The framing of DSK: One afternoon in Manhattan By Edward Jay Epstein
Dominique Strauss-Kahn: what really happened in the New York hotel?
Dominique Strauss-Kahn awoke on Saturday May 14 in the presidential suite of the Sofitel New York hotel knowing he was supposed to be en route to Paris that afternoon ahead of a Berlin meeting with Angela Merkel, the German chancellor. Instead, the head of the International Monetary Fund and leading contender to unseat Nicolas Sarkozy as president of France in the April 2012 election would by that time be under arrest.
He was to find himself indicted by a New York grand jury on seven counts of attempted rape, sexual assault and unlawful imprisonment, placed under house arrest for more than a month and, two weeks before all the charges were dismissed by the prosecutor on August 23, sued for sexual abuse by the alleged victim.
DSK, as he is universally known, knew he had a problem with a smartphone, the one he called his IMF BlackBerry. This was the device he used to send and receive texts and emails for both personal and IMF business. According to several people close to him, he received a text message that morning from a friend temporarily working as a researcher at the Paris offices of the UMP, Mr Sarkozy’s centre-right political party. She warned Mr Strauss-Kahn that at least one private email, which he had recently sent via the BlackBerry to his wife Anne Sinclair, had been read at the UMP offices.
Indeed, he had already been warned by a friend in the French diplomatic corps that an effort would be made to embarrass him with a scandal. The warning that his BlackBerry might have been hacked thus gave him reason to suspect he might be under electronic surveillance in New York.
At 10.07 he called his wife in Paris and, in a conversation that lasted about six minutes, asked her to contact a friend who could arrange to have it examined by an expert in such matters. DSK himself had no time to do anything about it that morning. He had scheduled an early lunch with his 26-year-old daughter Camille, a graduate student at Columbia university who wanted to introduce him to her new boyfriend. After that, he had to get to John F. Kennedy airport in time to catch his 4.40pm flight to Paris. He was in the thick of sensitive negotiations being conducted for the IMF to stave off the eurozone crisis.
He finished packing his suitcase just before noon, according to his own account, and then took a shower in a bathroom connected to the bedroom in the suite by an interior corridor. According to the hotel’s electronic key records, which were provided to DSK’s lawyers, Nafissatou Diallo, a maid, entered the suite (room 2806) between 12.06 and 12.07. Phone records show that by 12.13 he was speaking to Camille on his BlackBerry. The call lasted 40 seconds.
What took place between Mr Strauss-Kahn and the maid in those six to seven intervening minutes is a matter of dispute. DNA evidence found outside the bathroom door showed her saliva mixed with his semen. The prosecutor concluded that a “hurried sexual encounter” took place; Mr Strauss-Kahn’s lawyers have admitted as much, while saying what happened was consensual.
It is not clear when the maid left the room, since key card records do not show times of exit. What is known is that Mr Strauss-Kahn called his daughter on his IMF BlackBerry at 12.13 to tell her he would be late. DSK then dressed, picked up his overnight bag and briefcase and took the lift to the lobby. Hotel security cameras show him leaving at 12.28. He had to go eight blocks to the McCormick & Schmick’s restaurant on Sixth Avenue between 51st and 52nd Street. Traffic was heavy and the restaurant camera shows he arrived at 12.54.
Lunch, then lurid allegations
Camille was with her new boyfriend. They had a quick meal and at 2.15pm according to the restaurant’s surveillance cameras, Mr Strauss-Kahn got in a taxi to go to the airport. Almost immediately, he discovered that his IMF BlackBerry was missing. It was the phone that he had arranged to have examined for bugs in Paris, and that contained the text warning him about the interception of his messages. At 2.16 he called Camille, who had also just left the restaurant, on his spare BlackBerry and had her go back to search for it. Camera footage at the restaurant shows her crawling under the table. At 2.28 she texted him to say she could not find it. So DSK continued to the airport.
Back at the Sofitel, meanwhile, Ms Diallo had told hotel security she had been sexually assaulted by a guest in the presidential suite. A 32-year-old immigrant from the west African state of Guinea, she had been working at the Sofitel for three years.
After she had left Mr Strauss-Kahn around 12.13pm, the time of his call to Camille, she remained on the VIP floor. The hotel’s electronic key records indicate that at 12.26 Ms Diallo entered room 2820, which she had already been in several times that morning. Then, one to two minutes later, she went back to the now empty presidential suite. A few minutes after that, she encountered her supervisor in the corridor. Ms Diallo asked what would happen if a guest took advantage of a hotel employee. When pressed, she said she had been assaulted by the man in the presidential suite.
