The Not-So-Public Enemy
Commentary: What would Usama bin Laden be doing in Montclair, New Jersey, anyway?
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Usama bin Laden, the alleged terrorist mastermind, is wanted by the FBI. No surprise there. What did surprise me, however, was to see bin Laden's face on a "Wanted by the FBI" poster on the wall of a post office in North Bergen, New Jersey. Like many of us, when I go to the post office I always check out the "Wanted" posters. There's something about those grim faces that adds a thrill to the ordinariness of buying stamps or dropping letters in the mail. Bin Laden's photo brought me up short; among the others, he stood out. His neat white turban got my attention, for starters. And below that, the face—rather narrow, smooth, bearded, almost young—looked back at the observer without guile, even affably.
The FBI puts these notices in post offices because it hopes the public will become informed about certain fugitives and perhaps even aid in their capture. Willing to do my part, I studied bin Laden's poster in every detail. I read what he was wanted for: "Murder of U.S. Nationals Outside the U.S.; Conspiracy to Murder U.S. Nationals Outside the U.S.; Attack on a Federal Facility Resulting in Death." Then, his aliases: "Usama bin Muhammad bin Ladin, Shaykh Usama bin Ladin, the Prince, the Emir, Abu Abdallah, Mujahid Shaykh, Hajj, and the Director." He was born in 1957. The poster does not mention his high school, but he would have been Class of '75. So far he was pretty much as I'd imagined him. When I got to his physical statistics, however, I had to back up and read them again:
Height: 6'4" to 6'6"
Weight: 140 to 160
Build: Thin
Thin? I'll say he's thin. A more accurate description might be "Really, Really Thin." The guy's a beanpole! What the FBI is telling us is that bin Laden might weigh as little as 140 pounds and be as tall as 6 feet 6 inches. Even if he weighs 160 and stands 6'4", he's a string. Let's assume he's somewhere in between—say, 150 pounds and 6 feet 5. A guy like that would have to run around in the shower to get wet! If he drank tomato juice, he'd look like a thermometer! (Insert your own "thin" joke here.) I mean, this is one skinny terrorist (alleged). Not to mention tall! Plus you've got six inches of turban on top of that. A note at the bottom of the FBI poster adds, "Walks with a cane." So the picture emerges of a really tall, really skinny young-looking middle-aged guy walking with a cane thinking about ways to blow up lots of U.S. citizens (if news stories are to be believed) and writing poetry about the bombings (also according to the news) after they occur.
Next question: What would he be doing in suburban New Jersey? The FBI clearly believes there's a chance he might be here, and not in his rumored mountain fastnesses in Afghanistan—or else why go to the trouble of putting up the poster? As I think back, I recall that one or two of the guys who blew up the World Trade Center frequented a house around the corner from where I used to live in Brooklyn. So looking for him in New Jersey isn't completely far-fetched. But hanging out here would be a big mistake on his part, it seems to me. A skinny stick of a guy with a cane and a turban reading a bomb-making manual is going to draw stares. Plus, he would not be by himself; anyone with nicknames like "the Emir" and "the Director" is going to have an entourage. Considering that your average person is not such a long drink of water, the guys around him will probably be a head shorter than he. A group like that would be easy to spot, even among the Jersey commuters at the Port Authority bus terminal.
In time, reading the poster again and again, I felt I really got to know this man. It said that he had once been a construction executive—who'd've guessed—and described his complexion, somewhat improbably, as "olive." I had no doubt I could recognize bin Laden on the street. When I saw his name in the newspaper or on TV, I felt a small tingle of familiarity, as if he were a distant acquaintance or a person from my old hometown. You would think that a supposed public enemy of bin Laden's stature would have his "Wanted" poster displayed everywhere, but strangely, I never saw it anyplace but that one post office. Stranger still, when I went to other post offices, I noticed that some had no "Wanted" posters on display at all. Indeed, the "Wanted" poster, as a post office fixture, suddenly seemed to be disappearing under my nose.
First it was the main post office in Montclair, New Jersey—one day it had a large gallery of alleged rogues behind a glass frame by the door; the next, the whole display, frame and all, had vanished with no trace. Another post office I often go to in the same town used to have a handy clipboard with a big selection of "Wanted" posters hanging from a pillar right next to where you stand in line. One day I turned to it, hoping to pass a few minutes of waiting time, and the clipboard wasn't there. I asked the retail associate (the post office no longer uses the word clerk) behind the counter and she told me the postmaster had recently received a directive ordering that all "Wanted" posters be taken down.
She gave me the number of the district official of the post office from whom the directive had come. I called him at the district headquarters in Newark—his name is Dominick Balestro and his title is retail specialist. Dominick Balestro said, "Yes, those 'Wanted' posters will no longer be on display. They'll be available behind the counter to customers who request them, but they won't be plastered all over the place like they were before. At the post office we're trying to create a retail environment pleasing to the eye, and those 'Wanted' posters are not pretty pictures. They're not the image of the post office we want our customers to have. We want a bright, positive, clutter-free lobby to advertise our products and services."
Mr. Balestro had himself received a directive on the subject from Gloria Cheek, on the staff of the retail marketing group at U.S. Postal Service headquarters in Washington, D.C. I called her, and she said that removing the "Wanted" posters from display in all lobbies is the post office's national policy, and it's not new. It has been in effect since 1992. She said that any post office that displays "Wanted" posters (except for one or two having to do with postal crimes) is in violation of that policy, and eventually will have to comply, although she understands that old habits die hard. She said that in the past the post office was practically the only place where people looking for information about criminals could see those notices, but nowadays there are other venues, such as "America's Most Wanted" on TV.
Gloria Cheek said that studies have shown that the average customer can take in only four or five messages in a retail environment, and that the old post office lobby, with its army recruitment ads and "Wanted" posters and Selective Service notices, was too confusing. The Postal Service wants to give its customers clarity of message and access to information in a clean retail space similar to that provided by its competitors in the mail- and package-delivery business. People who specifically need to look at the "Wanted" posters—law enforcement officers and bounty hunters, for example—will still be able to see them by asking at the counter. Nostalgia for the past is fine, she said, but the post office is concerned with providing customers the modern retail services they desire. "We can't do everything we used to do. We add new services and we have to shed old ones. We can't be buggy-whip manufacturers," Gloria Cheek said.
I tried to explain to Gloria Cheek my fascination with the bin Laden poster, but I sounded feckless and hesitant, like a 10-year-old talking about a really neat tree fort he planned to build. Her no-nonsense silence daunted me, and my voice trailed away. This happens to me often when I talk to grown-ups older or younger than I. In the face of arguments invoking efficiency, fairness, and getting with the program, I crumble every time. Of course it's good that the post office wants to be more efficient; no one dislikes standing in line more than I do.
And what is gained, in the end, by idling over a "Wanted" poster for bin Laden, daydreaming about meeting up with him at the A&P? The proper time and place for such fantasies is while watching "America's Most Wanted" in your own home, along with the rest of the country. At the post office from now on I will enter the retail environment, take in its four or five messages, do my errands, and be on my way. Thinking about bin Laden doesn't get my letters mailed. It's not my business to think about the guy—I'm not a bounty hunter, after all.
