Postcard: Diego Garcia

Here’s a mental exercise: picture a tropical paradise lost in an endless expanse of cerulean ocean. Glossy palm fronds twist in the temperate wind along immaculate, powder white beaches. Leathery sea turtles bob lazily offshore, and the light cacophony of birdsong accents the ambient sound of wind and waves.

Now add concrete. Lots and lots of concrete. And B-2 bombers. Toss in a few high-value terrorists, disembarking from an unmarked CIA jet, most likely hooded, shackled and headed for days and nights of the closest thing to torture that American interrogators can come up with while still claiming not to have violated the Geneva Conventions.

Welcome to Diego Garcia–6,720 acres (2,720 hectares) of restricted military base on a depopulated atoll in the middle of the Indian Ocean, 1,000 miles (1,600 km) from the nearest continent. Back in 1966, the U.S. signed a secret agreement with Britain allowing the Pentagon to use the territory as an air base in exchange for a big discount on Polaris nuclear missiles. Five years later, hundreds of Navy Seabees arrived by ship and began pouring the 12,000-ft. (3,600 m) runway that would become a bulwark of American cold war strategy and a key launchpad for the first and second Gulf wars and the invasion of Afghanistan.

When I touched down aboard Air Force One with President George W. Bush recently for a 90-minute refueling stop en route from Iraq to Australia, Diego Garcia looked drab: think early-’70s industrial park. But as a 1,700-man springboard for the projection of military might to the far reaches of the world, it rivals anything 18th century Britain or Augustan Rome ever came up with.

Unfortunately, construction of the base in 1971 crossed the line from efficiency to cruelty. First, the British and Americans had the islanders’ dogs loaded into sealed sheds and gassed, according to Professor David Vine of the American University in Washington. Then the British packed the inhabitants, known as Chagossians, onto ships and sent them off to Mauritius and the Seychelles, 1,200 miles (1,900 km) to the west across the Indian Ocean, where many live to this day. A court case seeking right of return is under way in Britain, and last year the Chagossians were allowed to visit their relatives’ graves for the first time. Defense Department spokesman Commander Jeffrey Gordon says the U.S. gassed some dogs but only for humanitarian reasons and denies Diego Garcia is used for interrogations.

But its history and sensitive security role have helped keep the island pretty much off-limits to journalists. That has made it something of a holy-grail dateline for reporters covering the military. Not that I saw much of it. After Bush deplaned, he was greeted by an honor guard on the tarmac. We were taken to an auditorium while Bush met the base commander and troops elsewhere on the grounds. When I tried to leave the building to look around, some courteous airmen said I didn’t have the proper clearance.

But if I wasn’t going to do any reporting on the expulsion of the Chagossians or on terrorist suspects like the Indonesian al-Qaeda leader Hambali, who is believed to have been held on the island, I at least wanted proof I’d been there. Some 20 years ago, TIME’s chief of correspondents, Dick Duncan, offered a case of fine Bordeaux to the first correspondent who filed a legitimate story from Diego Garcia. The equivalent in 2007 media dollars is probably a box of Chablis, but I still wanted evidence.

I mentioned this to a civilian contractor, William Corke, who disappeared and came back with a bag of T shirts with pictures of scantily clad women and mermaids, bearing the words FANTASY ISLAND, DIEGO GARCIA.

Before we were hustled back onto Air Force One, I managed to file a story for TIME.com on Bush’s surprise visit to Iraq. I’d rather have had something on CIA detainees or the last remnants of Chagossian villages. Maybe next time. But the dateline for the story I did file was quickly mangled in blogosphere reprints into a joint byline that read,