning of 1992.

During that time, I met Bernard Mackey, who came into one of the clubs while I was bartending. He would come in almost every day after work. He was a vice president --- one of the vice presidents at the University of South Florida, and he was also an acquaintance of Hechiche.

He asked me out several times, and we dated over the course of the summer. I guess it was the summer of '88 and --- okay. Hold it for a second.

Okay. It was the summer of '89 that I was dating Dr. Mackey, whose nickname is Mac, if I refer to him that way.

During the fall of '89, the lease on my apartment was coming up. He was locking for somebody to rent one of his rooms at his house because he had recently been divorced. And he, in turn, rented a room to me and I moved out with him, which is where I stayed until May of ‘92.

So, during that time --- I was in school. was working both as a dancer and a bartender and, also, for a photographer who had become a friend of mine and struggling a lot to make ends meet.

And after getting my bachelor’s degree, I started my master’s course work and still seeing Hechiche a couple of times a week, and nothing was happening. I was still feeling threatened.

I started to question what they were going to have me do and when, so that I could get on with my life. And I wanted to go somewhere else to continue my studies.

The summer of ‘91, I had taught at an archaeology field school and was writing my master’s thesis, and I had to start thinking about postgraduate studies. And I got very frustrated when speaking with him --- with Hechiche --- and confronted him about exactly what it was that was to happen.

A few days later, he told me I was going to be going to Israel for a short time because Itzak wanted to see me. And that was in August of ‘91. He obtained for me a passport with the name Cynthia Nesbitt and had me travel on that passport to Israel.

The passport that Hechiche gave to me was issued in Washington, D.C. It was a new passport. The name was Cynthia Nesbitt. The date of birth was my own, which is 12/30/65, and the place of birth was Missouri.

The money for the ticket came from my stepfather. I was supposed to get reimbursed by Hechiche when I got back to the States. So, my stepfather sent me the money in the form of a check, which I deposited into my account in Florida and, in turn, wrote a check to the airlines. I believe it was TWA.

When I talked to my stepfather about the money. I told him I was just going for a brief time, and he recommended that I not say anything to my mother about going.

The reason that I thought I was going was just to speak with Itzak. When I arrived to Israel, Itzak wasn’t at the airport, but two other people were there. Two other men were there to pick me up. I was very nervous going through customs, of course, because of the previous time, but I had no problems.

They took me to a hotel in downtown Tel Aviv, where I stayed the first night without any contact anybody. And Itzak contacted me the next day and said he was going to come and talk to me.

The first day when he came and spoke to me, he just came to the hotel and talked about what my relationship with Hechiche was like, how things were being handled.

And I was still at that point questioning what I was supposed to do and when it was going to be finished. So, the discussion wasn’t very productive or not much came out of it at that point.

He left me then and told me the next day he would pick me up and he was going to take me to meet some other people. So, the following day, he picked me up with one of the men who had met me at the airport, and we drove to a person’s home outside of Tel Aviv, to the north of Tel Aviv.

I sat through lunch with a rather large group of men, probably ten or twelve people. I didn’t understand anything that was being said. So, I just sat quietly and waited.

As the people started leaving, Itzak started leaving as well. I assumed I was to go with him, and he told me no, I was going to stay there.

So, Itzak left the house. I was taken into the back area of the house with two men. The owner of the house was there, but he remained out of the room.

At that point, I was systematically beaten and shocked electrically or I guess you call it electrically. That went on for several hours. Then I was left alone for a while. Then they came back and started over again.

The reasons were apparently because I was being belligerent and I was asking questions when I wasn’t justified or I had no justification for asking questions. It wasn’t my position to question what they told me to do or to feel like I had any rights as far as they were concerned. 

I was taken back to the hotel, where one of the men stayed in the room at all the times. And during the rest of the stay there, this message was brought to me clear by Itzak, who --- he made it clear that that didn’t have to be an isolated incident, that I was available to them at any time to be treated the same way if I didn’t go along with whatever they wanted me to do.

I was taken back to the airport by the same two men who picked me up from the airport. At that time, I was convinced that I had no control over the situation and that I had no choice but to do exactly what they wanted me to do.

I arrived back in Tampa and --- I flew out of Tel Aviv on EL-AL through London, London, New York, Miami and back up to Tampa.

After I returned --- actually, before I left, my relationship with Hechiche was I had a certain amount of respect for him and I felt that he had some respect for me as well.

I had done work for --- research work for him, like I mentioned before. He treated me more like an intellectual than --- he treated me better than what Itzak and the other people had.

