Annals of Homeland Security

Reporter Richard Leiby on the streets of Baghdad. Customs officials detained Leiby at Dulles upon his return. (Yola Monakhov - Panos Pictures)

Our colleague Richard Leiby wanted no trouble from the authorities when he returned last week from Iraq carrying a copper tray -- a gift from a retired Iraqi police lieutenant whom Leiby had befriended in Baghdad.

But there was trouble.

When Leiby landed at Dulles International Airport on Thursday night, grim-faced U.S. customs agents confiscated the tray and $2 worth of Iraqi currency, detained him for two hours under armed guard, subjected him to four different interrogations, shadowed him to the men's room and even denied him permission to call his wife, Theresa Defino, who was in the family Volvo circling the airport and worrying.

"I'm sorry if Mr. Leiby was treated rudely, but the agents followed established procedures," Customs spokesman Bill Anthony told us, adding that the law still classifies Iraq as a nation under international embargo.

"It was my understanding we now run Iraq," Leiby told us. "A young male agent wanted to know everywhere I had traveled in Iraq. He asked if the retired police officer was a Baathist. Of course not, I said. He was trying to help the Americans."

Ex-cop Sabih Jassim Azzawe had told Leiby that the tray, bearing a likeness of the Lion of Babylon, was worth no more than $25. To avoid the sort of unpleasantness that befell "those embedded idiots who brought back artwork from Iraq," Leiby recounted, he carried it to the customs station in full view. "I had nothing to hide."

He not only had declared the tray on his paperwork but also had obtained two signed letters -- one in Arabic, the other in English -- indicating that the item was personal property and had been given as a gift. Azzawe was grateful because Leiby, in Iraq on a two-week reporting trip, had alerted U.S. authorities to unexploded ordnance and missiles in Azzawe's neighborhood, and American soldiers had promptly removed the dangerous weapons.

Now the tray is in the custody of the Customs Service's Fines, Penalty and Forfeiture division, part of the new Department of Homeland Security, and Leiby is being advised to request an importation license from the Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control.

We, for our part, shall not rest until the tray is restored to its rightful owner.

He Still Believes in A Man Called Hope

• It's hardly a surprise that showbiz aficionado Dick Cavett will emcee the celebration of Bob Hope's 100th birthday tonight at the Library of Congress.

"Bob Hope was always a god of mine," says Cavett, who will host tonight's celebration. (File Photo)

"Bob Hope was always a god of mine," the 66-year-old Cavett told us yesterday. "I first saw him in Lincoln, Nebraska. I think I was probably in junior high, and he was appearing in a variety show in a Hitlerian-sized coliseum at the University of Nebraska.

"I had never thought that Bob Hope was ever going to occupy the same space where I was living and breathe the same air that I was breathing. I was sitting next to my friend Lyle Burke in seats so high that we could basically just see figures on the stage. And then Hope glided out, and I thought, 'Oh my God, it's really him.' After the show, I wanted to see if he actually would have to leave the place like an ordinary human being. I saw him come down some steps before getting into a car with two gorgeous showgirls. I said something like, 'Fine show, Bob.' And he glanced at me and said, 'Thanks, son.' That made the rest of my year."

Cavett became a comedy writer and stand-up comic and eventually got to know Hope -- who turns 100 on May 29 and is too frail to attend tonight's festivities, though his family will be in Coolidge Auditorium -- as the host of his network talk show.

"He was the epitome of a comedian," Cavett said. "His gliding walk was inimitable -- well, it was imitable, but it was his. He was the brash, confident good-looking comic who would get laughs by playing the victim. That fabulous personality just leapt off the stage. And he had grace. He was the Fred Astaire of comedy."

THIS JUST IN...

• More news about the thaw in Franco-American relations: Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, who only a few months ago referred to the French government as "a disgrace" and "truly shameful" over some disagreements on Iraq, was spotted dining Tuesday night at Petits Plats on Connecticut Avenue NW. Rumsfeld, his wife, Joy, and an unidentified couple were seated for more than an hour at a sidewalk table. No word on what they ate, who paid, or what they tipped.

QUOTE

"Now that 'the intern' has identified herself, we, some of her former classmates and some of you are receiving renewed and intensified requests for information to which we are continuing our refusal to cooperate. . . . It is a shame that we live in a world that feels entitled to know the details of everyone's lives, particularly details that are no one's business."

-- M. Burch Tracy Ford, headmistress of Miss Porter's School, writing to alumnae about Miss Porter's alum Marion "Mimi" Fahnestock, who last week acknowledged that, as a 19-year-old White House intern, she had a sexual relationship with President John F. Kennedy