* * *
The inbound Medevac helicopters brought us constant reminders of the realities of war, as they delivered the most recent casualties to the Air Force Hospital on the base. This was a 62,000-square-foot facility under canvas that would rival any major trauma center in the U.S. On staff was a medical team of 380 doctors and nurses I described in my reports as the “Healing Hands for Heroes.” Dave Kimmel and I were on the pad as a Black Hawk helicopter landed and a medical team raced out to lift a wounded Marine onto a gurney and rush him into the emergency medical facility in a desperate attempt to save his life. The Marine had a serious head wound, and was not responsive. I watched with a heavy heart as doctors worked feverishly against the clock to stabilize and revive the wounded marine. Within hours, he was on a plane to another medical facility in Germany. His chances of survival, we were told, were very good. Unlike in Vietnam, where it had sometimes taken days to get the wounded to a field hospital, we were told that in Iraq, the wounded were transported from the battlefield within 30 minutes, contributing to the base hospital’s 98% survival rate.
I had a chance to see the doctors at work when an orthopedic surgeon invited us to get into scrubs and join him in Operating Room 3. He was removing a bullet from the left arm of a 50-year-old Iraqi civilian, who got caught in the middle of a firefight. It was difficult to watch as he delicately removed the bullet from the bloody arm, then sewed up the wound. The operation finished, the doctor had barely taken off his facemask before he asked when we were going to serve those bagels we had brought.
“I haven’t had a good bagel since I left New York,” he said wistfully.
There was no discrimination to be found at this field hospital. Even enemy combatants were treated here, under the watchful eyes of armed soldiers. Civilians were regularly treated here too—including children. It was a chilling moment when I heard the cries of a three-year-old Iraqi girl, who was being treated for shrapnel wounds.
In a most unusual encounter, I sat with an enemy combatant in a gazebo outside the hospital. An armed soldier stood over him, keeping guard. The man looked deeply troubled. He didn’t speak any English, but somehow we managed to communicate. He offered me an Iraqi cigarette, and showed me a photo of a little girl.
“Your daughter?” I asked. He nodded his head and held up four fingers, indicating her age. Through his gestures, and the fact that he was waiting outside the hospital, I surmised that his daughter was one of the wounded, and was in surgery. Tears suddenly filled his eyes, and he held his hands together in prayer. I placed my hands in the same position, and expressed in English my hopes that his daughter would come through all right. Sadness consumed him, but he seemed to understand. He held my hand for a moment, and spoke briefly in his language, saying what I believed to be words of heartfelt thanks. For those few moments, we weren’t adversaries from different worlds, but simply two fathers, connecting over the common concern of the well-being of a little girl.
* * *
One night, we flew under the cover of darkness to a military base in northern Iraq. Boarding a Black Hawk helicopter just as a 9 p.m. curfew went into effect, we lifted quickly above the rooftops of Baghdad. Lights flooded the deserted streets below us, the silence of the night punctured by the deafening roar of the chopper’s rotors. The tranquility of the city belied the fact that we were smack in the middle of a war zone. Off in the distance we could see the flickering flames of an oil refinery, stark against the darkness.
Previous wars were fought in jungles and trenches, not along roadsides like these; and as dangerous as those environments were, there was something newly menacing about these seemingly innocuous highways, where faceless enemy insurgents could hide the improvised explosives responsible for at least 44% of American combat deaths in Iraq. During one of our visits, we learned how dangerous it was to drive along any highway in Baghdad. After being told that a helicopter flight to the Green Zone was not available, Dave Kimmel and I were placed inside a 15-ton vehicle known as a Rhino—essentially an oversized RV encased in armor—destined down Route Irish, the codename for one of Baghdad’s most notoriously dangerous highways. Even in such a heavy transport, I had some trepidation about the 12-mile ground trip, and offered to abort if Kimmel didn’t want to chance it.
“No way,” he insisted—and we were off, under orders to wear our flak jackets and helmets.
As we exited Camp Victory, we heard a loud thud, and off the left side of the vehicle we saw a plume of smoke.
My heart began to race as the driver, Staff Sergeant Hector Morales, made the sign of the cross, exclaiming, “Did you hear that?” Tersely, he told us that we had just narrowly avoided a small explosive device, apparently spirited away inside a plastic bag in the middle of the roadway. Morales gunned the accelerator and we raced off under the escort of a Humvee just ahead of us, its gunner standing alert at the trigger of his 50-caliber machine gun. Kimmel, his camera already rolling, turned it on me, as I breathlessly described what was happening, a chill running down my spine.
As we raced along the stretch of highway, the streets whizzed by in a blur. Once we were safe in the Green Zone, the Staff Sergeant got out to inspect his vehicle, and found no damage.
“We got lucky,” he said with a sigh, his voice remarkably steady. We were reminded that what had been a nail-biting experience for us had been just another day in Staff Sergeant Morales’s job. Still, he was not unappreciative of our narrow escape. “The man upstairs, he carries you around,” he said, looking skyward. “We pray before we go to mission every morning—and he did his job today.”
