Matt Leon, a young and upcoming executive at the real estate services firm Newmark Knight Frank, will be taking over as head of the leasing team that represents TF Cornerstone’s collection of properties, which includes the midtown trophy building Carnegie Hall Tower, 645 Madison Avenue and 387 Park Avenue South.

Newmark's Matt Leon.

The substantial account had previously belonged to Billy Cohen, a top Newmark executive who had long worked with the firm, helping it fill Carnegie Hall Tower when that property was developed in the early 1990s as well as craft its image and place among Manhattan’s top high end office properties.

Mr. Leon had previously worked as an assistant to Mr. Cohen on the account. A person familiar with the situation said that Mr. Cohen was stepping down because of growing responsibilities tied to other agency assignments he handles, specifically buildings that he is working on with another large landlord; Malkin Properties. Mr. Cohen is a lead broker on a Newmark team that handles deals at the Empire State Building as well other Malkin assets.

The Empire State Building has attracted a number substantial leases recently that he has had a hand in arranging, including a 70,000 square foot lease with Human Rights Watch in recent weeks. Last year, he helped ink a deal for the Asian firm Li & Fung to take 500,000 square feet in the landmark tower.

Even though Mr. Cohen’s departure is amicable it still is a notable changing of the guard.

Mr. Cohen is one of Newmark’s top dealmakers and is considered a veteran of the real estate brokerage business. In recent years,though, it was Mr. Leon who had drawn much of the praise for his savvy minding of TF Cornerstone’s space. Before coming to Newmark, Mr. Leon had been a real estate attorney at what is widely considered the top practice in the city, Fried Frank.

“With his background in law, he can just cut right through deals,” a source said of Mr. Leon.

Neither Mr. Leon nor Mr. Cohen could be reached for comment by press time. TF Cornerstone also could not be reached.

Dan Geiger, Staff Writer, is reachable at Dgeiger@Observer.com

--UPDATED, 1:46 p.m.--

Mr. Pitt offers this bit of press criticism in citing Mr. Roth for the list:

In October 2006, Mr. Pitt wrote Esquire's cover story about the drug war, green building, and the ultimate diaper-rash cream.

Instead, his hurried hanging at dawn by a gang of masked guards in leather jackets was all too reminiscent of the lawless carnage routinely carried out in the old Baathist regime’s prison cells. Indeed, the ugly event took place on the first day of the Muslim festival of Eid al-Adha, as celebrated by the Sunnis, in the same building where Saddam’s secret police used to string up his political opponents. Among the many things that have not improved much in Iraq since the U.S. invasion is the administration of criminal justice.

Intentionally or ineptly, the Bush administration permitted this embarrassment to be perpetrated in the name of the American people. The President contributed his own special combination of false and foolish commentary when he released a statement praising the execution as the result of “a fair trial.”

What Mr. Bush means when he utters those words is unclear. Spoken by him, such rhetorical phrases are devoid of their historical meaning in American and international law. It is very unlikely that the President actually knows whether Saddam received due process, and even less likely that he cares. He may well have received the customary reassurances from Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, who always made certain that his brief deliberations on executions as Texas governor were free of confusing facts, wholly predetermined and, oh yes, “fair.”

For those who do care about the reputation of American justice as well as the prospects for a civilized future in Iraq, the way that Saddam met his end was not uplifting. After decades of totalitarian rule, there were few qualified Iraqi jurists available to deal properly with the massive docket of crimes committed by the Baathist government. Human Rights Watch—which exposed Saddam’s abuses back when he was still being coddled by Republican politicians—urged the creation of a competent tribunal that included both Iraqi and international judges. But the Bush administration disdains all international institutions, so that wise proposal was dismissed.

The Iraqi High Tribunal, set up and operated with U.S. assistance, was unable to run the court with any semblance of impartiality or independence during the trial of Saddam and his co-defendants for mass killings in the town of Dujail. According to a November 2006 report by Human Rights Watch, the defense attorneys had no reliable means to submit evidence and motions, or even to receive accreditation to represent their clients. The court was unable to keep track of submitted documents—and copies of the investigative dossier that formed the main body of prosecution evidence, as provided to defense counsel, were largely illegible.

