DEBORAH LEFF: Good evening and welcome. I'm Deborah Leff. I'm Director of the John F. Kennedy Library and Museum, and on behalf of myself and John Shattuck, the CEO of the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation, we're delighted you're here. I want to thank our co-sponsors of the Forum Series, WBUR, Fleet Boston, The Lowell Institute, Boston Capital, The Globe, and Boston.com.
Like many of you last week, I listened to the WBUR fundraiser and I guess one promo that caught my attention was the WBUR listener who said, "I'm addicted to Anne Garrels." It's an understandable addiction, and I want you to listen for a moment to her reporting from Baghdad.
ANNE GARRELS (RECORDED): In the dark a crowd of men move toward the nearby mosque. They carried coffin after rough-hewn coffin aloft, their voices raised in prayer, not propaganda.
[CROWD SOUNDS]
The blast hit at 6:00 when the local open-air market in the Shula neighborhood of Baghdad was packed with shoppers. It's now a mass of corrugated iron, broken glass, and the tangled frames of what had once been vegetable stalls. A burst pipe does little to wash away the blood.
Some said they heard fighter planes overhead. The next thing they knew, shrapnel flew in all directions. They point to a crater about five feet in diameter, and a couple of feet deep. It's in the heart of the market. Convinced an American bomb was responsible, people ask, “How can the Americans make these mistakes?” Amar Devastani(?) came to see if friends have been hurt. “Is this the way America brings democracy?” he asks.
AMAR DEVASTANI (RECORDED): There are people ... (inaudible) people, and there's no military police. You can see it's a civil zone and only small houses where poor people are living in.
ANNE GARRELS (RECORDED): Shards of metal struck two teenage boys who were standing outside their house on the edge of the market, killing them instantly. Shrapnel peppered the gate behind them, piercing the metal. A third brother standing in the courtyard was hit in the head and also killed. Their bodies are lined up inside, wrapped up in white cloths, illuminated by a kerosene lamp. Their father, Josamal Homdani(?), stands frozen, unbelieving, as a friend raises his hands in prayer over the dead children. In the next room, draped in …
DEBORAH LEFF: Anne Garrels lets us feel, helps us to understand what was going on in Baghdad. When NBC, CBS, and ABC had left Baghdad, when CNN had gone, the remarkable Anne Garrels was there, placing us there, and helping us to find the truth. Now she has enriched that enormous gift of reporting she gave to us with her marvelous new book Naked in Baghdad, which she'll be signing in our bookstore after this forum.
In writing so clear and evocative you can hear her voice, Anne weaves together a diary of the time leading up to the U.S. bombing and throughout the war. Interspersed throughout are the emails her husband, Vint Lawrence, wrote to friends to update them on Anne's whereabouts, affectionately referring to her as "Brenda," as in the comic book heroine, Brenda Starr: Star Reporter. Through his eyes, Vint's eyes, we see a whole new Anne, as when Vint writes of Anne's life in Baghdad, "To while away the down time of the cat-and-mouse game that is so much of her life these days, Brenda has taken up a new indoor sport, embroidery. Madame DuFarge incarnate, Brenda stitches away, artfully recording the elusive sights of weapons of mass destruction on pillowcases collected from the better hotels en route."
Prior to her embroidery career, Anne Garrels covered the Soviet Union, Central America, and the State Department for ABC and NBC news. She moved to NPR in 1988 and has reported from around the world, including Afghanistan, Israel, Pakistan, Bosnia, and the former Soviet Republics. Reporting does not get better than hers and gutsier than hers, as recognized by her winning the DuPont Award and the Overseas Press Award.
And we are especially pleased that the moderator of today's forum also has graced us with top-notch reporting from Baghdad and around the world. Dick Gordon is host of WBUR's The Connection, and joined WBUR after years as a leading correspondent for the CBC. Dick, I turn it over to you.
DICK GORDON: Thank you very much. Nice to have you here. And thanks to all of you for coming. It's nice to see the room so full, although it didn't surprise me at all knowing who our guest was going to be tonight. Is that still disconcerting for you, to listen to a piece of tape like that, to hear the tone of your voice, to know what was going through your mind as you did it?
ANNE GARRELS: And especially that day because there was no clarity. You only had people's perceptions. The clarity was people had been killed by an explosion. What caused the explosion? Was it, indeed, an American bomb? We did not know that day. It was what Iraqis believed to be the case.
I believe, actually, now … I've been back to that neighborhood and there were two instances like this where there were numerous civilian causalities, where there were large blasts in civilian neighborhoods, which was, frankly, unusual. The American bombing, for the most part, was highly accurate. And Iraqis knew it. And they knew more or less what the targets were. And they were military installations, security installations, Saddam's palaces.
And there were, in fact, very few civilian neighborhoods that were hit. And when they were hit, the question was, what were they hit with? I described a crater, and it was only about five feet round and not very deep. It was not, in fact, a typical … It did not have the signature of an American bomb. Subsequently, I think it became clear, or clearer, that it may well have been an Iraqi missile that went awry.
DICK GORDON: I wonder if you know now how many of us woke up each morning in March and April, listening for Carl Cassells to say, not in this news from Iraq, but, with a report, here's Anne Garrels. Just so we would know that you were still in one piece. Were you aware of that at the time? Any idea?
ANNE GARRELS: I got a hint of it only, well, in when I was trying to beg off being on the air, and I said to Lauren Jenkins, my foreign editor, I don't have anything to say. And Lauren said, “I don't care. If you don't go on the air, they'll think you're dead, and I'll have to deal with a lot of emails.”
At that point, I got an inkling, but I frankly was living in a cocoon. I didn't speak at length with the shows or with the foreign editor because the satellite phone that I was using, I would put it up, broadcast quickly, and then knock it down as fast as I could so the antenna wasn't visible out the window. I didn't want it to be confiscated. And also the sat phone is very expensive at eight bucks a minute. So we didn't have long, lengthy discussions, and it was really only when I got back and I saw emails from listeners. And it was overwhelming. I mean people sent me unguents and oils. Well beyond … Then I got it. I got a glimpse. It was also a little scary to be suddenly one of the 16 who had stayed. And you got there right afterwards. You got in there very quickly, I have to say, one of the first. And saw the disgusting room I lived in.
DICK GORDON: I'm probably one of the few NPR people who met you first in a hotel in Baghdad.
ANNE GARRELS: That's right.
DICK GORDON: I'd actually called up from the lobby and said, "Anne, it's Dick Gordon from WBUR Boston.” And she said, "you know, I am terribly, terribly busy." And I said, "Anne, I have 5000 dollars for you." And she said, "I think you should come up right away."
