Then, like flipping a switch, my mind locked on the assignment. Everything else that was important to me was left behind. I wasn’t afraid, and I had no regrets. The story was everything: the journey and the destination, a jolt of adrenaline, and the magnetic pull of breaking news. If there was such a thing as work-life balance, I broke the scale when I walked out the door.
There were seventeen of us on the National Media Pool, including a television crew, three photographers, a radio reporter, and six writers, known quaintly as “pencils.” We would be the only foreign journalists in Saudi Arabia, but our stories and images—whatever we produced—would be available immediately as pool reports to the rest of the media. We had to protect our individual interests (our jobs), but we had a greater responsibility as the eyes and ears of the world’s media. A mistake would be worse than normal because there would be no competition to check and correct our work, and the stakes were life and death.
A noisy military aircraft flew us to the headquarters of Central Command in Tampa, where we were hustled into a briefing room. The air was cold, the surfaces clean. It reminded me more of a community college than a wartime command center. We sat and waited for a few minutes. Then a four-star general stormed in, big and strong, filling the room with confidence and an extra-large personality. He shook our hands and welcomed us to CENTCOM. Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf was upbeat, hard-charging and ready for a fight. He also gave a good briefing: clear, colorful, and to the point. The Iraqis had to leave Kuwait immediately, he said, and they would not be allowed to push into Saudi Arabia. Period.
Schwarzkopf went back to work while we huddled over a laptop to write for the first time as a pool. By mutual agreement, the one who sat at the keyboard was John King, a twenty-six-year-old fast-mover from the Associated Press. The rest of us stood behind him and offered a jumble of suggestions, phrases, and quotes, which King managed to turn into a decent story. The pool report was sent back to the Pentagon to be shared with the rest of the media and broadcast to the world.
After a long flight, we landed in Saudi Arabia, tired and stiff but eager to cover a huge story. We were taken to a hotel in Dhahran, not far from the oil fields on the Persian Gulf, and just a few miles from where Saddam’s troops were digging in to the Kuwaiti desert.
Saudi King Fahd had tried to keep out the US media, but the Bush administration pushed for some news coverage, so the compromise was to allow the Pentagon pool to represent the media of the world. Our pool reports would be available for all the media to use as their own. While this was an extraordinary opportunity for us in the pool, we were too few to cover a story this big. Also, we represented US media companies, and this was a global conflict. Personally, I was happy to have an exclusive seat for the biggest story in the world.
Reporting was not a team sport, and normally I would have considered the other members of the pool to be competitors. Reporters sometimes worked in packs, and I had shared transportation and sources with other reporters overseas, but I never had written stories with the competition. The exception was at the White House, where most events were covered by a pool. The justification for the pool was that there were far too many reporters in Washington to fit inside the White House. Every day a few reporters, including me, were assigned to cover the president and share the reporting with the rest of the media. Nobody liked the amount of control the pool gave the White House, but nobody stood up to the system, either.
Pools were never the most effective way to cover news because competition and having more eyes on the story were always better. Still, if a pool was the only option, I wanted to be in it.
The handlers who managed the Pentagon pool had restrictive rules for what we could report about what they dubbed Operation Desert Shield. We weren’t allowed to name the military people we met, or describe their weapons or their mission. The only permitted dateline was “Somewhere in Saudi Arabia.” Our main escort was Lt. Col. Larry Icenogle, whose day job was in tank warfare, but who somehow ended up in Public Affairs. Icenogle was big and gruff, loud and confident, extremely smart and even a little bit funny. We called him the Iceman.
The Iceman’s job was to make sure the pool didn’t endanger the troops by revealing too much about their numbers and capabilities. That was exactly the information we wanted, however, because the story was whether Saddam would continue his attack into Saudi Arabia, and if he did, could the US troops hold him back.
When we pressed for details about the size of the deployment, the commanders told us vaguely that the force included “elements” of several divisions. I knew the approximate size of each division and the order of battle, or array of troops and equipment, so it was easy math to estimate the size of the force protecting the oil fields. Except that it wasn’t. I didn’t realize that “elements” of a division might not be anywhere close to the full 12,000 combat-ready soldiers. The “elements” of a division could have been three guys sharing a room in our hotel.
Without realizing it, I made the US defenses appear more powerful than they were, a mistake that worked to the advantage of the US mission. If Saddam considered taking the Saudi oil fields, he would want to know the size and disposition of the US force. Even at the higher numbers, US forces were thin on the ground. If he had moved quickly, Saddam could have taken eastern Saudi Arabia and controlled a significant portion of the world’s oil. He also could have seized the modern Saudi military bases and the military equipment that had been stored there years before by the United States, just in case something like this happened.
The Iceman checked our stories but suggested few changes. We knew the rules and mostly stuck to them. In any case, we didn’t know much outside our little bubble. After awhile, the security checks became a formality and then a lark. The Iceman held my little computer in his big paws like a grizzly bear playing with a toy. I stood behind him and read over his shoulder. He scrolled through the text, nodding, and then stopped. He looked up at me and said, “Don’t you think ‘due to the fact’ is a little verbose?”
From the first day, we fought with the handlers over what we could report and how long we could remain in country. We wanted to stay at least until the situation was stabilized, or until Saddam had withdrawn from Kuwait. For the moment, we had deep access to the operation at its most delicate and dangerous stage. Our handlers, both from the military and the Saudi government, regarded us as unruly kids loose in a store filled with fragile objects. They watched and held their breath, waiting for us to break something.
Our Saudi handler was Adel al-Jubeir, a thin, earnest twenty-eight-year-old with glasses and a soft voice. He had gone to school in Texas, earned a master’s at Georgetown University, and was working at the Saudi embassy in Washington. He was honest with us and enthusiastic about being our guide, and we grew to trust him. He understood the politics of the Saudi kingdom and the region, and how it all fit with US politics.
He wore nice suits in Washington, but at home in Saudi Arabia, Adel wore a flowing white robe and good shoes and always looked cool and fresh, despite the heat. He seemed able to open any door. He took us to Saudi government officials and members of the royal family, and his presence gave them the confidence to speak openly. We soon had met so many princes that we gave them nicknames.
The Chatty Prince invited us to dine at his palace, which was a desert-brown fort as big as a department store. After a sumptuous meal served from long buffet tables, the prince led us into a large indoor tent, an immense and stylized version of what the Bedouin used in the desert, richly decorated with thick rugs and soft cushions for sitting on the floor. The ambience was desert, but the air conditioner kept the tent as cold as an igloo.
The Chatty Prince had a pretty good sense of humor. Lounging around after the long meal, which we ate Saudi-style (without cutlery and using our right hands only), I asked, “What’s the best thing about being a prince?”
He thought for a minute and said, “You get good tables at restaurants. The bad thing is, they expect you to tip a lot.�
��
We spent the days racing around the kingdom in jeeps, buses, planes, and helicopters. Out in the desert, I looked far across the sand to the horizon and saw a silver ribbon shimmering like water; so that was a mirage.
On a trip aboard a Saudi military plane, I tried my first phrase of Arabic on one of our local handlers. “Peace be upon you,” I pronounced carefully.
He smiled and returned the greeting in Arabic, adding, “Are you Jewish?”
“No,” I said, thinking it was a setup line for a joke. “Why?”
“Because Jews learn fast,” he said, not joking and not intending a compliment, either.
The August days were so hot that stepping outside was like being hit in the face with a rolled-up carpet. Even on the stillest afternoons, the heat whipped around like wind. My first reaction was to shed clothes, but soon my head throbbed and my skin tingled from dehydration. Flying in an open helicopter one hundred feet over the desert, I saw the rotors pulling up brown columns of sand, and pockets of hot air rocked the chopper. So much sand slashed across my face that I feared my eyes were bleeding. I felt woozy and nauseous and then shivered with icy chills. The next day I bought a hat, added a long-sleeved shirt, and carried a bottle of water.
General Schwarzkopf followed us from Tampa to Saudi Arabia, and we covered his first visits with the troops. He was a robust man who turned fifty-six that month and appeared grandfatherly compared with the young soldiers.
The general was an inspiring leader, and he loved to be out with the troops. After a few stops at remote camps under the hot sun, I was tired and light-headed from the heat. Schwarzkopf didn’t seem to mind the sun and got all fired up with the airmen and women who maintained A-10 attack jets one hundred miles from the Kuwaiti border. “Let’s face it,” he told the cheering troops, “if he dares come across that border and comes down here, I’m completely confident we’re going to kick his butt when he gets here.”
I looked at the other members of the pool, raised my eyebrows, and we started shouting mock headlines: “General Cedes 100 Miles of Saudi Territory!” “Iraqi Attack Welcomed!”
Our handlers winced.
The general was energized by the troops, and the more he spoke to them, the bolder he became. By the next stop, he was totally wound up and sounded like a coach getting his team ready for the big game. They cheered, and he yelled back, “Go get ’em!”
Noticing again the TV camera pointed at his face, the general cleared his throat, and backed up a little. “Well, we’re in a defensive posture down here, so if he does come down, we’ll handle him.”
Stop the presses! We shouted, giddy now in the baking sun: “General Orders Attack!” “General Cancels Attack!” “General Indecisive!” Even our handlers laughed, discreetly.
I knew the good times were over when I saw familiar TV network reporters having breakfast in the hotel restaurant. The Saudis had agreed to open the country to more news coverage, and journalists were arriving from all over the world. Our work as a pool was finished, along with our exclusive access. The door of one hotel room now was labeled “Dan’s Room,” and I saw pressed safari jackets hanging in the closet for CBS anchor Dan Rather.
I sat down for breakfast with an up-and-coming NBC reporter I knew from the Pentagon. She was thirty-three, smart, and very competitive about stories, but in a good way that made me want to help. She was excited to be in Saudi Arabia and eager to hear about the troop buildup. I happily told her what we had seen in the pool, and she shared the news from Washington. Her name was Katie Couric.
