The Intercept

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Bassam Shah had driven through a day and two nights from Denver, stopping only for gas, eating fried pies, drinking Red Bull, and urinating into a plastic milk jug between gas station fill-ups.

At dawn, in the chaos of merging lanes on the New Jersey side of the George Washington Bridge, orange traffic cones squeezed the cars to the right. Port Authority Police cars blocked the available lanes, routing all visitors to the city to a checkpoint just beyond the tollbooths. Commuter congestion into New York City was building at that early hour, though still not at its heaviest.

Two men in blue Windbreakers and baseball hats waved flashlights up ahead, peering into a car’s rolled-down windows. They wore wires in their ears.

Shah saw no dogs. For that, he was relieved. He was ten cars back from the search point.

He watched the driver, a man traveling alone like him, get out to open his trunk. The searchers — now he saw the words PORT AUTHORITY POLICE on the backs of their jackets — shined their lights inside. They lifted the mat off the spare tire, conferred…

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