We were relieved to get through a most harrowing experience. But we were later told that it never happened. Three days after the incident, I received a call from a public-affairs officer in Baghdad who attempted to dissuade me from running the story in my broadcast, claiming that we hadn’t had an IED encounter at all. The officer, a Marine colonel, told us she had never received a report of the incident. I suggested that perhaps there had been no report because it caused no damage or casualties. She insisted that there was no story here, claiming that maybe the driver was exaggerating.
She finally declared, “So you were hit by a firecracker.” Fearful that the colonel might block the transmission of our story via military satellite, I remained respectful and held back what I really wanted to tell her. Fortunately, our account aired as scheduled.
* * *
Flying along over Baghdad at just under 1,000 feet, our helicopter cast a racing shadow across the sun-drenched landscape. We watched farmlands morph into rural and urban neighborhoods. Once a beautiful biblical city, Baghdad now bore the unmistakable scars of war, with many of its buildings in ruins.
These included Saddam Hussein’s 12 opulent former palaces—marble-and-granite edifices the infamous tyrant had built as monuments to himself—along with the shacks and shanties they dwarfed: the homes of most Iraqis. Off in the distance, we could see the palace that Hussein had planned to name Victory Over America. His defeat had reduced the unfinished palace to rubble. Another, named Prosperity, was leveled to an impoverished hovel, its floors collapsed. The palaces were a part of the Camp Victory compound in Baghdad, as was Al Faw Palace, which U.S. forces had turned into a military command headquarters. We landed to visit the building, marveling at the flashy remnants of the former tyrant’s reign. A three-story chandelier reflected light off the towering marble columns; the bathrooms retained their gold plumbing fixtures. A Christmas tree with colorful lights incongruously adorned the rotunda. I couldn’t resist sitting on a throne given to the former Iraqi leader by Palestinian president Yasser Arafat. Like the palace itself, this too was glitzy but beginning to show the wear of time, the fabric fraying and discolored from the multitude of visitors who parked themselves there long enough to take a picture. Similarly, as we hovered over other palaces—including one in Saddam’s hometown of Tikrit—we were told that one had been fitted with a gold toilet for the despot’s mother, while another was provided with
a “torture playroom” for his sons.
The surroundings outside of Al Faw Palace were as pristine as those of the Taj Mahal. This, too, was a magnificent structure surrounded by a moat; Hussein, we learned, had closed down farmers’ irrigation canals in order to redirect the water to encircle his palaces. The pool around this one was murky, with terrible secrets rumored to lie beneath its depths—the remains of scores of dissidents executed during Saddam’s reign of terror.
As we prepared to leave the Green Zone, we stopped at a command center where soldiers were hosting a Christmas party for Iraqi children, many of them orphaned by the war. There was a jolly and rotund Santa—with a real white beard—and many happy, smiling children being weighed down by presents. It was a rare bright moment out of so many dark ones for them. As for me, my heart began to pulse as I watched one child, all of 11, being led up to Santa in a wheelchair. The boy’s face lit up with delight as he spoke to the man in the red suit. Both of his legs were gone. It was sobering to see yet another innocent casualty of this awful war.
* * *
I was often inspired and emboldened by the courage and perseverance of the young men and women engaged in this far-off war, a war that met with so much opposition and created so much controversy back home. Many of these were citizen soldiers, members of the National Guard or Army Reserves. All of them showed exceptional dedication. In on-camera interviews, they expressed their support of the war, the feeling that they were accomplishing something. Off-camera, some of them expressed disdain and opposition to the war. But that sentiment was not reflected in the base hospital, where I spoke with an injured Marine sergeant, who cried because he was being sent home.
“I’d rather stay with my men,” he said, teary-eyed. “I should go home when they go home.” Nearby, a wounded 22-year-old Marine was equally eager to get out of bed and rejoin his men in Fallujah, where several were wounded and one killed in a battle with insurgents.
For a reporter, it was exhilarating to be able to boost the morale of our men and women who stand in harm’s way, to bring them the spirit of Christmas and let them know they hadn’t been forgotten back home. The high point of our visits with the soldiers was always the live hookups with their families. These were always uplifting, and very emotional.
“Hello, Amy, it’s your old grandma,” bellowed one woman to her granddaughter in Iraq, Lieutenant Amy Updike. “I’m so proud of you!” Sergeant First Class Alarik Talbert’s wife and five children gathered around a Christmas tree as they spoke with him via satellinte.
“I have your butter cookies—I’ll send them to you,” his wife said, adding, “you look healthy.” Master Sergeant Paul Raimondi, a retired telephone worker, got choked up as he spoke to his wife, four children and seven grandchildren on Long Island.
You could feel the emotion as his tearful daughter burst out, “I miss you, Daddy—I love you so much. I’m so proud of you!” Raimondi could barely express his thanks.
His voice faltered as he said, “This means so much to me.”
Senior Airman Olamady Quinone’s two-year-old daughter, sitting on her grandmother’s lap in New York, interrupted the conversation to ask, “Why are you crying, Grandma?” Private First Class Tai Barbee was so moved by the outpouring of love from his large family in the Bronx, he couldn’t hold back his tears.
