by Harris, Dan
That sealed it. For the next five years, Peter was my mentor and, sometimes, tormentor. Anchoring the overnight show was now off the table. I had, improbably, become a network news correspondent. They gave me a set of business cards and my very first office, on the fourth floor of the building, alongside five other correspondents, all men several decades older than I was. Our offices were arrayed along a catwalk that overlooked the set from which Peter anchored his show. One morning, shortly after I moved in, I got off the elevator and the other reporters were huddled together, chatting. None of them would speak to me. It was awkward and a little bit intimidating, but if this was the price I had to pay for scoring this job a full decade before I thought it could happen, it was totally worth it.
Working for Peter was like sticking your head in a lion’s mouth: thrilling, but not particularly safe. He was frightening for a lot of reasons: he was about a foot taller than me, he was subject to sudden and unpredictable mood swings, and—even though he was originally from Canada—he was a bona fide American icon, which made it surreally mortifying when he yelled at you. He seemed to take pleasure in embarrassing me, preferably in front of as many people as possible. Once, his assistant called me down to the rim, saying Peter needed to discuss something. When I arrived, Peter looked up, did a double take, and eyeing my plaid jacket, said, “You’re not going to wear that on television, are you?” Everyone laughed uncomfortably. I turned fuchsia, and muttered something about how of course I wasn’t. I may have subsequently burned it.
But the real flash point—as with every correspondent—was the script-writing process. Peter was an exacting and irascible editor, and he often made changes at the last minute, sending producers and correspondents into frenzied scrambles minutes before airtime. Even when he affected a more-in-sadness-than-in-anger tone to his revisions, I strongly suspected that he actually enjoyed the power play. He had a set of semi-rational writing rules that every correspondent learned to obey over the course of a particularly rigorous hazing period: don’t start a sentence with “but”; don’t say “like” when you can say “such as”; never, ever use the word “meanwhile.”
By no means were all of Peter’s standards arbitrary, though. After observing and interacting with him for a while, it became clear that he cared deeply about this work. He saw his job as a privilege—a sacred trust with the audience, and a vital part of a functioning democracy. He was a congenital contrarian who expected his staff to aggressively question authority (including our own bosses—except, of course, him). Early in my tenure, I pitched him a story about the treatment of mentally ill inmates in prison, which Peter personally helped me produce and gave prominent play on his broadcast. Then he had me launch more investigations, one on the issue of rape in prison, and another into the silencing of conservative voices on American college campuses. It was a journalistic apprenticeship par excellence.
Very often, though, Peter’s inspirational qualities were obscured by his mercurial behavior—and the primary venue for this was at the rim in those frenetic late afternoon hours before airtime, as reporters and producers were desperately vying for him to approve their scripts—which he insisted on doing personally. Some of his signature moves included reordering all of the ideas in a story for no discernible reason, and poaching the best lines from our pieces and using them himself. We correspondents (the older guys on my hall eventually deigned to communicate with me) often commiserated about getting “Petered,” inevitably concluding that the level of criticism we received was directly correlated to Peter’s mood or his personal feelings about you at that moment. He was, we all agreed, a man fueled by a combustible mix of preternatural talent and crushing insecurity. The first—and only—time I was handed back a script with no marks from his red pen, I saved it.
While I may have been initially stunned by my ascent at ABC News, I was not about to let the opportunity go to waste. I quickly got over my I-can’t-believe-they’re-letting-me-through-security phase and started focusing on how to navigate what could be a Hobbesian environment where the various broadcasts, anchors, and executives competed fiercely against one another, and where aligning yourself too closely with any particular clique carried risks.
My modus operandi was inherited from my father, whose motto was: “The price of security is insecurity.” Dr. Jay Harris, a gifted wringer of hands and gnasher of teeth, used his security/insecurity maxim to advance through the world of cutthroat nebbishes in academic medicine. My mom, a reserved Massachusetts Yankee, was slightly mellower about her equally demanding medical career. The joke around the house was that this was because my dad is Jewish and my mom is not. The other running joke was that I had inherited all of my dad’s worrier genes, and my brother had been spared. As Matt once quipped, “Dan makes Woody Allen look like a Buddhist monk.”