When I returned, his attitude towards me had changed considerably. He was much more threatening. I got the feeling that he had gotten an some trouble as well for making me feel more like an equal than not.

At that point, he started training me, more or less, for surveillance of a person who was in Tampa at the university who was a Palestinian.

I was being trained or prepared to get close to Abi Shaadad, who was an associate professor at the university. He had only been there for a short time, We lived near campus in one of the apartment complexes --- in the Way Apartments.

What I was expected to do was to get close to him and just get information about who he spoke to, what he did, what he felt about certain things, just kind of general information like that.

It was relatively easy because at that time, I was helping to prepare a conference with people coming in from all over the country and some people coming from the Middle East talking about peace in the Middle East at that time.

So, I did the work that they wanted me to do for --- on this person --- that Hechiche wanted me to do. So, I formed a relationship with Abi. And I was to go to whatever lengths were necessary to get the information that they wanted, including having a sexual relationship with him, staying at his place sometimes, you know, being involved in his activities around school, etcetera.

I was involved with him for a little over three months, at which point I was told by Hechiche that I was relatively successful in what I had done. It had been a situation that was set up. Abi was actually part of their group. He had been set up as well.

So, neither one of us knew that we were involved in the same --- with the same group of people. So, that situation --- at that point, Abi left the university, and I don’t know his whereabouts now. I believe he went back to Israel.

So, during that time, I had done --- I had reported directly to Hechiche several times a week whatever information I had, both in written form and in spoken form.

And we spent the next couple of months going over how I had handled certain situations, how I could have done it better, what would be more effective, what was less effective, et cetera.

In February of ‘92, I started to be prepared for the next situation they wanted to put me --- that Hechiche wanted to place me in, which was the same type of surveillance situation as before, but a little more extensive; and that was on Bashir Kouchacji.

At this point, in January and February of ‘92, I was spending an extensive amount of time with Hechiche and I was also trying to --- I was also finishing my master’s thesis and my last course in my master’s program.

So, it was very difficult to work. I was having trouble making money to pay the rent, things like that. And Hechiche suggested that I talk to Joe Redner again about working for an escort service because that would free up my time, I could make more money and I wouldn’t have to worry about the rent and things like that.

Redner suggested the service to call, and when I called them, I went and had a brief interview. And I was only sent out twice. The first time was with a person from out of town at a hotel.

The second time was with a local man named Orien Hall, who asked me to just go to him exclusively and not go through the agency; that way. I could make more money, he could pay less and I wouldn’t have to worry about being called out at all hours of the day and night. And we struck a deal like that.

During the times that I was with Orien, we would have conversations about various things. But at one point, he mentioned to me that he was involved with the CIA and he had a lot of connections in Washington.

This is when I was being told that I was probably going to be going to Washington. So, he told me if I --- he encouraged me to move to Washington, and he said if I needed help when I got there, he knew a lot of people here who could help me out.

So, at that same time, in January and February of ‘92, as I was being prepared for what was to be, like I said, the more extensive case, I knew it was more extensive because the preparation involved was --- I new it was more serious because the preparation involved was much more extensive.

I knew the person that I was going to be put on was in a psychiatric hospital. Therefore, a lot of preparation was made for me based on my past to give me a diagnosis of posttraumatic stress syndrome.

Between Hechiche and I, we created a story based primarily on fact, but elaborated to make it look that I was suffering a great deal. I was --- he put me in contact with a psychologist on campus, Dr. Dale Hicks, who was able to make the diagnosis of posttraumatic stress.

I wasn’t put on any medication or anything like that. I would go and see him once a week and basically just reiterate the same story that I had started out with.

While the preparation for me going into the hospital was taking place, I was starting to be briefed on who the person was who I was going to be put on. I knew that he had been in the hospital for some time. It was my impression that he was involved in terrorist activities for a number of years.

His wife --- his first wife --- I was told that his first wife and her sister were both involved with the same group of people that I was and several other --- several other people over the course of the next several years. This included his --- wait a second.

Okay. Prior to my involvement, I was told about other people who had been involved. And the order that they were involved that I knew was his first wife, Gail, and her sister, Stephanie.

I was told about Sally Jackson, George and his next wife Nancy, and Karina, another girl who was put in the hospital in kind of the same situation. I was told, also, about a girl in Philadelphia and a girl in New Jersey, whose names I wasn’t given, and a couple of other situations where --- that people had been involved.