No security measures were taken to protect the defense lawyers before the Dujail trial, so several of them were promptly murdered as soon as it began. Those who survived were unable to effectively question prosecution witnesses. Meanwhile, prosecutors acted as public spokesmen for the tribunal, casting doubt on its fairness, as did constant prejudicial comments and announcements emanating from the Iraqi national-security advisor.

The kangaroo-court proceedings concluded in late December with a mockery of the right to appeal. With only 30 days to prepare and argue their case against the predetermined verdict, the defense lawyers didn’t receive the 300-page guilty opinion until more than halfway through that period. They had less than two weeks to respond.

When the appeal was denied on Dec. 26, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, described as “frantic” to see his enemy executed, signed a death warrant of dubious legitimacy in violation of Iraqi law. On a secretly recorded video, the hanging looks and sounds much like an old-fashioned lynching. The noose is fitted and the trap door springs while a jeering mob screams “Muqtada! Muqtada!” in homage to Muqtada al-Sadr, the anti-American Shiite warlord.

They don’t even do a fair trial that way in Texas anymore.

Despite late and feeble protestations by American officials—who supposedly tried to postpone the execution because of concerns about its legality—suspicions abound that the Bush administration wanted this travesty to unfold exactly as it did. Saddam was a dangerous man until the very end, who might someday have squealed on his longtime benefactors in the C.I.A. and the Reagan administration. As for Mr. Bush, always simple-minded and bloody-minded, he probably believes that executing Saddam will somehow adorn his discreditable legacy.

It won’t, because the hanging of Saddam was not only a judicial miscarriage, but a strategic blunder. While he was in American custody, the U.S. could have wielded a powerful incentive to urge the Shiite-dominated governing coalition toward serious negotiation with the Sunni rebels. Squandering that opportunity while dishonoring decent standards was worse than venal. It was stupid.

Such convenient invocations of human rights are nothing new, of course, and the White House is hardly alone in its hypocrisy. Although the world's governments set forth the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948, few have since distinguished themselves by upholding a single standard of adherence to those ideals. On a planet of contending power alliances and global commercial competition, governments cannot be relied upon to safeguard the rights of individuals and communities.

Fortunately, there are non-governmental organizations devoted to that cause-and foremost among them is Human Rights Watch, which will celebrate its 25th anniversary on Nov. 12 in New York City.

Founded in 1978 by Random House executive Robert L. Bernstein-along with Jeri Laber, Aryeh Neier and Orville Schell-Human Rights Watch first came into existence as Helsinki Watch. Its initial purpose, during a gelid period of the Cold War, was to monitor compliance with the 1975 Helsinki Accords, guarantees of freedom and legality signed in the Finnish capital by world leaders including then–Soviet Premier Leonid Brezhnev. Denounced at the time by conservatives here as a token of the West's craven acquiescence to communism, the Helsinki agreement actually encouraged dissenters within the Soviet bloc to publicly demand basic freedoms.

But the instigators of Helsinki Watch soon realized that they couldn't credibly demand Soviet accountability unless they did likewise here. At that time, the Reagan administration enabled abusive "authoritarian" governments on the right-particularly in Latin America-while blasting "totalitarian" governments on the left. The Helsinki Watch group organized Americas Watch to fight the Reaganite double standard and hold the U.S. accountable for the atrocities committed by its client states. Naturally, they were red-baited for acting on this insight. Eventually, the same right-wingers who had denounced Americas Watch were claiming credit for the flowering of democracy in the Western hemisphere.

