95 posts tagged “173rd airborne”

One of the most interesting parts of my job as the Combined Joint Task Force Phoenix Public Affairs Officer is working with and supporting reporters who are "embedding" with our task force.

The Department of Defense authorizes civilian news media to become inserted with units for the purpose of covering events and then reporting on what the military is doing. They have to fill out a lot of paperwork and apply. The military has to review and approve their request and then arrange for them to physically get to the unit they will cover. We do that right over here, and we usually get it done pretty quick. "Credentialed" press get badges that tell our troops that they are welcome members of the team, albeit as visitors.

There are ground rules that the reporters must agree to and they have to accept much of the same risks and austere conditions that the service members do. The reporters eat, sleep and move with the troops. Most of the time there is no public affairs officer escorting them. There is just not enough people like me for this. The reporters are just inserted into the military unit and one guy or gal is given the responsibility to look after them.

You can imagine the possibilities for what can go wrong. And, the military does not review or edit the reporter's work. There is no censorship. Reporters are honorbound not to release information that will comprise the security of the team or the mission. They are noncombatants who are there to observe. If they break the ground rules they risk losing their credentials and are asked to leave (we provide safe transport.) That rarely happens though. But, I think this is a great program and I hope the public appreciates the efforts of dedicated reporters and America's military for doing this.

I have been coordinating and supporting the embedding of many reporters since April. They include the Washington Post, Time Magazine, Fox News (Oliver North), The Wall Street Journal, Reuters, AP, Agence France Presse and more. In a few instances I have been personally hosting some reporters here at Camp Phoenix while in many other cases I have simply been setting up their visit to "down range" destinations, arranging for them to fly aboard military aircraft and making sure that they get to the right units as soon as possible by coordinating by phone and e-mail with the right people.

But I have worked or at least hosted some really interesting reporters, news media professionals that I am very glad to have met.

Charles Eckert is an agency photojournalist who used to work at Long Island Newsday. Many months ago when he learned that the New York National Guard was sending troops to Afghanistan he jumped at the opportunity for an embed. The agency he is with cut a deal with Newsday and he did a lot of personal preparation. He made a lot of sacrifices to do this.

He bought all his personal protective equipment (helmet, body armor, flame retardent gloves, eye protection -- this is a requirement for embedding with the military) and he even enrolled in special personal security training and got himself into shape. He covered one of our Long Island-based units during the sendoff ceremony at the armory and then worked with members of the Family Readiness Group from there. He came down to cover us during training at Fort Bragg, N.C., last March and came back at the end for our ceremony before we were flown over here.

He flew over to Kabul at the end of June by purchasing a commercial airline ticket. We picked him up at the commercial airport in one of our armed convoys and brought him to Camp Phoenix. He spent about a week with us at Camp Phoenix and then we moved him by convoy east to Camp Blackhorse to be with the Long Island unit that he knew so well.

After two weeks with them, he came back to Camp Phoenix and I arranged to have him flown south to Kandahar, where he was picked up by our command there. He was then flown even further out by helicopter to a remote location so that he could be attached to one of our Embedded Training Teams with the Afghan National Army. He wanted to be with one officer in particular who is both a guardsman and New York City police officer who served at Ground Zero on Sept. 11, 2001. Mr. Eckert had met this officer and his wife and family before that soldier was mobilized. Now Charles was catching up with this soldier - half a world away - in order to get the story.

"Charlie," as he quickly became known by the troops, was welcomed everywhere. In addition to endearing himself to New York troops he developed relationships with our British allies, Marines and even Afghan Army soldiers. Down south he went out on patrols in the 120 degree-plus heat, dodged bullets, saw the effects of improvised explosive devices and experienced the war up close. He spent a month there and then came back to Camp Phoenix and Kabul before he flew home, again buying his own ticket.

Charles is a photographer who also wrote stories and shot video for use on Web sites. At Camp Phoenix he went out on local missions and we hooked him up with soldiers from Long island. He found a male nurse at our troop clinic on base who often treated injured Afghan children, including infants. At Camp Blackhorse, he worked with members of our Security Force team who go on patrols and escort convoys and occasionally get to train Afghan Soldiers where they are located. Down south he saw and covered a lot - the war in the raw, remote, austere and dangerous.