The names weren’t given because they felt if I was given the names, that I may react to people in a certain way if I met them or if, you know, they were talked about or something like that.

I was told about the people who were involved previously mostly to look at how Bashir had reacted to them, to the situations, what they did, what they didn’t do, what was done wrong and how I was supposed to act differently or act the same.

Through the accounts of these people and court reports and interviews, I was given a type of personality profile of Bashir.

At this point, I was meeting with Hechiche almost every day. Each time I would go into his office, he would give me something to read, either about accounts from --- like I said --- from the people who were involved or something else about the --- having to do with Bashir’s profile. I would read the information in the office and give it back to him directly.

Our discussions consisted mainly of --- well, actually, it was a combination of how to prepare myself to go into the hospital and how to deal with Bashir when I met him,.

It was the same type of situation as with Abi. I was supposed to get close to him. But I will go into that more --- in more detail later because it involved much more than what was involved with Abi.

The preparation to go into the hospital was somewhat complicated. At first, like I said, I was working --- I was trying to finish my thesis at the same time as all this was happening.

I managed to do that. I had one paper left for one course, my final course, and I was told to off and that it would be no problem finishing it at later date.

I was still seeing Dr. Hicks once a week, and the situation was supposed to get aggravated. Hechiche would tell me to be more nervous, more tense.

And then in May of ‘92, I was to go into a --- to falsely --- how do you say --- make a false attempt at committing suicide to kind of clinch it for Dr. hicks and for family members--- People like that were involved.

So, I was put in the psychiatric wing of Tampa General Hospital for about two weeks. In order to get into the hospital, Hechiche told me to take some sleeping pills, enough to hurt me, but not enough to --- or not enough to hurt me, but enough to make it look like I had attempted seriously to commit suicide. I ended up having to get my stomach pumped and spend the night in the emergency room before being admitted to the psychiatric ward.

The rest of the preparations that were needed before I could come to Washington and enter into the hospital were mostly to appease my mother, my grandmother, family members who had been --- who would question some of the events that were happening.

Before going into the hospital in May of ‘92 there was another person in the archeology program at USF who was --- who became involved. He was --- we were supposed to form a relationship that would --- that was a pretense to marriage. That was Lyle Torp.

When I was in the hospital, Lyle came to visit me every day. And when I got out of the hospital which was right before graduation, he was pursuing me, supposedly, romantically for the benefit of my friends from school, professors and my family.

My parents came down for --- came to Florida for graduation. Lyle came to the graduation party. About a week after graduation, we drove to New York to meet his parents, and we married on the way back from New York in Alexandria. That was on June l9th of ‘92. We then drove back to New York, told his parents, told my parents --- created that whole scenario --- and drove back to Florida.

When we got back to Florida, we started preparing to come to Washington. I discussed with my parents the probability that I would go to Catholic University, which Hechiche arranged enrollment because it was too late to apply and things like that. He made the arrangements with Bill Gardner from the anthropology department at Catholic U.

So, we came to Washington in August, about a week before classes started, and were able to start classes right away and get all that started.

When we came up to the area, we stayed with Lyle’s friend, Ed Mccabe, until --- Ed found us an apartment in silver Spring. We started courses. I was working. I bartended for a little while, and then Bill Gardner arranged for me to get an internship at the Smithsonian in the Museum of Natural History.

It wasn’t very much money. So, I continued to work bartending and waitressing. And we maintained that lifestyle. Lyle didn’t work at all during that time.

We maintained that until December of ‘92. I flew down to Florida in December to go over more details about Bashir. We weren’t sure exactly when --- -Hechiche and I were not sure exactly when I was going t’ start to try to form the relationship with him.

I was told not to try to have any contact at the restaurant or anywhere else like that with him until I could meet him in the hospital.

In December and January --- December of ‘92 and January of ‘93, I was supposed -- according to Hechiche’s dictation -- I was supposed to start having a relapse, as it were, of the posttraumatic stress symptoms. 

There were several events that led to the capitulation of the final event of me going in to the hospital in February. I knew that it was going to be an extend stay. I was trying to --- I had to justify a stay long enough to establish a firm relationship with Bashir.

Hechiche gave me the name of Dr. Burton Schoenfeld, who was the person who put me into Sibley Hospital on February 3rd, 1993.

I met with Schoenfeld one time before that, about a week before, and we, discussed the logistics of my going in, the same type of situation that had put me into the hospital in Florida, an attempted suicide, an attempted hanging.