[LAUGHTER]
You went through money at quite a clip there, and [it was] always hard to know what you were going to be asked to spend it on. And I guess, in a way, public radio was a little bit under the radar of these American television networks that were passing it over by the suitcaseful. But, still, that's a hard thing to know what to do. Are you going to pay to stay? How much are you going to pay to stay? You have to make that judgment yourself, almost on an hourly basis, in those final days.
ANNE GARRELS: There was a rate card, an official rate card, just for the pleasure of staying in Baghdad. Officially we had to pay per person $200 a day for which we got nothing.
DICK GORDON: The sat phone cost you … ?
ANNE GARRELS: The sat phone was $100, and my presence in Baghdad cost $100. That was official. You got a receipt for that. And then there were all sorts of … To try and get a visa. I didn't find that vast sums … Or I didn't have vast sums. I work for NPR and, frankly, they weren't doing it. Because the networks, I can't absolutely prove it but I have been told by any number of people, that the networks were paying thousands upon thousands of dollars. That's just out of my league. I gave a guy $100 here and $100 there to take my phone calls when I came back from this … For when I would call from the States in the hope I would get a visa.
The visa game, you have to understand, from October up to and during the war was a huge moneymaking operation for the Iraqi authorities. And they would let us in for ten days and maybe we could squirm a few more days out of them. But the networks were there, basically, they were there all the time, and they were paying dearly for it. It raised, I think, some real questions in the minds of a lot of us about how we should all operate under these circumstances in a police state. It's not a happy operation.
DICK GORDON: John Burns has been writing about it, and others, since then, and I wanted to ask you. It's got to be a healthy thing if those questions are seriously thought about. Because at the extreme end the idea that you're paying huge bribes to tell a story that you don't get to control … At some point you're not really doing your job as a journalist.
ANNE GARRELS: That's right. And of course the irony is that the networks and CNN were paying huge bribes to stay for what they thought was going to be the big story. And then in the end, frankly, they fled. I don't belittle the fear and the real danger that we all faced. And anybody who wanted to leave Baghdad was, in my view, justified.
But nothing changed, really. What was interesting to me is that there was nothing different about Baghdad and the prospect of war at the beginning of March. And in the middle of March when the clock started ticking, nothing changed substantially. It was the same danger. And why they suddenly … I mean we all thought the networks and CNN would stay. It was shocking to us when we looked around as the clock ticked down and went, sixteen? NPR? The New York Review of Books? The New Yorker? It was a very strange group.
DICK GORDON: But you write in the book, and you know, though, that those are days that you can't predict. Those are days when you're moving from one hotel to another hotel. Somebody's got a rumor from Washington that they're going to hit the foreign ministry. And no, they're going to be aiming at the Al Rasheed hotel. And we have to move somewhere else. And that gets the pulse going.
ANNE GARRELS: Oh yeah. The problem was the rumors. I mean nothing, in fact, had changed. We knew the Al Rasheed was a target. We knew that we have to find somewhere safe. All of those facts had been known for weeks, months, whatever. But it started to get loopy with rumors.
And then bosses in Washington suddenly realized that they didn't want to take responsibility for having their reporters there. It was just too dangerous. They didn't want to write a eulogy. And so they started pulling journalists. Other journalists were trying to defy their bosses, to stay. It was crazy. And some just plain lost it. And got scared.
The other problem was the Iraqis weren't quite sure if they wanted us to be there. So one day they would say, okay, you're all going to have to leave in two days. And then they'd go back on it and say, oh, you can stay. So there was always this, just a huge number of sort of craziness going on.
DICK GORDON: What was it for you, though? Had you made your decision when you went there initially and you just stuck with that? Did you review it everyday? Talking to Vint, talking to the desk? How did you ultimately decide?
ANNE GARRELS: Of course I reviewed it. But basically the key factor for me was once I had established a relationship with this one particular Iraqi who was my driver, Amar. He was not a government official. I mean he initially was nothing more than a driver for me. But he clearly was extraordinary, and I had been there for so many months on and off since October. So I knew Iraqis. I'd seen the bombing in '91 and again in '98. I knew that wasn't the real problem. Shock and awe notwithstanding.
What I didn't know was how the Iraqi authorities were going to behave in the end, and were they going to take us hostage in a desperate last … And I didn't know that, and couldn't answer that question in my own mind. But I figured it was worth the risk in the end. It was a gut instinct if you will. I can't say why, but now looking back on … Hey! I'm fine! Thinner, but fine.
DICK GORDON: I knew you'd been in Moscow. And you write in your book … I'm going to quote you here. "It's been almost 25 years since I started out as a correspondent in Moscow. I so remember my first day in the bug department wondering how the hell I was going to cover the country."
And I thought, as I read that, the kind of uncertainty, and the kind of unknowing that you learned to live with when you were … Who was the general secretary? Breszhnev was still general secretary when you were … Under that kind of regime, you learn that you don't get to know everything that's going to go on but that there's still a story to tell.
And I wonder if you leaned at all on what you'd learned in your time on the other side of the Iron Curtain, and figuring out how to work in a country that's run by a dictator, how to work as a journalist when you don't really know who's ratting on you? How to make a decision day-to-day what the next story ought to be?
ANNE GARRELS: Absolutely. I think there's no question that having worked in a police state before, although the Breszhnev years look simple compared to Saddam. I mean Saddam was Stalinist if the last years of the Soviet regime were Breszhnev. You know, people are afraid to talk to you.
And it was much easier doing it with radio than it was for television because, you know, you raise a camera, and it's like raising an M-16. Everybody scatters. I have great sympathy for television trying to work in that kind of environment. But Amer, once again, I mean that was critical for me, was finding Iraqis who would offer to help and wanted to help, and understood the dangers. Amer was in a perfect position as my driver. And then as it got chaotic during the war and he knew the regime as well as anyone and how to work around it. He would often say, no, I can't do that, that's too dangerous.
But sometimes when the authorities would lock me in the hotel and all the other journalists, he would go out and look and see what had been bombed, what the mood was. And because I knew him so well over the months I knew he was a superb and very accurate observer. In fact he had incredible reverence for truth and facts, precisely because he lived in a regime that did not. And he had been always so careful. So by that point I knew that I could trust him as my eyes and ears when I could not go out. Obviously it was preferable for me to do it, but sometimes that just wasn't possible.
And those were all skills that I had learned in many ways in the former Soviet Union, when I had given Super 8 cameras in those days to any number of people who took film for me. To dissidents, if you will. I had gotten film of Andrei Sakharov out when he was an exile in Gorky that way. And so experience came to play in more ways than one.
Also, one thing that came to play. When I was in those early years in Moscow, I was young, intrepid, and pretty stupidly brash. This time I was, I hope, intrepid, but a little older, more mature, didn't get into fights with officials the same way, didn't just shove it in their face the way I used to. And I think that really helped. I just kind of looked like a dumb broad and went under the radar. Maturity has definitely helped, compared to the way I behaved in 1980 and '82.