Kidding—and ethnic stereotypes—aside, I took my dad’s maxim very much to heart. Straight from childhood, I was a frequent mental inventory taker, scanning my consciousness for objects of concern, kind of like pressing a bruise to see if it still hurts. In my view, the balance between stress and contentment was life’s biggest riddle. On the one hand, I was utterly convinced that the continuation of any success I had achieved was contingent upon persistent hypervigilance. I figured this kind of behavior must be adaptive from an evolutionary standpoint—cavemen who worried about possible threats, real or imagined, probably survived longer. On the other hand, I was keenly aware that while this kind of insecurity might prolong life, it also made it less enjoyable.
Once at ABC, though, any attempts at balance went directly out the window. I was young and out of my league; I had to work triply hard to prove myself in the face of widespread institutional skepticism. (One night, as I was standing in front of the camera waiting to go live on Peter’s show, his executive producer got into my earpiece and said, “You look like you’re getting ready to pose for Bar Mitzvah pictures.”) To compensate, I was pitching stories constantly; I was ruthlessly self-critical; I was willing to work nights, mornings, and weekends—even if it meant skipping important events (such as friends’ weddings and family gatherings) in order to get on the air.
The news division was a fertile environment for this kind of intensity. In fact, people here were fond of repeating a famous quote from the legendary White House reporter Helen Thomas, one I embraced with gusto: “You’re only as good as your last story.” Getting on the air was not easy. On any given night, World News ran six or seven taped pieces from correspondents, and most of those slots went to the people covering specific beats such as the White House. Meanwhile, there were about fifty other correspondents vying for what remained. I set up an endless mental tape loop: How many stories have I had on this week? What is the state of my relationship with Peter right now? What else do I have coming up?
For the first year or so on the job, my strategy was to focus mainly on producing what we called “back of the book” pieces, stories that aired after the first commercial break. These ranged from investigations to in-depth pieces to fluffy features. I figured that given all the competition to cover the big, breaking news, this was the smart play. Aside from the aforementioned investigations, I reported on the dotcom boom and bust, and did colorful features on the periphery of the Bush-Gore recount battle in Florida.
About a year into my tenure, Peter summoned me to his book-lined office to discuss a new assignment. He was settled behind an imposing dark wood desk as I sank uncomfortably into his overstuffed couch, which was clearly designed by the same person who invented such medieval torture devices as the iron maiden and the pear of anguish. He made an announcement that was both unforeseen and unwelcome. He wanted me to take over ABC’s coverage of religion. This beat was a top priority for Peter. He had recently hosted a pair of highly rated, well-reviewed prime-time specials about the lives of Jesus and Saint Paul. He had also personally overseen the hiring of the first full-time religion correspondent in the history of network news, Peggy Wehmeyer. But Peggy, a comely, blond evangelic
al from Texas, was leaving now, and Peter had decided I was going to take over her responsibilities. I tried to issue some sort of a protest about being a devout atheist (I didn’t have the guts to tell him I couldn’t care less about the subject), but he was having none of it. This was happening. End of discussion.
Several months later, I was sitting in a puddle jumper on the tarmac in Fort Wayne, Indiana, having just finished shooting a story about church youth groups. A guy in the front of the passenger cabin hung up his cell phone, turned around, and told everyone that the Twin Towers were on fire. It was September 11, 2001, and suddenly every civilian airplane in the country was grounded. I was no longer heading back to New York anyway. My own cell phone rang, and my new marching orders were to get myself to Shanksville, Pennsylvania, where United Flight 93 had been brought down by passengers who stormed the cockpit.