I was to --- I went to see--- Lyle took me to see Schoenfeld at about 11 o’clock on the night of February 3rd, and he sent me from his office to the hospital, where I was admitted at about midnight.

To be convincing with the suicide attempt, we had to --- Lyle and I had to make marks on my neck that looked like I had tried to hang myself and fell, and he was supposed to have found me laying on the floor half conscious.

So, once I was in the hospital, I was in contact with Hechiche almost daily, just updating on the situation, on how my relationship with Bashir was progressing. Lyle and his friend, Ed, would come by almost daily as well to discuss the same things.

I would call Hechiche from the hospital from the patient’s phone billing my stepfather’s calling card, who -- I didn’t mention before, but in November or so of ‘92, my stepdad and Hechiche were meeting in Florida at the university. So, I knew that they were in contact and involved together.

I didn’t have a lot of meetings with Dr. Schoenfeld. It wasn’t a normal doctor/patient
relationship. We would come -— his visits were kind of erratic.
But in order for it to look real, like there was a reason for me to stay the amount of time I did, he and Hechiche suggested ECT to supposedly erase the bad memories to decrease the symptoms of posttraumatic stress.

I was very leery of going through that, but Schoenfeld assured me that it wouldn’t do any damage and I would be okay with it and that would justify the longer stay.

During that time, they also put me on a medication -- a lot of different kinds of medication before they started the ECT, which I guess is supposed

to justify giving the ECT because the medications were not supposed to work.

He prescribed either six or eight ECT treatments. I went through three of them and refused to take any more after that because they were making me completely dysfunctional.

I lost my memory for that period completely. I have ho memories of what was happening, what was going on. And I just felt very much out of control.

For the rest of the time, as I was -- the relationship between Bashir and myself was getting closer, more intense. Hechiche was telling me --guiding me and telling me to continue to get closer to him, to make him trust me, to talk to him a lot about different subjects and to encourage a sexual relationship with him at that time one of the difficulties that I had was that I felt that I was very suspect. One of the other people who I had been told about that had been put on Bashir before that Hechiche had briefed me about was Conrinna, who had entered the hospital supposedly with bulimia, under the supervision of Dr. -- or under the care of Dr. Schoenfeld as well.

And it was pretty much known that she was placed in a hospital for the purpose of getting close to Bashir. So, I felt that a lot of the nurses knew what was happening.

I was warned by -- or encouraged, guess -- by one of the nurses who I was close to —- her name was Dona -- and also by the neurologist, Dr. Kratz to kind of try to get out of the situation without saying it directly.

Dr. Kratz went so far as to give me a written note to say -- to leave the hospital, to change my name, to change my appearance, speak with an accent, not smile in public and stay away from Washington.

Bashir left the hospital the first week in April. It was kind of a predicament as to how to get me out of the hospital at that time because they had made so much effort to make it look like I needed to stay in.

So, it was decided mostly by Hechiche that I should leave without doctor’s consent. It was arranged a few days before. Dr. Schoenfeld came in on a Sunday morning -- they had agreed on the Friday before that I was to leave on Monday.

He came in on Sunday morning and attempted to make it look to one of the nurses like I was feeling very paranoid. And he prescribed -- he left the hospital, prescribed tranquilizers for me on Sunday night, which I didn’t take, and then he didn’t return to the hospital.

I was supposed to -- the nurse told me to take the tranquilizers and see him on -- talk to him on Monday morning about it. He didn’t come in on Monday or on Tuesday.

I was pretending to take the tranquilizers, but not taking them. And on Wednesday morning, I called Marvin Smith, who I had been put in contact with before I went into the hospital- I called him and he came around to the smoking area of Sibley and picked me up. And I left the hospital.

The plan at that time was to, first of all, talk to Bashir before I left and see what his reaction was -- would be if I left without my doctor’s permission. Bashir advised me against that, and I reported that to Hechiche.

So, the plan was then to contact him once I had already left the hospital and try to maintain my relationship with him outside of the hospital. I called him from Marvin’s friend’s home on Wednesday evening, and we agreed --- hold on a second.

So, I called Bashir from Marvin’s friend’s home, and we met at Tyson’s Corner Mall. He was willing to help me out. And this was over --- the week before Easter, he was going to go to North Carolina to visit his daughter, and he invited me to go along with him.

When we returned from North Carolina, he offered to let me stay in his apartment and I regained --- or I got in contact with Hechiche again.

While I was staying at Bashir’s apartment, my contact with Hechiche involved reporting to him where Bashir went, who he met with, his phone calls, reporting the phone numbers he had written down next to the phone, just general information like that.