DICK GORDON: You've also seen statues come down before, and know that the world doesn't change the day after the bronze hits the pavement.
ANNE GARRELS: That's right. I think that's my proudest day, in fact, covering up to and during the immediate aftermath. You all remember the pictures of the statue coming down and, not coincidentally, in the square right outside the Palestine Hotel where all the journalists had to live like a reform school. And the pictures that were shown gave this idea maybe of what everybody hoped for.
Look! Everybody is applauding the American troops! And Saddam is pulled down! And it's victory!
And I've seen, as you say, I've seen statues pulled down in any number of countries, most poignantly in the former Soviet Union. And I knew that pulling down statues doesn't mean anything. It doesn't begin to answer the questions of how you got there and where you're going to go from here. And, indeed, as I spoke to people in the square, yes, there were some jubilant people, but there were probably more who were just standing there in shock. And saying what next?
And there was a professor I knew who happened to be in the square and he came up to me and said, "You now understand the Americans will have to take complete control. Look at the city. There's a vacuum of authority." And he said, "And we will resent them every step of the way." What was extraordinary was how well Iraqis knew themselves.
DICK GORDON: And I was struck at the tail end of the book when you describe Amer, the man who valued truth in a country that did not, cried when the statue came down. Explain that for us.
ANNE GARRELS: I think he shared the … It was why did the Americans have to do it? Why couldn't …
DICK GORDON: It was humiliation on top of?
ANNE GARRELS: Yes. It was humiliation. Why did it take the Americans to do this? Why couldn't the Iraqis? And you have to … Amer comes from one of the tribes. Iraq being basically divided up into tribes now. It makes it sound very primitive. It's very elaborate family relationships.
DICK GORDON: Think of them as clans in Scotland. It's a little easier.
ANNE GARRELS: Exactly. Thank you. But then of course Iraqi tribes are divided up into clans too! His family was Sunni Muslim, like Saddam, and comes from the region which is now actually opposing the Americans. He comes from Ramadi. He was a bundle of contradictions.
Here he was this Sunni Muslim who, in some ways, could have benefited from Saddam, chose not to, chose not to marry a first cousin, as most Iraqis do, chose to move out on his own into Baghdad, considered himself an Iraqi first and foremost, rather than a Sunni or a Shiite or whatever. He's a very interesting man.
And I think like many he wanted Saddam gone, but it was the fact that it was the Americans who had to do it. He was sobbing when I came upstairs. He said, “This is not a great day for us.” Much as he loathed Saddam Hussein.
DICK GORDON: There was a day, and everybody in this room who was listening to the radio and watching the television will remember it, because it was one of those few days in the midst of all that craziness when we had an image, television image, and something described to us by reporters that was something other than the bombs landing in Baghdad. Do you remember when the soldiers were running up and down the banks of the Tigris River, firing their AK-47s into the water, and kicking through the reeds? It was a very strange day and a bizarre one for you, as you describe it.
That's a day when, and Vint Lawrence writes, "Annie slept soundly through the lullaby of Baghdad last night. Even through the dodgy satellite phone connection, her voice was strong and her mood determined."
Vint's in the front row here. Can you just stand up?
ANNE GARRELS: I have a great husband, everybody. Who's also a wonderful writer.
DICK GORDON: He is, and I want to talk about the way Vint's emails complement the work that you do in the book, because at the same time as we know what's going on, we're getting your description, we're getting his Brenda
Starr version. Who were those emails going to anyway? I mean at times …
ANNE GARRELS: That's a good question. We thought they were just going to a small circle of family and friends. But then …
DICK GORDON: You know the "forward" button on the … ?
ANNE GARRELS: And then when we were sort of getting replies and comments from people in Alaska. They were going very far afield. And they had been quite open in some ways.
DICK GORDON: Were you reading them at the time?
ANNE GARRELS: I read them until … Vint stopped sending them to me at a point at the very beginning of the war, because I think he was expressing his concerns and the rumors that were flying around about me staying and what other people were saying about me staying. And he thought it was better that I didn't see those. Although in the end, when he realized that I knew all the rumors and more, he then sent them on.
DICK GORDON: There's also a time in that same week when you and Susie Goldenberg go out under … I think it's nighttime when you went out to visit?
ANNE GARRELS: No, it's actually early in the morning.
DICK GORDON: Early in the morning. Well you tell the story. I'm pulling it from my own memory.
ANNE GARRELS: Well it was just … We were basically locked in the hotel all the time. Or if we weren't, the authorities told us we couldn't go see families, we couldn't go speak to people. Some journalists who had just gone shopping for food had been detained in their rooms. But Susie and I were going nuts.
So we went out. We were at the information ministry and then sort of did a dodge and got a taxi and went out to a neighborhood and had the taxi drop us at a restaurant, not at the house we were really going to. And then we took a risk by sort of sauntering down a street and saw some friends who lived next door to an Air Force base where cruise missiles had been slamming into the Air Force base.
But in some ways these people had already lived through the bombing of '91, '98. They knew that the Air Force base was going to be hit, but they knew that their house, even though it was literally only a block away, and most of the glass had broken, that the house would be okay. The glass would break, but they would be okay if they slept in one room down in the middle.
DICK GORDON: Now Susie's Canadian, writing for a British paper, but you can't make any secret of the fact that you're American, and reporting for National Public Radio in the United States. It is the Americans who are dropping these bombs on this family. And you show up. And I'm asking you the question, because I still can't quite figure out the answer to it. You show up, making no secret about who you are, and these people want to tell you their story. They don't want to grab you by the throat and say, send the message back to your President, that blah, blah, blah.
ANNE GARRELS: They wanted an end to the regime. Desperately wanted an end of the regime. But they weren't sure that the Americans were the ones to do it. And they weren't sure that the Americans were up to the task of what it would mean when the regime was over. They knew perfectly well that this country was going to fracture into bits, that there was going to be looting, violence, crime in the aftermath. They predicted exactly what was going to happen. They were fearful of that. And these people had lived, had made their peace in a funny way. Not made their peace, but they had somehow in a way made a lot of compromises and figured out a way to survive Saddam.
DICK GORDON: But for some reason, though they know you're American, they don't connect you as American with American bombs?
ANNE GARRELS: Oh yes I see your … No. And that was true of Iraqis again and again. They love Americans. Whatever they thought of the government, they make a very real distinction between the Americans and the American government. Again and again. Now sometimes they just said that.
They love the American government too, but they couldn't possibly say that under Saddam, and they desperately wanted the Americans to come in and get rid of Saddam. And they would make this fake distinction between … Or, not fake, but they would deliberately say people are different from the government. But many people made that distinction and were enormously welcoming. And many have family in the States.
