The Washington Post
For Reporters in Iraq, Security Gets Personal
By Howard Kurtz
- Washington Post Staff Writer
Michael Holmes was in a Chevy Suburban headed toward Baghdad late last month when the first armor-piercing bullet blasted through the seat between him and his cameraman.
" I saw this guy in an Opel car standing in the sunroof and firing what appeared to be an AK-47," the CNN correspondent recalled. "It was a terrifying experience."
As gunfire rained down on the six staffers in a two-car caravan, the network's security guard shouted "Down! Down!," thrust half his body out the passenger window and began returning fire. Two of CNN's Iraqi employees, a driver and producer, were killed, and cameraman Scott McWhinnie was grazed in the head, but the guard hired by the network enabled the rest to escape.
" The guy's a hero," Holmes said. "I have absolutely no doubt in my mind that if he hadn't returned fire, we wouldn't be having this conversation."
As violence continues to plague postwar Iraq, American journalists there say they have never been more nervous about their safety. Since major combat operations ended in April, six deaths and a number of injuries and close calls among news staffers have prompted a soul-searching debate over whether they, or their bodyguards, should carry guns.
The latest incident took place Saturday, when a gunman with an AK-47 opened fire on a Fox News convoy led by Geraldo Rivera near Mosul. A driver in the lead vehicle, which contained the network's security guards, was grazed on his left arm by a bullet that shattered the window. "Ladies and gentlemen, we have just been attacked!" Rivera said as the camera rolled.
Rivera later showed viewers the holes in his armor-plated Toyota Land Cruiser: "I was seated here in the back seat. This was the one that had my name on it. Thank God there is bulletproofing inside."
There is a long tradition in the news business that journalists, like Red Cross workers, should be seen as unaligned observers with no weapons or agenda. That tradition is being sorely tested, journalists say, in Iraq, where insurgents routinely target Americans in shootings and bombings in an effort to undermine the occupying force.
In past conflicts, from World War II to Vietnam to the U.S. invasion of Iraq last year, most journalists did not carry guns -- in part because most of them traveled with and were protected by American troops. But the dangers of postwar Iraq are so random and so pervasive that questions about security have become life-and-death decisions.
In interviews with staff members at nearly a dozen news organizations, none said they approved of reporters and photographers carrying guns. But there are periodic debates about such matters as whether to use armored vehicles, which are more conspicuous even though unmarked, or conventional cars.
The major television networks, which must move crew members and their equipment to cover stories, have signed with expensive security firms that provide squadrons of armed guards.
Correspondent Jim Avila met with such guards, from the London-based firm Centurion, when he checked into the small hotel on a busy Baghdad street that NBC was using last fall. They told him the building was too exposed and they were trying to find a safer locale.
Unwilling to wait, Avila moved to a more secluded hotel around the corner. Four days later, he was awakened by a bomb blast and rushed to the building he had recently vacated.
" It was chaos," