“Special Agent Memphis, the government’s case is extremely weak. Your own officers will testify that no doors were locked between Mrs. McDowell and themselves. There were no firearms, nor weapons of any sort, found within, according to your own evidence team. No marks of bondage were discovered or documented. No bruises, no abrasions, no physical evidence of any kind of abuse has been documented, nor can it be. At no time did the woman merely say, ‘I wish to go home.’ Had she, compliance would have been immediate.”

“She tells a different story, and the situation as discovered by the SWAT team—four men grilling a single woman under harsh lighting—is itself prima facie evidence of most of the charges. Moreover, the courts have long held that psychological intimidation—the suggestion, the intimation, the subtle inference of force—is force. Bruises are not necessary, only witness testimony of intimidation as to direction.”

“Our position is unassailable: the woman discovered to be representing herself under false identification was asked to discuss her presence on private property after hours. She agreed to do so. That discussion was ongoing when the officers—well, we can’t say burst in, since no bursting was necessary through the unlocked doors—but they strolled in. That is all that happened.”

“If Mrs. McDowell represented a threat to you, you had recourse to the law: merely phone the police. She would have been taken into custody, examined, and her case processed as the law found. You had no right to take her captive, to threaten her—verbally or nonverbally—with violence, and to detain her. This is true whether she’s an FBI contract employee or not. It further seems that your true methodology here was deprivation, as you meant to wear her down by denying her sleep. That is torture, by any definition. It is actionable, if we deem it appropriate.”

Kasim replied that Mrs. McDowell was hardly irreproachable herself. “It turns out she had appointed herself a one-woman crusade and has bedeviled your security forces with paranoid conspiracy stories of Islamic evil for years. We are sympathetic, given the tragic loss of her son, but only to a point. The fact is, her irrationality has been long documented, I am learning, and more evidence will be forthcoming. That makes her an unreliable witness. On top of that, I can promise you adverse publicity, demonstrations and other sorts of highly unflattering and bothersome attention, if you proceed with this issue. I hope you do. I think the good people of the United States would be interested to learn their tax dollars were being spent on wild-goose chases of purely anti-Islamic hate under the aegis of a crazy woman. I’m sure allegations of an out-of-control Bureau would not be welcome, given the situation you find yourself in.”