There was one really peculiar moment where just as the regime is about to fall the troops are on the outskirts of town, and Saddam's people had this propaganda thing outside the Palestine Hotel, and they brought out musicians and a big thing with a new song about Saddam that would run every night on television. The sign was up there with the bouncing ball, follow the words, and all the crowds were brought out to sing it.
And there was a musician there, and I was trying to find out what the words to this new song was, what the words were. And I went up to this distinguished-looking musician, and he spoke wonderful English. And he said, oh, by the way, my son lives in Chicago, and he's got his green card, and he's going to be a citizen in a couple of weeks. Meanwhile he's conducting this song to Saddam. And I said, “Does this seem strange to you?”
And I think the bottom line is whatever he thought about Saddam, he said, I love my country and I am glad that my son has a future in your country. And in some ways I think he truly believed that. Now it was still at a dodgy time to speak, but I think his answer actually wouldn't be different today than it was then.
DICK GORDON: I wonder if it's the people in that country have just learned to live with such unimaginable contradictions that we never think about having to rationalize. There's a President who people like, everything's good, the President people don't like, everything's bad.
ANNE GARRELS: I think it's also that people are afraid of … There are many different elements. I often think of the former Soviet Union. I mean Saddam, as awful as he was, like Stalin in a way, who killed innumerable people, innocent people, put the Soviet Union on the map. And Saddam, in a way, put Iraq on the map for many Iraqis. Much as they … They'll sort of recall the early days, the early Saddam, with a kind of nostalgia.
They know that he became corrupt and launched wars that destroyed any of the good that was formed. But there is a sense that Iraq was a leader in the area. Iraqis, with all of their oil wealth, they are very unlike many of their neighbors in the Gulf, because they have built their own country. It has not been built by foreign workers. They have utter disdain for the Kuwaitis because they say, we get education, we build our own country.
Iraqis, even though they're still grappling with a sense of country at one level because of the divisions between Sunni, Shia, Kurds, whatever, and also regional divisions between clans and tribes and whatever, nonetheless, there is a growing sense of real pride in being an Iraqi.
And the other part of it is they're afraid of themselves and they knew how difficult things would be. And they knew how hard it would be for the United States when the United States came in. And I think they're disappointed now and say, you see, we knew the United States can't secure this country. It's worse than it was.
DICK GORDON: So step one, further step into the psyche, do you think a good number of Iraqis take a secret kind of pleasure in the fact that Saddam Hussein continues to elude the American forces? Do you think anything will change?
ANNE GARRELS: I don't think anybody, apart from some Sunni holdouts and members of his tribe and tribes that feel that they really have everything to lose now, that they're going to pay for having been the beneficiaries for so long, no. I don't think that.
I think people are exhausted at this point. Remember they've lived under 13 years of sanctions. Their patience was already at an end. Contradiction: they had both inflated ideas about what the United States would do when it came in, or else they knew in their gut that this was going to be a real mess that nobody could handle.
And it is interesting that the number of troops, though it sounds like a whole lot, 130,000, that's actually per capita a lot less than what was in the Balkans. And clearly from the very first day Iraqis saw that the United States had underestimated the problem. When they heard that Rumsfeld was talking about reducing the troops to 30,000, there was just sheer panic. He thought clearly it was going to be much easier.
And then when the looting went on. Okay, one day of looting, two days, a month of it and it was not stopped. And that has, of course, made it that much harder for Iraqis to sort of take control of their own lives. The very ministries, you know the, unfortunately, records. Imagine living in Boston and you don't have traffic records, police records, education records, school records, college … You can't … Nothing. And you're trying to get the country back up and going and figure out who's who.
DICK GORDON: You've done one reporting trip since …
ANNE GARRELS: Yeah I just was there for six weeks.
DICK GORDON: And in that time, Anne, did you get a feeling that people are judging the future of their country on their own well-being, their job, their access to basic services, or that they're still thinking of their future in larger terms like I hope they get Saddam, and I hope that the provisional authority does X, Y? How consumed are people by just making it day-to-day?
ANNE GARRELS: They're consumed by day-to-day. They're scared. They're scared of the nights. You don't have electricity, or very rarely at night. Most people can't afford a generator. Most people are out of work. The provisional authority is beginning to pay more and more people, or get salaries going, but most of the people work for the government, and most of the government buildings were destroyed. So you had a real Catch-22 in the beginning. They're scared … You don't see women, or you didn't. You're beginning to see a few more, but you just didn't see women on the streets. Families, men wouldn't let their wives and children go out.
DICK GORDON: Too unsafe.
ANNE GARRELS: That's what they believed. There were a lot of rumors about … But that's gotten a little bit better. During the day it's better. You see more women out on the streets now during the day. And if you were in Baghdad now you would, during the day it's busy, in fact, too busy, their traffic is terrible, because there aren't any traffic police and there are no traffic lights, because there's no electricity, or not enough electricity to run the traffic lights. Now you imagine Boston with its reputation! But in Baghdad it's nuts.
So it's exhausting. People are just … And they don't know what’s next. They don't know who the 25 members really are. Especially the exiles. The United States military has done, they can be applauded for any number of things they've done but as a police force, unfortunately, they can be a very blunt weapon. And a lot of Iraqi civilians have been killed in raids and checkpoints that were just raids that went bad, checkpoints that were badly managed.
And initially Iraqis would watch the news television station, their only television access. I mean they can watch satellite, too, and it's very popular, but then they got Araby or Al-Jazeera, which is completely slanted in one angle. And they were watching their own news TV station, which is being paid for by the American Provisional Authority. And it's not very good, unfortunately. It's underfunded. Surprise, surprise. The reporters aren't very experienced yet, they don't have enough camera crews. And most of it was very Pollyanna-ish.
And initially Paul Bremer, the head of the American occupation authority, was also just saying that everything is just hunky-dory and fine. And many Iraqis would say, I don't know who's worse. This news media or Baghdad Bob. This is nuts. We just traded one for another. So there was this sort of credibility gap, and they would listen, and everybody's saying, oh, it's fine. And they go, what country do you live in? That has gotten a little bit better now.
DICK GORDON: I just want to mention we've got a couple of mics here. And Anne will stay and answer some of your questions if there's something that you want to ask her about. So I'll give you a few minutes to find your way to a mic if you're interested in doing that.
There's a day that you describe that strikes me more than any of your time there, and I don't know whether or not it was having worked there both when Saddam Hussein was in control and then coming in after he'd left. The day you got up and found everybody gone! I can't imagine what it felt like. You must have wondered just what was going on. Because you didn't expect that, did you?
ANNE GARRELS: This particular morning I got up early, I went downstairs in The Palestine. And other journalists were still asleep. But there were no Iraqi security. The information ministry was dark. All the thugs who had been around … Gone. Evaporated. I went out on the streets. The Baath party members in their distinctive green uniforms. Gone. Nothing. It was the strangest … And after a moment of "Yes!" then I got scared. Because the hotel was full of journalists. This is a cash economy, and I could begin to hear … People started, even at 8:00, 8:30 people began to come and say there's looting going on. And I went uh-oh. It's going to roll toward us. All of us combined had a lot of cash on us. They don't take credit cards in Baghdad. And I thought, oh my, and we've got equipment, and whatever, and everybody knows where we are. So I sort of went from elation to raw fear and then the fighting on the streets began to get bad.
DICK GORDON: Fighting between the Americans and the Iraqis?
ANNE GARRELS: Yes. The bombing more or less stopped at that point and the troops, even though Baghdad Bob, the information minister, had long been saying that, no, the troops aren't at the airport! You want to go out and see them? No problem! You want to go out and see how everything is just fine at the airport? At which point every other Iraqi official in the room is just turning green, going, oh my God. Because they knew, and so we then said, well, sir, if that's the case, may we go to the airport? And he said, well, absolutely.
So after he left, we went to the Iraqi officials and said, hey, we want to go to the airport. And they're going, are you out of your minds? You'll get killed. And we don't want to die. So we always wondered, though. I mean they knew the truth. They knew what was going on, and they knew that there was going to be a moment when it just went … But they wouldn't ever talk about it.
And it was only when I went back this time, and I tried to get answers to questions from some people as to what were you thinking? I mean you knew that it was … And they were just waiting for the moment. Either they were too scared … They said they were too scared to leave because other officials sort of had their number and would get their families, or they had to stay there.
And then one official said that he would always deliberately get behind the information minister, so that his wife, who was in the countryside, would see that he was alive. Until the information minister said, go away, go away. What are you doing there? But it was just everybody obviously … And then this magical moment when they just … Poof. Gone.
DICK GORDON: One of those few transforming moments. Let's start over here at this microphone. Ma'am, go ahead.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: Thank you. It's wonderful to hear you in person and to be with Dick, too. You said something that struck me very much and I don't know whether you'd want to expand on it or not, but it was, why did the Americans have to do this? And a number of us held signs for many months: war is not the answer.
Yet when we were asked what is the alternative, we didn't have good answers. And I'm impressed by the work of Gene Sharp and others in other movements in other countries over time where the people within the country were able to change their government. And I wondered if you wanted to make any comment on that? I know that may be a little beyond the scope of your work.
DICK GORDON: Can I ask you if your question is, had the Americans not gone in when they did, were the Iraqis anywhere closer to taking care of business themselves?
AUDIENCE MEMBER: Yes. Was there any sense of a movement within the country?
DICK GORDON: Thanks.
ANNE GARRELS: Sadly, no. And that was really the essence of Amer's dilemma and why he was in tears. He knew the Iraqis couldn't do it, and that they were nowhere near a point where that was going to happen. But they still didn't want the Americans to. It was a push me, pull me.
Nonetheless, many Iraqis were always baffled by … I mean they would ask why now? What's the rush? I think they sensed that … Some said to me, you need a coalition. Why is the U.S. rushing to do this alone? Because it's going to take more than the U.S. And they wanted more than the U.S. involved. And that question came up again and again. Let the inspectors do their job. It's not '98 where they've been stymied. But there were, indeed, other Iraqis who were just desperate that Saddam be overthrown and just said, come in at any … Whatever.
DICK GORDON: Thanks for that. Over here, Ma'am.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: I have a couple of very quick points to request input from you, Ma'am. Is it really true that Iraqi women right now are in a worse situation than they were before, because I read in the newspaper that they were now in voluntary seclusion, deliberate seclusion to avoid rape or murder. My other question is that, as someone living very far away here … I'm not an Iraqi. I was born in India. But I'm an American citizen. It seems that we Americans are making some terrible mistakes in winning the peace. The killing of the Iraqi police, recently, who are shouting in English in broad daylight, “Police! Police!” The killing of Saddam Hussein's 14-year-old grandson who was hiding under a bed. The gunning down of a 12-year-old boy who had just peeped his little head on the rooftop during a very hot night during the war, and GIs allegedly who had shot him prevented the boy from being rushed to a military hospital; the boy bled to death.
None of these things would be regarded as winning the peace. I'd be grateful for any input you or Dick Gordon might have. Thank you.
ANNE GARRELS: On the issue of women, for women in general, the situation has been deteriorating, really, since the late eighties, as basically Iraq was bankrupted by the Iran-Iraq war and then subsequently by the invasion of Kuwait, and the sanctions. Women have suffered probably more than … No, children the most. But women have paid a big price. When a family can't afford to educate all the children, the first to lose out are the girls. And literacy in the country has declined.
Demographics are completely skewed because of the Saddam regime and the wars. So many men have been killed and then so many millions more, in fact, have left the country for jobs, that this has completely distorted family life and the life of women. Any number of young, middle class girls who should have been educated, who would have been educated 15 years ago, their families are now pressuring them to marry because there aren't enough men.
And so, at 16, instead of getting an education and going on, as many Iraqi women did, they're being … There weren't the jobs, there was high unemployment, and there weren't enough men. So the issue now of women being inside, I mentioned it earlier, I think that's the case. But I think that's a temporary phenomenon.
But what Iraq is in the future and the kind of society it's going to be, and what kind … I mean it will be Islamic, in some form or another, I make that assumption, as I think most Iraqis do. But how conservative it becomes over time, it's become more conservative over time as the region has, and also as people … Saddam used religion, people also sought solace in religion. So this has also played a part.
As an example of how explosive this might just be, one of the first decisions by the governing council was to allow women to travel abroad alone without a male relative, a brother, uncle, father traveling with her. And while this was hailed by many, I can assure you I also heard outraged comments by other, more conservative Iraqis. So these sorts of issues will be played out and we'll see. Sadly, of course, we know that a leading member of the governing council, a woman and a moderate at that, and a Shiite, who could have played a very key role, was assassinated.
I don't comment on the specific incidents you've mentioned. There have been unfortunate incidents when the military has killed innocent bystanders. Some of this is inevitable in an ongoing conflict with an invisible enemy, but I have spoken to military officers who have been critical of the way they've conducted raids and the way raids have been conducted. They are learning on the ground, but in the first four or five months some very bad mistakes were made.
And the fact that the United States provisional authority would not even comment on Iraqi civilians sort of led many Iraqis to say, don't we even exist? I mean who do you think lives here? The Americans would document each soldier who was killed, correctly, I think. But would absolutely ignore the issue of Iraqi civilian casualties.
That has begun to change, and I think Bremer is beginning to realize that you've got to admit that Iraqis actually live in Iraq. And when he said to the Hill more and more Iraqis are seeing us as occupiers, not liberators. That's a refreshing acknowledgement that there are problems on the ground that need to be resolved. Nobody's saying that this is simple. But I think the fact that the civilian administration is now facing up to those problems and saying they exist is healthy for everybody.