I disembarked, rented a car, and with my producer alongside me, began the four-hundred-mile trek eastward. I spent those seven hours in the car experiencing what was, for me, a new and confusing breed of misery. Like all Americans, I was furious and scared. But there was also an overlay of self-interest. This was, in all likelihood, the biggest story of our lifetimes, and here I was stuck driving a “midsize vehicle” across the breadth of Ohio, helplessly listening to the news unfold on the radio. I knew Peter would be in his element, in full-on clarify-and-comfort mode, and it made me feel physically ill not to be part of the team reporting on—and explaining—this news to the country. I knew now that “back of the book” would no longer cut it for me.
I reported from Pennsylvania that night, and then drove the rest of the way back to New York, where I essentially moved into the Tribeca Grand Hotel, just blocks from Ground Zero. The police had closed off much of Lower Manhattan, and since I lived and worked uptown, the only way to cover the story was to stay nearby. This boutique hotel, with its tiny rooms, exposed wrought iron elevator shafts, and huge lobby lounge (normally filled with boulevardiers sipping overpriced cocktails—now eerily empty), was an incongruously chic spot from which to cover the deadliest terror attack ever on American soil.
I was right about Peter. His round-the-clock anchoring during those terrible days was nearly universally lauded, and under his guidance, I produced stories about the anguished crowds visiting the rubble at Ground Zero, and also the troubling number of attacks on innocent Muslims around the nation.
A few weeks later, as the maelstrom of Ground Zero coverage began to abate, I was back uptown in my office one afternoon when my phone rang. The caller ID read FOREIGN DESK. The voice on the other end of the line said, “We need you to go to Pakistan.” A pint of dopamine was released into my brain. After I hung up the phone, I actually paced around the room, pumping my fist.
This, fittingly, was how I began the most dangerous and formative years of my life: with a series of douchey gesticulations. I lurched headlong into what would become a multiyear adventure—during which I would see places and things that I never would have had the audacity to imagine as a shaggy twenty-two-year-old reporter in Bangor. I was floating on a wash of adrenaline, besotted with airtime, and blinded to the potential psychological consequences.
Prior to this first trip to Pakistan in October of 2001, I had never been to the Third World, unless you count a visit to Tijuana in the 1980s when I was on a Teen Tour. So when I boarded the flight for Islamabad the day after that call from the Foreign Desk, I had no idea what to expect. I arrived to what my British friends would call a “proper Star Wars scene.” Baggage claim was teeming with bleary-eyed passengers, bored-looking cops, and greasy, brown jumpsuit–wearing baggage-handling hustlers. I was the only Westerner in the hall. A local driver met me on the other side of customs, holding a sign with my name on it. Outside, the morning air was hazy, warm, and smelled vaguely of burnt tires. The highway was clogged with huge, brightly decorated cargo trucks whose drivers were constantly beeping their tinny, melodic horns. I later figured out that people in places like this didn’t honk to get other drivers out of the way so much as to simply alert people of their presence, like a pulse of sonar. I had never felt so far away from home before.
But then we got to the hotel. To my surprise, it was a Marriott, and a nice one at that—much larger and more elegant than the average American version. I dropped off my bags then went straight up to the presidential suite, where the ABC team was working. This was my first time meeting many of these people. They were mostly from our London bureau—swashbuckling types, veterans of places like Bosnia and Rwanda. They seemed completely comfortable with the cognitive dissonance of being in a dangerous, impoverished country where we had uniformed hotel staff bringing us cellophane-wrapped platters of cookies and mixed nuts twice a day. My fellow correspondent Bob Woodruff strolled in and nonchalantly ordered scrambled eggs from room service.
Things got edgier pretty quickly. Within just a few days, I got word that we’d received an invitation from the Taliban, who were still ruling Afghanistan, to come visit their home base in Kandahar. It would be a sort of embed. At first blush, it sounded like a supremely dumb idea—to go behind enemy lines, a guest of the actual enemy—and it provoked a spirited debate among our staff. We had a big meeting and argued it out. I went through the motions of listening to both sides, but it was really a foregone conclusion: there was no way I was going to miss this.