There was nothing too serious involved at that point. It was just a basic surveillance kind of thing. And that went on for a couple of weeks.

And he told --- Hechiche told me at that point to go to Martin’s Tavern in Georgetown and somebody would meet me there to speak with me.

I got to the restaurant, and the bartender told me there was somebody there who wanted to buy me a drink. I went and spoke with this person, and he told me I was to go with him because he wanted to talk to me in private.

He and the bartender took me to an apartment in Bethesda where I stayed. That night, they asked me the same kind of questions that Hechiche was asking me on the phone.

Apparently, I wasn’t giving enough information. They weren’t happy with the amount of information I was giving. They basically interrogated me all night long and then kept me through the next day until the next evening when they told me to call Bashir and tell him I would be back around 11:00.

When I got back to the apartment, Emil Henoud was there. He had arrived from Lebanon. The person who I met in Martin’s Tavern was Andrew Miller, and the bartender was Mike Sullivan. He goes by the name of Sully. They were the two who interrogated me that night.

The following day, Lynette Newberry came to the apartment and I was told to keep in touch with her --- she lived in Georgetown --- and to kind of form a relationship with her as a secondary person, a secondary contact.

I attempted to call her a couple times but I wasn’t able to get a hold of her and I never spoke with her again, and I never talked to either of the man again either.

So, after the incident at --- after that incident, Hechiche was interested in getting more information from me, which I really didn’t have. I wasn’t --- Bashir didn’t make a lot of information available to me. And Emil was there all the time.

So, Hechiche told me to get close to Emil and get him to tell me what he and Bashir spoke about when they spoke in Arabic, because I couldn’t understand, and, again, to sleep with him if it was necessary, which only happened one time. And their conversations were mostly about George and Nancy, which Hechiche already knew about. So, he was less and less satisfied with what I was doing. His demands started increasing.

As we started to go out more, we went to a couple functions where Bashir had asked me to take pictures. And I mentioned this to Hechiche, and he said I wasn’t supposed to be doing that, to screw up the pictures, to get in the way of doing anything like that. We went to a fund raiser for George Mitchell that was a small affair at the home of Peter Tannous, a small dinner. And while we were there, I was approached by Simon Karam, who was at that time the Lebanese ambassador to the United States.

He approached me after the dinner and gave me his phone number and asked if I would like to go and play tennis and go sightseeing and things like that with him.

I, at the time, just thought it was kind of humorous, but when I told Hechiche about what happened, he was adamant that I contact him and go and meet with him. I talked to Bashir about whether or not I should call him, and he advised me not to.

So, I was kind of stuck. So, I told Hechiche that I did call him and left a message and he didn’t call back. And I just figured that if he did call me --- because he had my number and if he did call me, then I would go and meet with him.

At that point, we started talking about going away for the summer. We were going to go to Switzerland and to Israel and to Lebanon.

Before Lebanon was discussed, there were two other people who became -- who I became aware of that were involved in the situation that I was in contact with.

The first was Saba Shami, who I first met at the hospital the night of the Unsolved Mysteries program. I didn’t have any idea who he was at that point, except for a friend of Bashir’s. But later, it was --- Hechiche told me that he was part of the same group and, also, Christina Hacker and her friend, Jessica Johnson.

Christina was --- came into --- came in contact with Bashir about the same time that I did in the hospital, but she met him at the restaurant and she was kind of there as a backup in case I failed.

So, anyway, Saba was going to be married in Israel. So, we were going to tie in the trip to Switzerland with his wedding, travel to Israel, see the wedding. And after we’d planned on doing that, then Bashir mentioned going to Lebanon, which was only about a week before we left.

When he first mentioned it, I didn’t even take him seriously because he made it kind of an offhand remark. But then he said it again, which was when I told Hechiche about it.

And I was told in no uncertain terms to not go to Lebanon and, if I couldn’t get out of going to Lebanon, I should get out of going on the trip altogether, create some kind of a scene, create some kind of problem, so that Bashir wouldn’t want to take me into Lebanon.

It was getting more and more awkward to try to deal with the situation because they’re asking me to do things that weren’t natural, that weren’t normal, to create scenes, to create arguments.

Anyway, when I said that there was no way that I could get out of going on this trip with him without breaking the relationship, he said that we wouldn’t be able to get a visa to go to Lebanon anyway.

When we applied for the visa --- prior to him talking about me not getting a visa, I was --- I had the problem of obtaining a passport because I had left all my papers at the apartment I lived in with Lyle. I had no identification.

