Sunday, June 20, 2010

By Reviewed by John French

"Finding Chandra"

By Scott Higham and Sari Horwitz Scribner, $26

If you remember only one news story from the year 2001, it is undoubtedly the story of 9/11 -- the catastrophic terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

But, as I vividly recall, there was another, earlier story that year that preempted television news and dominated newspaper front pages. It was the riveting, baffling account of the disappearance, on or about May 1, of a 24-year-old Washington, D.C., government intern named Chandra Levy.

Chandra was a graduate student at the University of Southern California. She wanted a career in law enforcement. To that end, she, like 20,000 other young Americans every year who seek careers in the public sector, headed to Washington, D.C., for an internship in a government agency -- in Chandra's case, the Federal Bureau of Prisons.

But Chandra's tragic destiny was totally unlike that of any of her fellow interns. Her story and the related stories of police incompetence and media overreaching are recounted in gripping and highly readable detail in "Finding Chandra," by Scott Higham and Sari Horwitz, both of whom covered the Chandra mystery for The Washington Post and are recipients of Pulitzer Prizes for investigative reporting.

Violent death in our nation's capital was so commonplace in 2001 that it seldom raised an eyebrow. What was different about Chandra was, first, that she was white, college-educated and affluent whereas most D.C. victims were black and poor. (Indeed, many blacks considered the frenzied coverage of Chandra's disappearance to be racist.) Then, too, there was Chandra's relationship to those who inhabited Washington's corridors of power.

Chandra came from a well-to-do doctor's family in a central California congressional district that tended to elect conservative Democrats to Congress. In 2001, the district's representative was Gary Condit, a 10-year congressman in his early 50s whom many women considered handsome and charismatic.

Chandra took a friend to see Condit in the hope he might know of a job for her. The friend got a job in Condit's office. Chandra got Condit, and vice versa.

Rep. Condit was married and the father of two children but that did not deter him from embarking on affairs with other women as the opportunity arose. He was shrewd and discreet. None of his illicit liaisons surfaced until Chandra's disappearance brought them to light.

O.K., you ask, what happened to Chandra? It took many months for the police to answer even part of that question but here is a preview. When Chandra's course work at USC was completed, her Bureau of Prisons internship came to an end. This provided an opportunity for her to return to California for the USC graduation ceremony, where she was to receive her master's degree. Having no immediate job prospects, she decided (without telling Congressman Condit) to give up her Washington apartment.

On May 1, with half-packed suitcases scattered around her apartment, Chandra wanted some exercise. Using her computer, she began to prospect for likely hiking trails in Washington's beautiful, forested Rock Creek Park. Clad in workout clothes, Chandra left her apartment and was never seen alive again by anyone who knew her.

What followed is meticulously described by Higham and Horwitz, and it is maddening. Chandra's telephone answering machine was full and several of the calls were from Condit. When this led the investigators to him, and the press learned of his involvement, a mammoth media frenzy erupted.

It was almost summer -- Washington's slow season -- so the D.C. press corps filled the void by endlessly recounting everything it (or the police) could dig up on Condit. This included a detailed account by Chandra's aunt of Chandra's affair with Condit as well as emerging revelations by other women about their affairs with him.

Of course, all of this ultimately destroyed Condit's career but, in the short run, it mesmerized the police and prosecutors who followed every conceivable lead about Condit and ignored possibilities that pointed toward any other suspect. One electronically inept detective even damaged Chandra's computer, delaying for many weeks the discovery of her search for Rock Creek Park hiking trails.

Prosecutors and investigators assigned to the case often disagreed and failed to follow each other's theories. The D.C. police neglected leads provided by the Park Police, who have jurisdiction over Rock Creek Park, and the Park Police failed to share relevant information, including information about the man who eventually became the prime suspect.

One senior police official held almost daily press conferences that revealed information far better kept secret from anyone who had abducted or harmed Chandra.

Complicating the investigative challenge was the fact that many eccentric people advanced theories that the police were then obliged to check out. Example: Condit arranged to have Chandra drugged and transported to Dubai, where she was sold into sexual slavery.

The media were so eager to report news of Condit, his wife and his girlfriends that they made up facts. Meetings and conversations that never occurred were reported and then relayed around the world as gospel truth. (When I say "around the world" I do not exaggerate. The Chandra/Condit story was circulated by newspapers in Australia, Great Britain and China.)

The principled refusal of Dan Rather and the CBS Evening News to report on the story absent genuinely new and genuinely relevant facts caused the program to be ridiculed by competing cable-news-show hosts, who repeated items on the investigation every 15 minutes.

Finally, the D.C. police were compelled to give up on Condit. Not even their tunnel vision could get them past the fact that Condit's wife, who was in Washington for a high-profile event hosted by Laura Bush, spent a week with Condit at precisely the time of Chandra's disappearance.

But, you ask again, what really happened to Chandra? The answer is we cannot yet be sure. Chandra's badly decomposed body was found in Rock Creek Park a year after she disappeared. Police have charged an illegal immigrant from El Salvador named Ingmar Guandique who is currently serving a 10-year prison sentence for attacking two women in the park about the same time Chandra vanished. His trial in the Chandra Levy case is scheduled for October of this year. Stay tuned.