Within a decade after its founding, Helsinki Watch became Human Rights Watch, a new kind of international organization that combined the highest journalistic standards of investigation with tough advocacy and smart diplomacy to advance human rights around the world-including the United States. Back in 1988, when U.S. policymakers were still coddling the Iraqi dictatorship for "geostrategic" reasons, Human Rights Watch documented its slaughter of the Kurds and Iranians with chemical weapons, along with its quotidian practices of torture and repression.

For the past 10 years, under the leadership of Kenneth Roth, Human Rights Watch has achieved a high level of professionalism without diluting the idealism that inspired its creation. As a former federal prosecutor, Mr. Roth believes that international law can provide the underpinnings for the enforcement of agreements like Helsinki-and to bring malefactors like Saddam Hussein and Slobodan Milosevic to justice.

The war on terrorism hasn't deterred Mr. Roth and his staff from continuing to uphold the single standard enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights-even if that discomfits some of the Bush administration's motley allies. Our government no longer has much use for the democratic French and Germans, but adores the Uzbeks, the Pakistanis and the Saudis, "authoritarian" rulers whose abuses are regularly exposed in H.R.W.'s detailed reports.

This doesn't mean that human-rights advocates naïvely discount the threat of Islamist terror. Indeed, Mr. Roth considers human rights to be the foundation of the struggle against terrorism, as he explained in an excellent essay in the new book Lost Liberties: Ashcroft and the Assault on Personal Freedom (New Press):

"Clearly the United States needs to take extra security measures. But the U.S. government must also pay attention to the pathology of terrorism-the set of beliefs that leads some people to join in attacking civilians, to believe that the ends justify the means. A strong human rights culture is an antidote to this pathology, yet in too many places the Bush administration saw human rights mainly as an obstacle to its goals ….

"Even someone as unsympathetic to human rights as President Ronald Reagan at the height of the Cold War understood the need for a positive vision. He understood that the United States could not only be against communism. It had to stand for democracy, even if at times his support was no more than rhetorical. Similarly, it will not work for the Bush administration today to be only against terrorism. It will have to stand for the values that explain what's wrong with attacking civilians-the values of human rights."

And then, abruptly, the climate seemed to change. Prison rape was the focus of a long piece on the front page of the April 15 Sunday Times that emphasized the ways people seek to look the other way. Then that same week, and even more forcefully, ABC's World News Tonight ran a three-part series on prison rape that included tearful and shamed statements by inmates describing their terror and humiliation.

There had to be some strong moral force behind this assembly of prestige media, and on April 19 I went to the 34th floor of the Empire State Building to meet her.

Joanne Mariner came out to the reception area wearing a gray sweater and ankle-length black skirt. Her blond hair was pulled back from her high cheekbones and fine features, and as she walked me back to her office I got a distinct sense of her presence–elegant, calm, svelte, cool.

Ms. Mariner works for Human Rights Watch, and the day I visited was publication day for a report on prison rape that has been several years in the making. No Escape is a humbling and horrifying book, a compendium of prisoners' accounts of their experiences, rendered with precision and terror, and overlaid with Ms. Mariner's Yale Law School-trained analysis of official tolerance of the abuse and the best legal means to attack the problem.

"I had the orbit of my left eye fractured, and was assaulted by another prisoner with a knife, among other altercations …. I did the only thing I could do–I found someone to 'be with.' I determined I'd be better off to willingly have sex with one person than I would be to face violence and rape by multiple people. The most tragic part to this is that the person I chose to 'be with' has AIDS …. A place like F.S.P. [Florida State Prison] could not exist, could not do such things without public support. The opposite of compassion is not hatred, it's indifference." (M.M., July 30, 1999.)

Joanne Mariner sat down. Her cramped office had a nice river view and a small vase of flowers on the desk.

"Did you cry during the prison interviews?" I asked.

A slight shake of the head. "I don't think I cried. I might have felt like crying. Some of the inmates cried."

"And then?"

"When someone breaks down, you let him collect himself. I'd say, 'I'm sorry, I'm sure this is difficult for you to describe.'"

"How long were the interviews?"