And so, Hechiche thought, obviously, wasn’t going to be able to get a passport, but Bashir was able to get one through contacts at the State Department.

And then when we applied for the visa for Lebanon, it was denied. And I knew through Bashir and his friend Mansour that it was denied by Simon Karam, but Bashir was able to get it through New York. So, we ended up getting the visa.

So, we had the visa to go to Lebanon and the tickets to go, and Hechiche was still telling me to try to get out of it or to do something to get out of it. And he told me to create a scene where the police would be called, which I did. And it didn’t make any difference. Bashir still took me on the trip.

So, we went to Switzerland first, and then we went to Israel the week before Saba’s wedding and traveled around Israel as tourists and then went back to Saba’s father’s home.

The day before the wedding, Saba had been advising me to go and see Itzak while I was there, but that was kind of difficult to do since I was with Bashir and Emil the whole time.

We did drive past the Moshav, and Emil asked me why I didn’t want to stop. And I told him it was too late in the day and we wouldn’t be able to get past the guards. So, I just left it at that.

We got back --- we went to Saba’s wedding, and we were planning on leaving the following afternoon for Lebanon. Saba was maintaining that I not go to Lebanon; if I went into Lebanon, something was going to happen. He had me extremely nervous, and I had no idea, you know, what would happen if I went.

The morning we were supposed to leave, I considered just staying in Israel, just leaving and going back and working on the Moshav and got to the point of packing my bag and getting ready to leave, and Bashir talked me into just calming down and going. He had no idea what was wrong with me.

So, when we left the airport in Tel Aviv, Bashir gave both our passports to the customs people and asked them not to stamp --- put the Israeli stamp in, which is the normal thing to do. And they didn’t stamp his passport, but they stamped mine.

So, I thought at that point that I was off the hook, that I wasn’t going to be able to get into the country because I had the stamp on my passport. But we had to fly through Cyprus first. And when we flew through Cyprus, we went to the American consulate and they issued me a new passport on the spot.

So, we went to Lebanon that afternoon. And while we were there --- we were there three weeks. So, our trip to Lebanon, first of all, coincided with the firing of Simon Karam.

The only other event that took place while we were there that was any --- that was related in any way was I was going to visit the anthropology department at the American University of Beirut. I thought that one of my professors --- Emil told me that one of my professors was there.

So, when I tried to contact the professor who I thought was there at AUB, I ended up getting a visit by two other men who didn’t give me their names, who at first told me they were from the university, but then they began asking questions about how I knew Bashir, and what he was doing there and why I was there, just pretty general, non-threatening.

I don’t know who they’re related to or anything like that. And that was the only thing that happened. So, we returned to Washington in August.

At that point, I didn’t want to get back in touch with Hechiche. I didn’t want to continue anything that had been happening before. I thought there was some way that I could end it myself, but I found out that it was pretty much impossible.

I was --- Hechiche --- first, I got a phone call at our apartment, and I was told to Call Colonel Bowers from a pay phone. And I didn’t understand why. So, I called Hechiche to see what was happening, and he told me not to call him anymore, not to be in any contact with him and to deal with Bowers instead.

So, when I spoke to Bowers, I always had to call him from pay phones. The job or whatever you want to call it increased from surveillance to being more destructive, causing more problems. Whenever there was an event coming up that was significant, I was supposed to make a scene or cause a problem to divert Bashir’ s attention from it.

For instance, there was a book signing --- party at the restaurant that Bashir had wanted me to go and help out at, and Bowers told me that definitely couldn’t go. I didn’t know how I was going to get out of it.

So, he told me to go and to get --- to basically induce a seizure by taking Sleepinol (phonetic), which is an over-the-counter sleeping medication. He told me how many to take.

Unfortunately, when Bashir came in and saw me, he thought I had just had too much to drink and passed out. He didn’t realize that it was --- you know, that it was supposed to be a seizure or something like that. So, it didn’t make any difference.

There were a few other incidents in between. It was a continuous effort to cause a lot of problems.

The Sleepinol incident was not for the book-signing party. It was on the day I was calling congressmen to invite them to the peace dinner that Bashir was planning at the restaurant for Jews and Palestinians- Arab-Americans and Jewish-Americans.

And I was halfway through my phone calls when I spoke with Hechiche, and he told me definitely do not call anybody else. And I said how am I going to stop from doing what I’m supposed to be doing here, and that’s when he told me to take the Sleepinol.