I tried to call my mother to let her know where I was going before she saw it on TV, but I couldn’t reach her at the hospital where she worked. So, against my better judgment, I called my father, the far more emotional parent. When I told him the plan, he started to cry. As the line went silent, except for the sounds of my dad catching his breath, the myopia of exhilaration gave way to remorse. Up until this point, I had been thinking only about what was in this trip for me; I hadn’t considered the special kind of hell it would create for my family. My dad recovered pretty quickly, engaging in characteristically self-deprecating humor: “You have a Jewish mother—it’s just not your mother.”
That night, I felt so guilty—and, frankly, scared—that I couldn’t sleep. The next day, I was part of a small group of reporters who boarded a bus to the unknown. After a long, spine-rattling ride on the unpaved main road that bisects southern Afghanistan, we arrived in the middle of the night at a complex of squat government buildings on the outskirts of Kandahar. The American air campaign had knocked out power and the whole city was pitch-black. We quickly went to the roof of one of the buildings, established a satellite signal, and taped a report in which Peter Jennings, at the news desk in New York, asked me questions about our journey. After talking to me, Peter—who still had a national newscast to prepare for—took the time to call my parents and let them know I was okay.
The next three days were a surreal, heady blur. We were ferried around town by hirsute, heavily armed men. For the most part, they showed us things they wanted us to see for PR purposes, including bombed-out buildings in which they claimed innocent civilians had been killed by U.S. warplanes. But it was the offscreen demeanor of these Taliban fighters that made the strongest impression on me. Aside from the top commanders, who engaged in the requisite propagandist puffery, the rank-and-file soldiers were actually easygoing and sociable. They were kids, really. They taught us local curse words. (Apparently “donkey” is a serious insult in Pashto.) At one point, one of them whispered to me, “Take me to America.”
I included a lot of this kind of color in my reports and received laudatory emails from the home office that were head-swimmingly intoxicating for a young reporter on the make. Peter was referring to me on the air as “our man in Afghanistan.” My crew, a pair of Brits, spent many hours ribbing me, predicting that I was going to be “an insufferable twat” when I got home. They would act out imagined scenes of me in New York City bars with friends, interrupting every conversation with, “Yeah, yeah, yeah—did I tell you about the time I was in Afghanistan?”
This trip was my first taste of what I would describe as journalistic heroin: the
pure, sick rush of being somewhere you are not supposed to be and not only getting away with it but also getting on TV. I was hooked.
When I got back to New York, though, I didn’t have much time to play peacock. I was greeted with a public repudiation in the New York Times. Arts critic Caryn James compared my coverage unfavorably to the BBC’s, calling mine “warm and fuzzy.” It was a hammer blow to my psyche. I bitterly disagreed with her, but many of my colleagues did not. Her article cemented the impression that I was too green to do this job. Around the office, I immediately went from hero to donkey.
A few weeks later, the Foreign Desk decided to give me a second chance, sending me this time to Tora Bora, where Osama bin Laden was holed up and under assault by local Afghan warlords on the American payroll. In the taxi on the way to the airport, I got a call from Peter. He told me the consensus was that I had blown it the first time around, and that now I really needed to prove myself. I spent much of the flight in the fetal position.
There was no Marriott in Tora Bora. Upon arrival, we paid an opium farmer to let us sleep in his ramshackle compound of mud huts in the middle of an iced-over poppy field. There was a large, smelly ox tied up right outside the door, and every day when we came home for dinner, there would be one less chicken running through the yard.
On this assignment, I redeemed myself. Part of what turned things around for me was a scene, captured on video, where I was shooting a “stand-up,” the part of a news story where the reporter speaks directly to the camera. I was perched on the side of a mountain, and right in the middle of my spiel, there was a whistling noise overhead. I had never heard gunfire up close before, so it took me a second to realize what was happening and dive to the ground. There was nothing warm or fuzzy about this. My bosses ate it up.