"At least an hour. Sometimes three or four. We had a lot of facts to go through. I was taking copious notes. Who, what, when and where. You know–journalism."

"Right, journalism," I said, with a sarcasm about my own profession that was lost on her.

Human Rights Watch took up the issue five years ago, and tentatively. The international monitoring group had just done a study on custodial abuse of women prisoners, and it was suggested that it look into the abuse of men. Gara LaMarche, then associate director of Human Rights Watch, was dubious about its status as a human-rights question.

"This is part of the motif of every cop show on television," he said. "It's deeply ingrained in the culture, and we're all inured to it. There's contempt for prisoners, and it's also a hugely uncomfortable topic for men to think about."

Mr. LaMarche went with Joanne Mariner to visit the leading activist on the issue. They entered a cluttered Morningside Heights apartment and were greeted by a small man who seemed gay, and who wore a belt buckle proclaiming himself a "PUNK," but who had pornographic female pinups on the wall.

Stephen Donaldson was then 49 and dying of AIDS, without regrets. He'd led a wild life. Born Robert Martin Jr., he had been discharged from the Navy for homosexual activity, and in time had become a bisexual, Quaker, poet, Hindu, Buddhist, punk rocker, non-racist skinhead and gay-rights activist.

In the early 70's, Mr. Donaldson was arrested in Washington, D.C., during a pray-in against the bombing of Cambodia. He was mouthy and a little out of control, and his jailers meant to teach him a lesson. They put him in a ward where he was repeatedly raped.

"Donny was the first prisoner-rape survivor I know of who went public, and he did it immediately," said Tom Cahill, who was himself raped in jail.

Mr. Cahill and Mr. Donaldson ran an organization called Stop Prisoner Rape. This in spite of the fact that Stephen Donaldson himself became a prison rapist during one stay in prison. "Rape of any kind is torture and it's crazy-making," Mr. Cahill said. "Donny and I and a lot of others are examples of how crazy-making it is. It often creates multiple personalities in the survivor."

They did not invent the antirape organization. Its founder was a black Midwesterner named Russell D. Smith, who had been sexually victimized beginning as a child in reform school. But after a few years as an advocate, Russell Smith simply disappeared. Mr. Cahill took over his files.

"We suspect he's long dead," Mr. Cahill said. "But we've been searching for him for years."

On the surface it seems odd that Joanne Mariner, a formal woman who grew up riding ponies in Topanga Canyon and who has lived in Paris, Nairobi and New Haven, would suddenly be the heir to such a cause. But get to know her a little, and it makes perfect sense. She is a 38-year-old loner who doesn't own a television, lives in Little Italy, and seems more comfortable with Mexican peasants and brutalized prisoners than with her fellow Barnard alumnae.

"I call her an active volcano masquerading as an iceberg," said her friend, the filmmaker Hampton Fancher. "She has a 100-and-forever I.Q. and she wears high heels, but she's a pirate, she doesn't see fences or laws."

Ms. Mariner has borrowed a motorcycle to do interviews in the mountains of Colombia and once smuggled a sick kitten through Narita airport in Japan inside her clothes because she didn't want to leave it on the street in Hong Kong. ("She got it drunk first," Mr. Fancher said.)

"My former boyfriend once said she's aggressively independent," said Julie Hilden, an author. "She travels alone in countries where it's very risky for women and shows a complete disregard for her own personal safety when there's a moral question at stake. She's glamorous, but never intentionally glamorous. You might think of her as a 2001 version of Martha Gellhorn."

Ms. Mariner began by putting notices in three prison journals, seeking information about prison rape. Her language was gender-neutral, but she included her name.

"I had worried that me being a woman would make it more difficult. But Donny Donaldson said, 'No, you should either be a woman or a gay man,'" she said. "It was crucial. I think that when you have that whole façade of being a man, you can't show weakness to other men."

The response was overwhelming. Over three years, she got more than 1,000 letters, a graphic and wrenching record of terrible human suffering.