DICK GORDON: How much patience is there though? I'm wondering, too, about the question. I'm thinking back to the time when all the Iraqi policemen were killed, and I read the story and heard it on the radio that day and I thought to myself, this is an event that has the potential to be somewhat iconic at this moment, where people say, that was the moment. Forget it. The Americans are never going to get it right. But there continues to be some patience, or tolerance, beyond that.
ANNE GARRELS: If only because they're terrified. Even some of the most conservative religious figures, when they say we want the Americans out, and I've asked them, now? And they go, well, not right now. They knew perfectly well if the Americans leave now, Iraqis will be at each others' throats. And so that is tempering some of the fury that people feel.
But I have seen, I have been in neighborhoods on several occasions when raids have gone bad. And civilians, families, children have been killed. And at the funerals, you do hear the word jihad coming out of the mouths of the mourners, and these are middle-class, basically neutral … Probably wanted the Americans in in the first place.
DICK GORDON: Let's go back to our microphones. We'll try to be a little faster. I see the lineups getting longer. Go ahead.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: Anne, a lot of us are very delighted that you survived. I happen to be one who's been listening to you since you were in Moscow, and I remember thinking you were a gutsy woman then. It's nice to see you in person. Keep at it, please. Seeing you in person makes me feel how too bad it is there isn't a visual documentary of you at work.
ANNE GARRELS: I looked really bad in Baghdad, my dear. And he can testify to this. There is a really good reason.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: There is a question there, and I hope you'll answer it. But the one I want to ask you is, what would you advise policymakers, decisionmakers in the UN and the United States today if you could get them to listen to you?
ANNE GARRELS: I don't think that's my job. I really mean it. I think I've made it clear where I think where … There was no question that I think the administration was terribly naïve about the Iraq it would face in the aftermath. The Iraqis had long made it clear … That's why my job there was to listen to Iraqis. I just had one very small window on this whole exercise, and Iraqis knew perfectly well how complicated it would be. As I don't make predictions and prescriptions, I would just say that the good news that I have seen in the last few weeks is an acknowledgement, at last, so that Iraqis are not saying, as I said … Looking at their own TV and listening to the Americans and going, what's the difference between these guys and Baghdad Bob.
DICK GORDON: The other thing, too … Anne's job is to tell us stories. Not to broadcast to the administration. They have lots of satellite equipment and lots of very smart people on the ground who can give them advice about what they think they ought to do. And I think just in sort of thinking how I would answer the question you posed, and it really isn't our job. If we're doing our level best to make sure that American listeners are as informed as possible, and the best expression of a functioning democracy is that the listeners talk to their politicians, and that's where the policy changes come from. I hope that doesn't sound like I'm ducking the question, but I'm really …
ANNE GARRELS: Well we are ducking, but correctly. That's not my job.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: I understand. It's just that those of us at home are listening to you and gathering news where we can, and we have to advise our policymakers.
DICK GORDON: Go with your gut. It works for Anne.
ANNE GARRELS: The way I see my job in the aftermath … I talked to soldiers, we saw the looting, asked them, why aren't you doing anything? He said, we don't have any orders to do anything. I am a witness reporting what people say about given situations from as many people from various perspectives as I can. But to the rest of it … That's why politicians make such big money. And I work for NPR.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: So then please do answer the question that's on everybody's mind. How did the book get its name?
ANNE GARRELS: How what?
AUDIENCE MEMBER: How did the book get its name? Tell us the story.
ANNE GARRELS: Oh, you know the … How many people in this room know the story by now? But for those poor, benighted souls. Let me just tell you, naming a book is one of the worst things. I was hurtling through this, trying to write it in a matter of a month so I could go back to Baghdad. So the issue of the title came up.
Well, Baghdad Diary, nice, neutral, whatever. Title taken. I'm sorry! And so then we went to From The Palestine Hotel. They'll think it's about the Middle East, but come September they will have forgotten The Palestine Hotel, and they'll think it's about the West Bank. Well, Naked in Baghdad. A little too salacious, some said.
But Susan Stamberg managed to elicit from me in an interview that, in fact, I had indeed been naked when I broadcast in a desperate attempt to hide my phone from the Iraqi security people. I figured if the light was out and I didn't have any clothes on, and they would walk by the door and see there was no light there and they wouldn't see the reflection of the antenna out the window and either, hopefully, just walk by or, if they did knock, I could pretend I was asleep and say, oh my god, you just woke me up. Give them a little shoulder. And then shut the door. Hide the phone. It was desperate. What can I tell you? But I had no choice.
DICK GORDON: Microphone over here. Go ahead, sir.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: We all know that Iraq is more than just the city of Baghdad. It's a big country, probably the size of California? I think it's been compared to that. I was just wondering … You said that you have recently been back there for six weeks. Did you confine your residence there to Baghdad, or did you go out into what has become known as the Sunni triangle?
And one of the reasons I'm asking that is that a friend of mind has recently returned from Iraq on a rotation leave. He's a lieutenant colonel and he was the civil affairs officer in Tikrit. And my Fourth Infantry Division and Task Force Iron Horse is commanded by General Odiano(?), who I've met. As a matter of fact I was just with his wife a couple of weeks ago, down at Fort Hood.
We have a historian who is in contact with all of the Fourth Division, Iron Horsemen who are over there. And they give him reports and he writes a daily update of what's going on in their particular area. And he gets reports from officers there telling what wonderful work they're actually doing. About the number of schools that they've repaired, the dedication of chalk boards to the kids and getting the schools …
DICK GORDON: And you're not hearing these stories.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: That's right. Yeah, that's what they're complaining about. They say that the news media is reporting only the bad things, and not the good things. And, knowing my Fourth Infantry Division soldiers, they wouldn't do anything that wasn't good. I mean they're dedicated, and they're good. I've spent time with them down at Fort Hood and so forth and so on. So I am just wondering if you think-- and this would be a comment on your part-- do you think these people writing these stories because-- most of them are officers-- do you think they're doing it just to enhance their own military careers or …
ANNE GARRELS: Good ones, you mean?
AUDIENCE MEMBER: Yeah. Or are they …
ANNE GARRELS: No, the military is doing a lot of really good stuff. And in fact the military is doing just about anything that's being done in Iraq right now, because the civilians are so scared for their lives that they're living behind coils of barbed wire and sandbags, and the civilian administration under Bremer is tucked away in one of Saddam's palaces. You can't get there before body searches or whatever. Later, maybe.
And so the military is out there doing local elections, building schools, village councils, town councils, city councils, hospitals. Sometimes they're good at this. This is well beyond the mandate of many of them and their training. I mean civil affairs officers have …
AUDIENCE MEMBER: That's what they complain about. They complain, we weren't trained for this!