Before he left, he showed me some of his pictures. They are terrific. I can't wait to see what Newsday does with his work.

As he was getting ready to go, Charles shared with me his thoughts on his experience with us here. "Financially this was a personal disaster for me," he said, referring to the investments he made in equipment, training and travel to get over here. "But it is the most important and best thing I have ever done. This is an incredible story here and its not being told. I just can't believe that it is going mostly uncovered. I am going to tell this story. I am glad I came."

I met John D. McHugh last Friday when he flew into Camp Phoenix by Blackhawk helicopter from Bagram. The public affairs team from the 101st Airborne at Bagram had diverted him to Combined Joint Task Force Phoenix when they couldn't support his embed request with their task force at the time and because John was then interested in hooking up with an Embedded Training Team. Phoenix has all the embedded trainers, and none of the other task forces here have that specific training and mentoring mission right now.

John is a "scruffy" Irishman with a terrific personality. He is a free-lance photojournalist and has a contract now with The Guardian newspaper out of London. He said that The Guardian is generally known as a very liberal paper (I kind of like the name though) and that he doesn't exactly fit into their "stable" of reporters. But he said that his editor there is not giving him unrealistic direction and that they are generally interested in turning him loose to come up with fresh material.

John has been to Afghanistan before. In fact, the last time he was here more than a year ago he got shot and it was almost fatal. John explained that his approach is not the macro but the micro. He wants to cover the war from the soldiers' point of view. He wants long embeds, not short ones, so that he can build rapport and develop relationships.

Like Charles Eckert, he shoots still photos and video and writes. He has produced short films. He showed me one he produced last year that came about because of the embed he had with a U.S. unit known as the 503rd Parachute Regiment from the 173rd Airborne Brigade which is based out of Vincenza, Italy. I thought it was really good. You see soldiers as they really are, including what they are like when under fire. John clearly knows how to gain trust and he treats it well. John is getting married, he told me, in February and Army friends he made are coming to the wedding in Ireland.

"People have no clue what it is like over here," he said, referring to his friends back home. "When I show them some of my stuff they go like 'I didn't know that was happening or things like that are going on.'"

"When I was here before the unit I was with had lost someone and I was there, the captain called me aside," he said. "He said to me 'You are having a tough time with this too, aren't you?' And I said yeah, because I knew the guy and I was seeing how it was impacting the others, especially the feeling of futility that was going around."

"So this captain said to me 'This is not about us winning over there. We can't win this war. Only the Afghans can. Look, if this was a playground and the enemy is the playground bully our job is to keep him in check long enough for the Afghans to grow up so they can eventually handle the situation themselves,' the captain told me, and that bully description just makes sense to me because that's what these guys (the Taliban) are," he said. "I know people back home who think you can cut a deal with these guys. They just don't get it."

I hooked him up with our Afghan Regional Integrated Security Command-Central where the commander is a Marine and other Marines, Army, French and others serve as the mentors there. Two of the provinces this command covers is along the border with Pakistan. That is where John wants to go. "I want to embed with Marines," he said. "I haven't done that before. I am looking forward to it."

Richard Butler works for CBS News. He explained that he is a field producer and a cameraman who started out as a photojournalist. He was born in England, grew up in South Africa, is married and lives in France and works for a U.S. news organization. He has covered wars in many troubled areas including Darfor, Africa, Iraq and Afghanistan. Last year he spent three months as an insurgent captive in Iraq. He was rescued by coalition forces and said that the experience was very difficult mostly on his family. He said CBS tried to keep it low key for a long time but it is "out there" now.

Richard is another great guy who is very personable and down to earth. While he was spending a little time in my office in between the interview sessions I had arranged for him he used the Internet, told us some stories and even spent some time with Spec. John Smith, my team broadcast journalist, talking about equipment and techniques.

Richard explained that his work with CBS is mostly as a front guy for both 60 Minutes and the CBS Evening News. He explained that 60 Minutes is now shooting everything in high definition video but that there are still challenges with shooting and transmitting the imagery from remote locations like here in Afghanistan.

