Word: watchman
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Meili was a 28-year-old night watchman at the Union Bank of Switzerland in Zurich when, in January 1997, he happened upon the ledgers next to the shredding machine. His disclosure that Switzerland's largest bank was destroying Nazi-era records, even as death-camp survivors were trying to reclaim their accounts, turned the taciturn Protestant into an international celebrity--and a local pariah. The Zurich district attorney pressed charges against him--later dropped--for violating bank-secrecy laws. He was fired from his job and inundated with death threats and anti-Semitic hate mail...
Speaking invitations have flowed in from groups as far away as Palm Beach, Fla., and Vancouver. Meili was even invited to Los Angeles to meet Steven Spielberg after the director learned that the watchman had been inspired to act by seeing Schindler's List. Meili has traveled to Israel to accept a humanitarian award, to Berlin for interviews with German television and to Auschwitz for a weekend as the guest of survivors. His story was even optioned by a would-be Hollywood dealmaker but, far from profiting, Meili discovered he had signed away his movie rights "without getting a cent...
Under interrogation, the owner told police he was a dog handler for a private security company. At the time of the accident, he said, he had been on assignment as a night watchman in the western suburbs of Paris; he arrived at work on the evening of Saturday, Aug. 30, and left at 7 a.m. If his stated whereabouts are accurate, then he could not have been the driver that Francois and Valerie saw emerging from the tunnel shortly after 12:25 a.m. Sunday. Moreover, the man was East Asian, not a "European type...
...kind of ruined my day," says Littman, who believes the source of the problem is his latest book, The Watchman: The Twisted Life and Crimes of Serial Hacker Kevin Poulsen (Little, Brown). Poulsen was one of the more adept hackers ever to work a keyboard, and the first to be charged with espionage (a charge that was later dropped). At one point he won two $50,000 Porsches by rigging radio contests in Los Angeles. (I'd explain, but you'll have more fun reading the book.) Suffice it to say that the terms of Poulsen's probation specify that...
...morning, after studying in the mosque, I went for firewood. Because we are poor, we can't buy wood. I didn't know there are minefields. When I opened my eyes, I was in the hospital without my legs." The simplest impulse is perilous. Rahmat Khan, a school watchman, describes how a breeze blew his hat across a playground. He chased it, tripped a mine and lost both legs...