ANNE GARRELS: Well that's right. And some of them aren't very good at it either. Some of them are superb. I have seen some people in Sader City … I have been up in the Sunni triangle and whatever. In one instance I saw brilliant people in Sadar City who, civil affairs officers … And this is part of Baghdad, the Shiite, poor area of Baghdad … Some dumb military [person] had tried to pull down a religious flag from a helicopter. It was one of the most inflammatory gestures you can think of … That would have massed in the center and ripped across all of Baghdad. And they defused this potential crisis in a matter of hours by getting hold of all the right people immediately.
The problem is a lot of soldiers … And I'm sorry, but it was the Fourth, up in the Sunni triangle … And many of them had had no cultural training. Many of them dealt with tribal leaders in ways that were unnecessarily offensive. They went in to do arrests and they took a tribal leader and put his forehead on the ground with his foot on the head. And the problem is you do it once or twice and it begins to take on mythic proportions in the community.
These are very conservative, rural communities. And they don't look fondly on the Americans in the first place. So they're all looking for a reason to point to them. And it started out with immediately … And the troops did a great job in another instance when up there … And it happened actually all over. The word went out that the American night vision goggles-- and I can't tell you, people really did believe-- that you could see through women's clothes. That's what they were for.
[LAUGHTER]
You laugh. This got to be a huge issue. And so finally the troops found out about this, and they went to the schools and invited the parents and let them look through the glasses and realize no, it doesn't take away their clothes. But people wouldn't send their kids to school. There were getting to be some really nasty incidents with the troops over this.
That was the kind of rumor that gets spread. These are illiterate … I mean Iraq's confusing, because on the one hand it can be extremely sophisticated, educated, and the next turn of the road, you're dealing with illiterate, very rural, very traditional sort of families where the women never emerge from the walls of the house. So it can be very confusing for somebody who's just arrived there and is trying to negotiate a very difficult policing job.
So the answer is there's a little bit of everything. And I think it's getting a little bit better now than it was. When I was there, albeit August, there was cultural training under way. That's already four months after they'd been in Iraq.
DICK GORDON: Thanks for your question. Over here. Sir, go ahead.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: I'm thinking about the way the President characterizes things at times, and I'd like to call upon your experience to try to sort this out. The President tells us, for example, that we-- at least I think the most recent iteration [is]-- that we are there to help bring democracy to the people of Iraq.
So my first question is to what extent is there any sort of realistic basis to think that democracy is going to take root there? And I guess I'm asking that in, you know, my own view that the President sees that it's going to be pretty much as American democracy. That may or not be so, but I don't think he troubles himself a lot with sophisticated understanding of Iraqi culture and politics.
The second part of what I'm interested in is we hear about the forces of evil, fighting the forces of evil, that sort of crusade lingo that the President puts out there. Bring it on, and so forth. Should we have a sense that there really are, at this time, significantly organized resistances against Americans being there? And if not, can you project in the circumstances now how long it will take if things go on on our side the way they are before that takes root?
DICK GORDON: Let's start with the first one about how Iraqis hear the word democracy when it comes from American leaders. What does it mean to them?
ANNE GARRELS: They'd love it. But they don't believe … They think they need a strong leader. In truth, if you ask them, they don't see how this is exactly going to play out. But it's all too new at this juncture.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: Is there any model they look at? Is there any other state in the Middle East or anywhere where they say it would be nice if it worked like that? See, he's strong and … No?
ANNE GARRELS: No. And they know how much resentment there is because of 30 years of the Sunni and, specifically, Saddam's tribes. In I think yesterday's New York Times there was also … They know themselves, once again, and they fear that another tribe will come in and be, albeit elected, and elected President, but all it is is an Iraqi's responsibility to his tribe, to help the tribe's members, and they will be the beneficiaries of his position.
So how this plays out is still very unclear. And they're still waiting at this point, just to see how the governing council, a group of diverse people from diverse parts of Iraqi life work together. That's unclear.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: So if a tribal leader is never elected and …
ANNE GARRELS: But everybody's a member of a tribe.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: Okay. But if the tribal leader has that position because of birth, because he's inherited that. So you don't have any kind of ground level basis of electoral politics, or any way to build up that sense of municipal, local elections. Does that mean that when Iraqis hear about American democracy, including elections, at some point in the future do they actually see themselves as being able to choose someone who will be their strong leader, or is it too confusing at this point?
ANNE GARRELS: In theory they understand it. But I don't think they understand yet how it is going to apply in Iraq and how it will really work out without violence, corruption. They're frightened of it. I mean they want it, and they're frightened of it.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: And the second part of the question about the degree to which the resistance is organized, as opposed to sort of grass roots level. Any idea, any sense of that while you're there?
ANNE GARRELS: It's very hard to know exactly where the opposition is coming from. I have met people who have made it clear to me they support the opposition without saying they're actually part of it. Mainly remnants of the military or members of Sunni tribes who had benefited under Saddam. And also it may be that they've teamed up with some of the Shiite radical conservative clerics who have emerged from the shadows now.
The problem of the security vacuum, though, I think is that it will be very dangerous if security is not re-established and Iraq sort of held together, and Iraqis [were] given a chance to rebuild in a constructive way. Otherwise I think we will have turned what was a potential threat into a very real one with the borders unchecked at this point. I've seen many foreign fighters there. I've seen Algerians, Tunisians, Syrians, Yemeni.
Now how many are there and how many would like to be, and how many are attracted to come to Iraq to fight the infidel, as they would put it, I don't know. But if there's a security vacuum, we saw what happened in Afghanistan. It just becomes a playground for people looking for a place to have training camps.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: You don't have a time frame sense though.
ANNE GARRELS: Excuse me?
AUDIENCE MEMBER: You don't have a time frame sense that if this goes on like it is now for another year we're in big trouble.
ANNE GARRELS: No.
DICK GORDON: I'm going to take the question from here, because I know you've been on your feet a little longer, and then I'll come over to you, sir. Just bear with me. Go ahead, Ma'am.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: You write in your book that you turned down Sierra Leone because you didn't feel you had the instincts to survive in Africa. I wondered if you could talk a little bit more about that. Why not Africa? And also just in general about those core instincts and traits that you do draw on, that you feel that you need to do the work that you do all over the world?
ANNE GARRELS: Maybe if I had started out in Africa as a 22 year old, you know, as a young person. It's at this point in my career I've never … I've only worked in north Africa a little bit. And to be thrown in cold to a civil war in Sierra Leone I knew was … And, in fact, my colleague was killed. A friend of mine at Reuters. Anyway, it's a long story.
But you've got to draw the line somewhere. At least when I began my career I spoke Russian, so I went to the former Soviet Union. I learned in the Cold War if you will. So by the time the hot war emerged, and after it broke up in '91, I knew the place. And because I knew that part of the world, maybe I felt a little more comfortable in Bosnia. And, God knows, 1991 in Saudi Arabia, when I first got my taste of that region … It wasn't a dangerous war to cover. Most of us just sat in Saudi Arabia and watched planes take off for a long time while we got a taste of the region.