Free from pool duty, I was pleased to be invited to the home of a local university administrator. The host greeted me at the door and introduced me to a dozen Saudi men dressed in white robes and headdresses, sitting on the floor or on low couches. We nibbled on snacks and drank hot tea. It was my first adult party without alcohol, which was banned in the kingdom. I had to ask, and the men—amused but not embarrassed or angered—told me that under the comfy robes they wore boxers and t-shirts, regulation white. I could hear the laughing voices of women nearby, but they were behind a wall in another room. The men ignored the sounds of the women.
One of the guests, a worldly university official, said with absolute certainty that Saudi women agreed with the separation of the sexes, which he called an expression of Islam, not of sexism. I was dubious and said, with all due respect, that I would like to hear that from a woman.
“My daughter is coming to pick me up. You can meet her,” he said. This was startling because I had been in the country for a month and had not been allowed to speak to a single Saudi woman.
Around midnight, the doorbell rang, and someone announced the daughter had arrived. She did not come into the house, however, and I was led outside to see her. One of the Saudi men, showing me to the door, whispered, “You can meet her, but we can’t.”
She was a cute seventeen-year-old in slacks and a blouse, with no black robe and no veil. “Oh, daddy,” she blushed, whenever her father bragged about her. We chatted in the driveway until they got into the car and drove off. Only later did I realize the girl was driving, even though it was illegal for women to drive. Like a lot of things in Saudi Arabia, the relationship between men and women was more complex than I had thought when I first arrived.
The desk in Washington was less interested in the nuances of Saudi culture than in the preparations for war, so I arranged for a flight to the USS Independence, an aircraft carrier patrolling the Gulf of Oman. A minute or two before landing on the ship, I should have been concerned when the navy pilot suggested that we prepare for some “slight discomfort.”
The other passengers and I were facing backwards in the heavy metal seats of a Navy C-2 Greyhound, a prop plane used for a COD—Carrier Onboard Delivery. I was in a windowless seat next to an AP reporter, who had asked for an airsickness bag even before we took off. We were groggily enduring another early morning assignment, more of the military’s obsession with doing everything at the crack of dawn. What happened to fighting at night? Or at least after brunch.
The pilot explained over my headset that he would fly above the aircraft carrier, then turn sharply (“pull a few Gs”) to bleed off some air speed to land on the deck. Watch the crew chief for the signal, he said. When the crew chief waved his hand in the air, grabbed his shoulder harness, and planted his feet firmly in front of him, the meaning was clear. I braced for landing.
The little plane groaned as the pilot pulled it in a tight circle, turning so hard that the force pried open my mouth in a clownish smile. Reassuringly, I touched the arm of the AP reporter, who smiled weakly before bringing the bag to her mouth and filling it with breakfast. I tried to squeeze her arm to comfort her, but the warm, sour smell of vomit punched a fist down my throat. Then BOOM!—we hit the deck, and a metallic chain rang out like from a giant fishing reel, jerking the aircraft to a stop so quickly our heads snapped back into the hard metal seats.
I climbed down slowly on stiff legs, nauseous and squinting like a mole in the fierce sun. On the carrier deck the engine noise was so loud and the heat so intense that I was disoriented, and all I could see were the silver, oily undersides of jet fighters and attack planes. The crew proudly called the deck the “most dangerous three acres on earth.” The water of the Gulf was deep blue, darker than the cloudless sky.
I couldn’t resist the offer to sit inside the cockpit of an A-6 attack jet. I squeezed into the seat and tried to make sense of the array of switches, dials, and gauges. This plane would be among the first to fly if the shooting started, and the pilot told me he was studying targets in Iraq and Kuwait. I asked if it was hard to drop bombs on targets he knew might include civilians. “You just go where they tell you,” he said. “You try not to think about it.” The pilot had never flown in combat; none of them had, yet. If this thing kicks off, I thought to myself on the flight back to shore, it’s going to be like nothing my generation has ever seen.
By then the buildup to war had started to feel routine.
I had exhausted all my ideas for military feature stories, such as, “Logisticians—The Long Poles in the Tent,” and I had interviewed my last prince. There was one thing, though, that still got me up in the morning, one thing I wanted to do before I left Saudi Arabia: ride a camel.
We hadn’t seen any camels so far, which I complained about frequently. Our local handlers could not understand this unhealthy fascination with all things dromedary. Only one person shared my interest, and NPR’s John Ydstie promised we would not leave before we got up close and personal with a camel.
Our chance finally came on a trip to the legendary city of Hofuf, famous for its desert culture. The city’s old market was nothing like the modern, air-conditioned malls where we had done most of our shopping. Merchants sold spices, sandals, robes, and trinkets. Pungent sandalwood incense burned in silver charcoal braziers.
“Come, come,” said a scruffy, one-eyed vendor. He handed John a battered copper bowl with a design scratched into the side with a nail. “Silver, silver,” the man assured John.
I stepped in as John’s financial adviser, counseling under my breath, “Silver, my ass.”
The merchant understood the tone if not the English. “No, no. Is silver. Forty.” Then he went on about something in Arabic.
“What’s he saying?” John asked.
I winged it. “He says, ‘Today only. I make special price for you. Forty riyals.’ About ten bucks. Tell him you’ll give him twenty riyals and not a halala more.”
Finding the News Page 18