The book-signing party, I just had to fake an illness. So, what ended up happening was I had a tuna sandwich for lunch and pretended that I got sick from that. It didn’t make any difference at all. Bashir still went to the party and carried on.

And about a week and a half before the peace party was to take place, I was sent to 1 Washington Circle by Hechiche --- I’m sorry, by Bowers --- to meet with somebody.

And I was also supposed to create some kind of a scene with Bashir to distract him from continuing the planning for the party and to --- just to create disturbances and cause a lot of problems for him.

I went to 1 Washington Circle. I was approached by a man who wrote down his name and phone number on a napkin for me. He said he was from the State Department.

He didn’t really ask me a lot of questions, but he wanted an invitation to the party, which I was never able to get to him because when we left that --- I had Bashir meet me at 1 Washington Circle.

When we left, I created a huge scene outside the bar, and the Secret Service arrived almost immediately. And I went to stay in a --- he put me in a hotel for that night --- for the next couple of nights.

Bashir put me in a hotel that night, and the next night I was advised by both Saba and Bowers to get back into the apartment one way or the other.

I was supposed to carry on this relationship and show that I cared about him and that I needed him and all these other things and create this erratic behavior at the same time.

I was saying that this wasn’t going to work, that he was going to throw me out. They were telling me --- Bowers and Saba were telling me to stay there and be with him and continue doing what I was doing. And it just wasn’t happening

So, on the 18th of November, I, again, was thrown out and I went to stay at the Super 8 Motel in Washington. I had nothing with me, no clothes, no money, anything. I contacted Saba first.

When I first spoke to him on the phone, he said that he would help me out or they would help me out, as he put it, and get me started on something else,

When I left the apartment, I took Bashir’s wallet and phone book and business cards that were sitting on the counter. And the night that I left --- okay.

So, when I --- I was told before I left if anything happened and I was forced to leave the

apartment or I felt like I needed to leave quickly, I should grab whatever personal effects of Bashir’s I could, such as his briefcase, his phone book, his business cards, his wallet, things like that.

So when I left, what I was able to grab were the wallet, the business cards and the phone book. Since I didn’t have anything with me, I went ever to a restaurant bar across the street, Nick’s, and called Saba from there.

He told me to go across the Street to the Windham and call him back, which I did. When I called him back, he had me wait there for him for a while. He called me back and said that the doorman would take what I had and then take me somewhere to stay --- I’m sorry --- he would take me to the restaurant to stay at the restaurant that night and in the morning, Jackie, who was Bashir’s sister, would help me out and probably put me at the Comfort Inn or somewhere like that.

I didn’t want to go to the restaurant because that would just --- I was really tired of creating these kind of problems.

So, I tried to go to a hotel and use the credit card --- use Bashir’s credit card, but it had been canceled. So, I had nowhere else to go, and I went down and stayed at the restaurant that night.

So, I gave the wallet, the business cards and the phone book to the doorman, who was -- I don’t know his name --- an Ethiopian guy. And he took me down --- he took me first to a hotel and then, when I couldn’t get in there, he took me down to the restaurant or a few blocks away from the restaurant and dropped me there and gave me money --- enough money to get a cab the rest of the way to the restaurant.

So, Friday morning, I went to Super 8. I talked to Jackie that morning. She gave me $50 to go, and I went to stay there because it was the cheapest place I could find quickly, and I called Saba.

Saba had told me that he would help me out, he would give me or --- they would help me out, as he said. He came to the hotel, he wasn’t able to help me out financially.

He gave me enough money for the hotel for two nights, and he told me to call Khalil Aburich, who is --- he owns a limousine service and a travel agency and basically is --- runs a prostitution service for diplomats and people like that.

So, I called Aburich on Saturday morning, and he said that he would call me that afternoon and we would meet that evening and discuss possibilities. So, I called Aburich Saturday morning.

We were to meet that --- or he was going to call me back and we were going to meet that evening. That day, I was trying to call Bashir. He wasn’t answering my call. I talked to Jackie. She said that I should call Lyle because he said --- he had told her that he would help me out.

I hadn’t spoken to Lyle all summer. So, anyway, I called him. He and Ed came to the hotel. Ed stayed outside in the car, and Lyle came up and basically drew up a plan or showed me the plan that they had drawn up, which was, to appease my mother, to go and see her for a couple days, come back and go directly into the hospital and stay there for a couple of months.

I questioned on what grounds I was to go in. He said it didn’t matter, but that was what I should do. There Was no mention --- or I asked what I was supposed to do when I got out of the hospital, how the situation was going to be different. He couldn't answer that.