The supervisor brought her to Renata Markozani, the head of housekeeping, who entered the presidential suite with Ms Diallo at 12.42, according to the key records, and notified the hotel’s security and management personnel. At 12.52, the 5ft 10in (1.78 metre) tall maid is to be seen arriving in her beige uniform at the hotel’s security office on the ground floor accompanied by Ms Markozani.
Shortly thereafter the hotel’s own security team was augmented by John Sheehan, a security expert who is identified on LinkedIn as safety and security director for Accor, the French group that owns the Sofitel. Mr Sheehan, who was at home that morning in Washingtonville, New York, received a call from the Sofitel at 1.03pm. He rushed to the hotel. While en route, according to his cellphone records, he called a number with a 646 prefix in the US. On calling the number for the purposes of this article, a man with a French accent answered and asked who at Accor was being sought.
The man this reporter asked to talk to – but was not put through to – was René-Georges Querry, a well-connected former chief of the French anti-gang brigades and, as head of security for Accor Group, Mr Sheehan’s superior. At the time Mr Sheehan was making his own call, Mr Querry was arriving at a football match in Paris where he would be seated in the box of Mr Sarkozy. Mr Querry denies receiving any information about the unfolding drama at the Sofitel until after DSK was taken into custody about four hours later.
Triumphalism and mystery men
Another person at Accor Mr Sheehan could have alerted was Xavier Graff, who as group duty officer in Paris was responsible that weekend for handling emergencies at its hotels. His name emerged only five weeks later when he sent a bizarre email to his friend Colonel Thierry Bourret, the head of an environment and public health agency, claiming credit for “bringing down” Mr Strauss-Kahn. After the email was leaked to Le Figaro, the French daily, Mr Graff described it as a joke (it resulted, however, in his suspension by Accor).
But like Mr Querry, Mr Graff denied receiving any calls or messages from New York until later that evening, telling a French newspaper that the failure to inform him was an “incredible miss”.
By the time Mr Sheehan was called by the hotel at 1:03pm, Ms Diallo was seated on a bench in the hotel’s ground-floor service area. Surveillance camera footage shows her entering the area with a tall unidentified man at 12:52. She remains there until 2:05. At 12:56 she is joined by Brian Yearwood, the hotel’s chief engineer. Mr Yearwood had just come down from the presidential suite on the 28th floor, which he had entered at 12:51, according to the key records. Mr Yearwood remained close to Ms Diallo as she spoke to Adrian Branch, the security chief for the hotel, who remained behind the half-shut door of the security office. She can be seen gesturing with her hands for about four minutes, pointing to different parts of her body over and over again, suggesting she was telling and retelling her story.
At 1:28 Mr Sheehan, still on the way to the hotel, sent a text message to Mr Yearwood, then another text to an unidentified recipient at 1:30. At 1:31 – an hour after Ms Diallo had first told her supervisor she had been assaulted by the client in the presidential suite – Mr Branch placed a 911 emergency call to the police. Less than two minutes later, the footage from the two surveillance cameras shows Mr Yearwood and an unidentified man walking from the security office to an adjacent area. This is the same unidentified man who had accompanied Ms Diallo to the security office at 12:52. There, the two men high-five each other, clap their hands and do what looks like a dance of celebration that lasts for three minutes.
At 2:05pm, the footage shows two uniformed police officers arriving and then accompanying Ms Diallo to an adjoining office. It is unclear whether the police officially took over the case at this time or later. There is so far no explanation for why the security staff had delayed the call to the NYPD that would lead to a scandal involving the possible future president of France. What is clear is that they did so just three minutes after receiving a message from Mr Sheehan. Nor is it clear why the two men were celebrating.
More than another hour later, at 3:28pm, the police took her to St Luke’s Hospital, where she was medically examined and they formally interviewed her. She described to them a brutal and sustained sexual attack in which Mr Strauss-Kahn locked the suite door, dragged her into the bedroom, down the inner corridor to a spot close to the bathroom door – a distance of about 40ft (12 metres) – and, after attempting to assault her both anally and vaginally, forced her twice to perform fellatio. After that, she fled the suite.
As has been seen, according to the electronic key information and the record of Mr Strauss-Kahn’s call to his daughter showing him speaking to her at 12.13, it might be reasonable to conclude that any such actions could have taken place only within a period of six or seven minutes.