But you make decisions based on … I can't … Why here, why there? Why did I understand the Soviet Union? Why did I ever learn Russian in the first place?
Don't ask!
[LAUGHTER]
AUDIENCE MEMBER: Interested in your view on the Defense Department's embedding reporters, journalists with line units. Do you think it skewed any of the reporting?
ANNE GARRELS: I'm sorry?
DICK GORDON: Embedding reporters in this war. Did it mess up the reporting in your view?
ANNE GARRELS: Listen, all of us had a small window on it all. And I was very skeptical of embedded reporters, of the whole process to start with. I was wrong. I think it was enormously successful.
I have one sort of theory on this, that I think it was demeaned inadvertently by the television networks, and CNN and whatever, who had all of this air time that they had to fill. The reporters who had the most to say were in the worst position to say it because they were hurtling in battles and whatever and they didn't stop for World News Tonight, or Morning Edition, or whatever. Those who had the least to say were in the best position to talk endlessly, and they did. Because the networks had to fill air.
So I know that many embedded correspondents who did superb jobs came back and were really sort of … And found out Americans … “Oh, you were an embedded reporter? Oh.” They were shocked in a way that their experience had been dismissed.
I think that's beginning to change now as people are beginning to either read more material that embedded reporters collected and weren't able necessarily in the rush and the heat of combat … Because many of them were really in far more dangerous … Eric Westervelt, for instance, for NPR, was in far more dangerous circumstances than I was.
DICK GORDON: Jack Lawrence, who wrote the book The Cat from Hue about his experience in Vietnam, I think was embedded throughout the time with the Third, and has yet to write anything about it, but is putting it in a book form. And I think that what he has to say about that time will teach us a lot that we don't know about the war. I think you're right. Sir.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: I'm hoping you can talk about what it was like to work with those people that were your eyes and ears when you couldn't get out. I've done research into that in fairly tense situations. If you can talk about how you negotiate. Did you talk about the dangers that he might be putting himself in or these other people who were observing? Did you feel like they were being watched by the authorities?
ANNE GARRELS: You mean, for instance, my driver who was helping me?
AUDIENCE MEMBER: I haven't read the book, and maybe you talk about this. But does he say, I'm willing to take a certain risk?
ANNE GARRELS: Yeah, he knew what risks he was taking, and he was very careful. And we had discussed it. And there were some things, as I say, he wouldn't do. He'd say, it's just too damned dangerous. I can't do it.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: For him or for you or for both? Would he say to you no you can't go there? Or would he say I'm not going there?
ANNE GARRELS: Both. He was no fool. In fact he read the book through and he said, you went there! I told you not to go there!
DICK GORDON: But I like the first part of the question, which is how do you establish a working relationship with someone like that? Because Amer is a schoolteacher when you meet him, but he's not a schoolteacher by the time you get to know him very well.
ANNE GARRELS: He was my driver to start with. Somebody through somebody through somebody. Had he not been very good or very useful I would have kept my ears open for somebody else who could have been. I was lucky in that case that literally from the first day I was in Baghdad I was given this present.
But wherever you go as a foreign correspondent, you need someone like that. Whether it's Kosovo or Bosnia or Sierra Leone or wherever it is. Even if you speak the language you need someone who understands the society and who's open. The requirements are very demanding in a way. They need to be open. They need to be willing to take each experience as it comes and not get politically in a fight while you're trying to do an interview with somebody. They need to be brave, but not so brave that they get you killed.
In my case they need to have a sense of direction, because I can't get myself from A to B. And you find those people, we all do. Dick, you know as well as anybody, you find those people. The only problem is you hit the ground, and you've got to find them fast. You can't sort of put out an ad saying, following requirements.
And it's amazing how often they just kind of rise to the surface, and also then other reporters will help or somebody's already there on the ground. Abdullah will know Ali who will know so and so, and so once the first person is there the chain begins to form to good people. But they're critical. It's every foreign correspondent's secret weapon.
DICK GORDON: And it's fascinating when you look back, too. I had when I was based in Moscow and working in Afghanistan and hired a translator by the name of Salah Huddein(?) and a driver by the name of Amar Shah(?), and was able to find out, after the fall of the Taliban, that Salah Huddein is now filing for the BBC from Kabul and Amar Shah is the AP Bureau Chief.
I didn't teach these guys anything, you know. They just happened to be around when I was looking for someone in '93, but what they do, and I'd like to hear Anne talk a little bit about it, is that they understand some of the principles of what we call journalism and storytelling by hanging around with someone like Anne. And that she's not really interested in going off and taking photographs of military installations in Baghdad, but she really means it when she says, can we just go and find a family? Somebody who's not unusual, but someone who's representative of life here, and talk to them for a while.
And then the fixer and the driver come along, and they listen. And it's in their listening to what the reporter's working on that the rapport is built. No?
ANNE GARRELS: Absolutely. And the learning curve with these people, because they care … Usually these are societies in crisis and usually they care desperately, and they get it immediately. And just to follow on … My translator from Kosovo has just been asked to be the spokesperson for the new President.
These people are extraordinary. When they're good they're invaluable. And brave. Wading through … We ask them to do … I mean we're with them, but we're asking these people to do extraordinary things and to find us … You say to them, I want to meet a military officer who was betrayed by … Do you know anybody who might know? They're extraordinary.
DICK GORDON: Thanks for your question. We've got time for one more. I'm sorry, but time is tight. Go ahead, pull that mic down so we can hear you.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: How did the Iraqis feel about the U.N. presence in Iraq? Did they see it as the United Nations, or did they see it as a front for the U.S.? And how did they feel about the bombing of the U.N. facilities?
ANNE GARRELS: Iraqis sort of see the U.N. in two ways. One is having been the punishing force of the sanctions. On the other hand many of them have also had very good relations with the U.N. and received help through them. Most Iraqis were appalled at the bombing. There was no applause from anyone I talked to. They were horrified. They are horrified by all of these bombings because just as they're unseen enemies to the American troops, they are to the Iraqis, too. And, in fact, it was mainly Iraqis who suffered in the bombing of the U.N.
DICK GORDON: I'd like to pour a glass of medicine and sit and talk for another two hours, but you're going to go through that door to the bookstore to meet people and sign some books there. And I want to ask people here to join me in thanking not just Annie, but Amer the driver as well.
[APPLAUSE]
ANNE GARRELS: But I have a question for Dick Gordon. When are you coming to Baghdad next, Dick?
DICK GORDON: I don't know. November.
ANNE GARRELS: December?
DICK GORDON: It depends on whether I'm allowed out, you know? I'm planning now early November. That's my next plan. We'll see you there sometime.