He looked over some of the video I have been shooting using a small Sony High Definition camcorder I bought last year just to bring with me on this mission. He liked it a lot and asked me for it. I had already provided him video footage sent over to me from New York National Guard headquarters that showed our troops at Ground Zero immediately following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. We have been sharing that footage since it is a part of our story here. So giving him some of the HD footage I have taken of humanitarian support missions, convoys and other troop activity was no problem.

Richard was here for a few days last week, including on Sept. 11 to cover our ceremony here. I had already set him up with interview opportunities with some of our guys from New York City who served there at that time. One is an NYPD police officer. Richard said that this was really a great story - Guard soldiers who served at the World Trade Center now serving over here in Afghanistan. "This is brilliant," he said in his very-English manner.

So today he sent me an e-mail from his Kabul hotel for westerners, asking if he could come back tomorrow afternoon with his boss to re-interview two soldiers he had already taped. He said that CBS really liked the interviews and now they want to do a "60 piece" on us, so its time for the main CBS reporter to come over. Lara Logan, CBS News' chief foreign coorespondent, is due here tomorrow afternoon and I am looking forward to this.

Back in August 2005, Lara and her 60 Minutes team was embedded with the New York National Guard's Fighting 69th Infantry in Iraq. She spent almost three weeks with them as their tour of duty came to an end and the unit had been given a tough assignment and CBS was there. The unit had the job of tackling the security challenge on the most dangerous road in Iraq - the Baghdad Airport Road known as "Route Irish."

When I first learned that 60 Minutes had embedded with the unit then I was concerned that CBS was back on a story that it had already reported on - the accidental shooting of an Italian officer involved in rescuing a kidnapped journalist. In March 2005, a soldier of the 69th opened fire on a speeding car that was approaching his checkpoint and wasn't stopping. The soldier had no idea who was in the car and thought it was the enemy - a suicide bomber. Unfortunately, the bullets went through the engine and struck the reporter and an Italian officer. The officer died. The reporter, though wounded, survived. It was a terrible accident.

So I contacted CBS News to find out what they were doing and learned that they were on a story about the Baghdad Airport Road. I told the producer about the Fighting 69th and its history and its role on Sept. 11. I offered video footage of the unit at Ground Zero and the producer's interest grew. I told the producer that as a matter of coincidence at that time I was working with a CBS documentary team making a program for the History Channel on the origins of the National Guard and Army Reserve and that I was already providing that footage to CBS. So giving 60 Minutes an extra tape was no problem.

It worked. They used the footage and the background information I provided. CBS waited until the unit came home to show the story, which they did in November. It was a good piece. I e-mailed the producer later, after I talked about the story with members of the unit, people in my office and my wife (we watched the story together). I told the producer that we thought the story was good - accurate and balanced.

Sometime later I got an e-mail expressing thanks - from Lara. I was surprised to say the least. We exchanged a few messages then and again after she produced another Iraq story, this time on the Army's "clear, hold and build" strategy in a place called Tal Afar. I thought that story was also good - accurate and fair.

In a message she mentioned that she had received a lot of personal attack mail because of the Tal Afar story. She said that it all had come from Iraq war critics. I appreciated hearing her candor and when I later met her cameraman, Jeff Newton, the following St. Patrick's Day in New York City, I learned more about how and why they approached the two stories as they had. As a courtesy I had sent the CBS producer a copy of the press release for the 69th St. Patrick's Day special ceremony that was serving as the unit's official homecoming from Iraq. She called me up and thanked me and asked if she and a couple of coworkers could just come by and watch. Sure, I said. Please be my guests. I was working the event because news media coverage was expected. That's where I met Jeff and after the ceremonies were done we talked.

Jeff told me that the video footage and background information made a big impact on their approach to the story as did the way the Fighting 69th Soldiers worked with Lara and the team. "When we found out who these guys were, how much they had gone through, the casualties they had suffered, the access they gave us and the way they worked with us over there, we just knew we had something special," Jeff told me.

Richard Butler told me that Jeff Newton is here in Afghanistan now too. Richard told me that Lara and Jeff know he has been working with me here. Lara is coming over tomorrow, having just returned from "down range" on another story.

I am looking forward to it.