Arrest at the airport
At 3.01pm, as Mr Strauss-Kahn was approaching the airport, he was still attempting to find his missing phone. He attempted to call it from his spare but received no answer. What he did not know was that at 12.51, according to the records of the BlackBerry company, it had been somehow disabled. At 3.29, evidently unaware of what was happening at the Sofitel, he called the hotel from the taxi. He asked if his phone had been found.
When he was called back 13 minutes later, he told a hotel employee that he was at JFK airport. The police rushed there and, at 4:45, called him off the flight and took him into custody.
Then followed the arrest and indictment. The court eventually dropped all charges because the prosecutors found that Ms Diallo had proved to be an untruthful witness. They wrote in the motion for dismissal that “the nature and number of the complainant’s falsehoods leave us unable to credit her version of events beyond a reasonable doubt”. They said she had given irreconcilable accounts about her whereabouts after the encounter. She stated that she had hidden in the hall after leaving the presidential suite and entered no other room on the 28th floor until she told another maid about the attack (which was about 15 minutes later).
When asked why she had not used her pass key to go into another room, she said they all had “do not disturb” signs on the door. After her grand jury testimony, prosecutors discovered that this was false when the hotel belatedly provided them with the electronic key records showing that Ms Diallo had entered the other room, number 2820, at 12.26pm, after her encounter with Mr Strauss-Kahn. The same record also showed she had also entered room 2820 prior to the encounter and at a time when the occupant had not checked out and might have been in the room. Why she concealed visiting 2820 was “inexplicable” to the prosecutors, who noted that if she had mentioned her visits to 2820, it would have been declared part of the crime scene and searched by the police.
Nor were Mr Strauss-Kahn’s lawyers able to find an explanation. When they attempted to learn the identity of the occupant of 2820, Sofitel refused to release it on grounds of privacy. Given Ms Diallo’s conflicting accounts, all that is really known about what happened in the nearby room 2820 is that she went there both before and after encountering Mr Strauss-Kahn and then omitted the latter visit from her sworn testimony to the grand jury.
The Sofitel electronic key record, which the hotel did not turn over to the prosecutors until the next week, contained another unexplained anomaly. Two individuals, not one, entered Mr Strauss-Kahn’s suite between 12:05 and 12.06 while he was showering. Each used a different key card. The card used at 12.06 belonged to Ms Diallo; the one used at 12:05 belonged to Syed Haque, a room service employee who, according to his account, came to pick up the breakfast dishes.
If he did so, he would have turned left and gone to the dining room. But Mr Haque has refused to be interviewed by Mr Strauss-Kahn’s lawyers, so his precise movements have not been made public. Since the key cards do not register the time of exit, it cannot be determined from them whether both parties were in the room at the same time or, for that matter, at the time of Ms Diallo’s encounter with DSK.
Missing phone, delayed calls
Mr Strauss-Kahn’s BlackBerry, with its messages, is still missing. Investigations by both the police and private investigators retained by his lawyers failed to find it. While Mr Strauss-Kahn believed he had left it in the Sofitel, the records obtained from BlackBerry show that the missing phone’s GPS circuitry was disabled at 12.51. This stopped the phone from sending out signals identifying its location.
From electronic information that became available to investigators this month, it appears the phone did not leave the Sofitel. If it was innocently lost, whoever found it never used it, raising the question of by whom and why it was disabled. In any case, its absence made it impossible for Mr Strauss-Kahn to check – as he had planned to do – to see whether it had been compromised. Nor was it possible to verify from the phone itself the report he received on May 14 that his messages were being intercepted.
A further mystery concerns the one-hour time gap in reporting the alleged attack. After the maid said she had been the victim of a brutal and sustained sexual assault, it is hard to understand how the security staff would have ruled out that she might require immediate medical attention. But as has been seen, until 1.31, several minutes after receiving a message from Mr Sheehan, the security staff did not make the 911 call. She did not arrive at St Luke’s until 3.57, nearly four hours after the alleged attack.
By the time the call was finally made, the hotel’s management was presumably aware of the political scandal Mr Strauss-Kahn’s arrest would cause. Such considerations may have had no part in their handling of the situation, but without knowing the content of any messages between the hotel managers in New York and security staff there or in Paris, among others, it is impossible to be sure. Only one thing was already clear: DSK could no longer be a challenger to Mr Sarkozy.
The writer is an investigative journalist and author. A longer version of this article appears in the New York Review of Books |
