Fact and Fiction: Mayer and LeCarre

I recently read two books that went together like cakes and ale, although not quite so pleasantly. One, Jane Mayer’s The Dark Side is, as the sub-title says, “The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned into a War on American Ideals.” The other is John Le Carré’s new novel, A Most Wanted Man, a chilling page turner featuring a British banker and a young German lawyer who try to save a Muslim refugee caught up in the “War on Terror” described so eloquently in Mayer’s book.
Mayer offers ample proof for her thesis that the Bush Administration “invoked the fear flowing from the attacks on September 11 to institute a policy of deliberate cruelty that would have been unthinkable on September 10.” Allowing that extreme measures were “perhaps understandable” in the dark days right after the attack on the Twin Towers, Mayer argues that years later the Administration’s “counterterrorism policies remained largely frozen in place.” She also details the legal machinations that went on to ensure that those involved at the highest levels would escape prosecution at a future time. Not surprisingly, she identifies the villain in the story as Vice-President Cheney
Mayer’s book, which spares its audience few details of the evils done in America’s name, is troubling reading. A Most Wanted Man echoes its message in fictional form, giving the administration’s doings a human face. Issa is a ill young Muslim refugee with a mysterious history and a claim to money deposited long ago in a private bank in Hamburg by his Russian father—not that he wants the money for himself, no, he wants to help his fellow Chechens. His lawyer, an idealistic young woman called Annabel, determines to save him and enlists the help of Tommy Brue, the aging proprietor of a private bank that is on the outs. Together they battle the German and British and American intelligence services—each with a different agenda--that are determined to use Issa to capture bigger fish. In the end the good guys fail, and they fail in large part because of the demands of the Americans, who consider Issa dispensable even if he isn’t guilty. The last Annabel and Brue see of the boy, he is spread-eagled on the floor of a van as it speeds away, guarded by men in black balaclavas and jumpsuits. The scene brings to life Mayer’s description of the renditions that the US has carried out under the auspices of the Bush administration.