L.T., Texas: "I told [a guard] what my cellie wanted me to do … that my life was in danger. He said for me to return to my cell and stand up and fight, because this was prison …. My cellie's homeboy that said he would protect me he came over to my cell when they ran rec. My cellie was gone. He ask me what happen and what was I crying for. He ask me how I was going to pay him. I told him when I went to the store I would pay him. But he said I want to fuck. I told him that I didnt do that …. He kept saying he aint gonna take long. So he had me have anal sex with him. After that, my cellie came back from rec, he found out what his homeboy did and told me he wanted to do the same …."

Joanne Mariner had to work hard just to write back in a timely fashion.

"At times it felt coldly scientific. I'd say, 'Thank you for sharing your account of your experiences.' But then I'd ask a lot of questions."

Then came field work. She chose nearly 30 of the more dramatic cases and drove from prison to prison in California and Texas to interview these men. Usually they were face to face, sometimes separated by glass. "Several said, 'You're the only person I've told this to.' Part of the experience they endured is that no one had listened."

Ms. Mariner stayed cool. She put an icy hand to the details, and documented the repercussions of reporting rape: the refusal of authorities to do anything, the return of a prisoner to the circumstances and men who victimized him and who now knew that they had been reported. She constructed a legal argument for why the hundreds of thousands of prison rapes represent a form of official penalty.

But these arguments are animated at all times by the verbatim statements she collected. She preserved the many references to blacks' exploitation of white inmates; she made a point not to change spelling or grammar. She highlighted prison idiom, of "turning out" a prisoner or "making him ride."

"I wanted to convey their humanity," she said. "If I could, I would have had it so you could see their scribble."

Joanne Mariner first showed her report to a Human Rights Watch media director, Minky Worden, a year ago. Ms. Worden had nightmares for a week, before throwing herself into it.

"I said, 'This is something that deserves attention,'" she said. "But a lot of people wrinkled their noses and made squeamish noises about the report. Men especially. A lot of people said, 'I'd like to do it, but this is not news.'"

This is the most perplexing thing about Ms. Mariner's report, which is called No Escape: Male Rape in U.S. Prisons, and dedicated to Stephen Donaldson and former Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun. Everyone knows this already. Why is it news? Indeed, it is to the shame of journalists like myself that none of us were motivated to lift a finger about a horror that we knew was going on right around us. Think of all the men's magazines that have done nothing.

"They don't let journalists into some prisons," Ms. Mariner said.

That's a lousy excuse. Journalists could have easily done what Ms. Mariner did; few have gone near prison rape (with some notable exceptions, chiefly Loretta Tofani at The Washington Post in the 1980's). The issue simply did not matter. The United States has one of the highest rates of imprisonment in the world, and our public discourse demonizes prisoners, reasoning that they sign up for any victimization they experience by doing the crime in the first place. It takes people outside the mainstream to alter the thinking–the fiercely focused Ms. Mariner, backed by Human Rights Watch, an organization that the media have increasingly (and sometimes docilely) turned to to tell them what is an atrocity.

It seems significant that women played such an important role in bringing this issue to the fore. Men may be too deeply role-bound, and ashamed, to acknowledge it.

Then, too, women are experienced in dealing with victimhood. A generation ago, female rape was trivialized and the victims subjected to further abuse and indifference. It took waves of angry activists, followed by coldly angry documenters and analysts, to force the issue. Now no one trivializes the question, and some women have moved on to other issues. If you're a progressivist, you say, cheerily, that this is how society moves, one issue at a time, incrementally. I want to wait and see.

I pointed at the pretty bouquet of flowers on Joanne Mariner's desk. "Publication day?" I said.

"No." Her 38th birthday was two days before; a friend had sent them.

There wasn't too much fuss over publication. Ms. Mariner's mother had called from California to congratulate her on an article about the work in a San Francisco paper.

"And your dad?"

Ms. Mariner hadn't heard from him. "I should send him a copy," she said, without resolve. Her father, who teaches business, is not really the report's audience, she said.