“I want to apologize to New York City for a grown man crying,” he said. I quickly reassured him that it was quite all right to shed tears of happiness.
The base commanders always gave us a place to host our holiday parties. It would be decorated with a beautiful tree and colorful trimmings. Fellow reporter Jill Nicolini—who joined us on two of our trips—and I would don our Santa hats and serve the bagels and cheesecake, while Dave Kimmel would put his camera down long enough to grill some hotdogs. It was always a joy to hand out gifts from home, including plush teddy bears outfitted in military fatigues that, with a press of a button would sing, “Proud to Be an American.” For many of the homesick soldiers, Jill was the star attraction. A former Playboy model, she had no difficulty captivating and charming them.
During one of our visits to Iraq, she put on a Santa suit, entered the crowded room and asked, “Does anybody wanna to sit on Santa’s lap?” To this day I can still hear the hoots, stomping and laughter that filled that room.
For me, their expressions of gratitude were the greatest gift I could receive.
I’ll never forget the moment when a soldier thrust his hand into mine and said, “Thank you. You made a difference for my Christmas.”
Another female sergeant embraced me with a bear hug and expressed her gratitude, telling me, “You don’t know how much this means to us.” And we touched the lives of many family members back home, who flooded our inboxes with emails of thanks.
One parent presented me with a bronze plaque that read, “Not only did you bring Christmas to Iraq, but your daily reports brought joy, calm and peace to the families of troops shown on your daily broadcasts. You are a true humanitarian and an American treasure.” It was signed, “Proud Parents of an American soldier.” Along with a commander’s coin given to me by General David Petraeus, it remains one of my proudest possessions.
For the soldiers, marines and airmen we visited, our holiday celebration was a momentary respite. But there were always vivid reminders of the ongoing conflict that swirled around them. The most sobering moment for me came when I first arrived in Kuwait for a transfer to Iraq. I had just gotten off a plane with 200 soldiers beginning their deployment. My cameraman was collecting his equipment as I waited on the tarmac. My eyes drifted in the darkness toward a cargo plane nearby. I noticed what I thought to be hands raised in salute. As my eyes focused more clearly, I observed an American flag moving up a conveyor. It was a casket, bringing another soldier home. Tears began to stream down my cheeks. I stood silent for several minutes, and raised my hand in salute. The reality of war struck me hard.
on reporting
23
EXCLUSIVES: THE AGONY AND THE ECSTASY
Remains of TWA Flight 800 recovered from the depths of the Atlantic and assembled at a nearby hangar.
Every reporter strives to get that exclusive story—to be the first to break the news of something important. Over the years I’ve had my share of exclusives, but I’ve also been scooped by competitors on stories I was still working on that were not quite ready to broadcast.
With all of the on-air and Internet news outlets today, the rush to be first to break the story has increased, and often compromises the accuracy of news. The basic industry rule is that no exclusive report should be released unless the information comes from at least two reliable sources. Generally, this serves as a good safeguard against inaccurate reporting. Believing in that tenet, I have always relied on two or more sources for any story I have uncovered—except on the night of May 1, 2011, when Navy SEAL Team Six took down Osama bin Laden.
It was early in the evening that Sunday when the White House announced that President Obama would be speaking to the nation on a matter of national security. Almost immediately, speculation and rumors surfaced that the most wanted man in the world, Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, had been captured. The longer the President’s announcement was delayed, the more intense the speculation became. I reached out to several sources in Congress and at national security agencies, with the hope of nailing down the story. While most said they had no direct knowledge of what the president would be announcing, one trusted source—someone I had relied on in the past, who held a position that would have him in direct contact with President Obama—told me he could not discuss anything at that moment, but that he was about to get a call from the White House.
“Call me later,” he advised.
As the hours passed and we still had no definitive word about what the president was going to say, speculation continued to mount that the mastermind behind the September 11th attacks had been captured and was dead. Still, no news entity was prepared to state it as fact. I joine
d anchor Jim Watkins during our live broadcast, to fill the void while waiting for the president to speak. At around 10:30 p.m. I placed another call to my source. He confirmed that he had just gotten off the phone with the president, and was sworn to secrecy. Though I told him I respected that, the tenacious reporter in me continued to press him. He said he had to go, but before he did, I tried one more time.
“Is it true?” I asked. There was a momentary pause, then the words that sent a rush through my body.
“Yes, but you didn’t hear it from me,” he said—and hung up.
“I got it! Bin Laden’s dead!” I immediately told my producer.
It was now 10:39, and I was eager to break the story that PIX11 News had learned definitively that bin Laden was dead. But…not so fast. As I continued working the phones, my producer said that she first had to get the okay from News Director Bill Carey. He had concerns about breaking the story, she said, and didn’t want me making that declaration without a second source. I pleaded with my producer, insisting that my source was unimpeachable—someone who had just been briefed by the president himself. But it was not enough; they needed a second source. Frantically I reached out to other sources I trusted for corroboration, but none of them had as much knowledge as my first source. I hedged around it as I spoke with Watkins on the air, coming awfully close to stating what I knew as fact—but as tantalizing as it was, I couldn’t break the story.
As I Saw It Page 15