While he was there, Aburich called and meet him at the Park Hyatt --- told me to meet me at the Park Wyatt. So, that night I went.

At the Park Hyatt, Aburich introduced me to several people, including Munther Al-Mantheri, who is a diplomat from Oman, and I ended up staying at his home for the next several weeks.

On the 1st of December, instigated by Saba, I had a meeting at the Park Hyatt with Itzak and Bowers. Saba had met with them before me. He came down to the lounge area. I went up to the room. Bowers was kind of sitting back in the corner. Itzak was threatening. At that point, I had three choices.

I had screwed up with Bashir. So, my three choices were either to go into the hospital, to stay with Aburich’s group and basically in a prostitution situation or to go to Oman and be trained over there for the pursuit of Omani intelligence work.

I didn’t want to accept any of the three choices that were given to me. I had just had it with the whole situation. I called Bashir on the 13th of December, and he asked me to meet him forlunch. I went back and stayed with him through the 17th

During that week, I wrote a preliminary paper that listed most of the names and part of the situation that I was involved in. I didn’t give a lot of details, but I put it together a little bit for him.

I was very nervous during that week because I didn’t know how he was going to react, didn’t know what was going to happen and, by the end of the week, I decided just to leave.

So, I left and went to the Key Bridge Marriott, where at first I tried to call my family, thinking maybe that I could get some help from them, that was kind of a dead end street. So, I ended up going back to Munther’s.

When I left on the 17th, Bashir showed the papers that I had written to Saba. Saba called me early the next week, and he said this has gone too far. And he wanted me to meet with Bashir with him and deny everything and say that everything I wrote was under duress.

By this point, everybody knew that I wasn’t cooperating. Nobody knew what to do. Nobody knew in which direction to turn. Bowers had told me not to be in contact with Bashir before I went and met him for lunch the first time. So, he knew that I wasn’t listening to him.

At that point, I wasn’t supposed to call him directly anymore. I was supposed to call this person. Randy, who I had never met, who was staying at my brother’s home in Michigan.

In January, I went to Michigan, thinking that possibly my family could help me. Again, I was intercepted by my stepfather before I could talk to anyone else. He was extremely nervous. He put me in contact with Bowers. They wanted me to stay in Marquette and not come back out here.

When I did come back, I spoke with Bowers, and he told me if anything happened, that I wasn’t to contact them anymore and the only person I could contact was my priest, Father Sharbel in Philadelphia.

After returning from Marquette, Bashir and I started driving. We drove around the country, during which time I told him more details of the situation, gave him the rest of the names and made it clear what was happening and that I was still in contact with the people.

We went to Vancouver to see ---stopped and saw my father, who was in town for a brief time. He seemed to be familiar with the whole situation, He mentioned Bowers at the beginning of our meeting. And his advice to me the next day before we left was if I ignore everybody long enough, they’ll just go away.

The next contact was On March 30th. Lyle contacted Bashir and said that he had to speak with me about signing some papers and going over a few things about the divorce.

I met with him that evening. He was very nervous at first, and we sat down. I told him I only had a few minutes. When I got up to go, he grabbed me and sat me down. And I became very intimidated and frightened. And he spent the next hour and a half or so threatening that if I pursued any legal action, I could be kidnapped. I was supposed to go with him that evening to meet with somebody else to explain the situation about Bashir because somebody else was going to be placed on him, different threats like that.

He continued to try to call until April 14th -- through April 14th, and there hasn’t been a contact since.

The only other person who I failed to mention significantly was Ed Mccabe. He was --- he’s been it the picture since before the wedding of Lyle and myself. His --- during December and January of ‘92, he was constantly around me.

There was one day when I was attacked in the parking garage of the Metro station on my way to work and threatened and burned with the end of a gun.

Anyway, I didn’t go to work. I went directly home --- It was about 10 o’clock in the morning when Ed called to see if everything was okay when he should have been at work and he wouldn’t have known that anybody was at home.

I didn’t think about it much at the time, but, of course, I said no, I wasn’t okay and he came over. And he took the next two weeks off of work and stayed there with me the whole time.

One other significant thing is that once I began to tell Bashir things, they wanted me to cover it by giving this information and implicating people such as Khalil Jeahshan or other people who were important in Bashir’s life who it would hurt him to think that they were involved in this situation. And the people who were to be implicated were people who were part of the Arab-American leadership community.

(Whereupon, the above proceedings were concluded.)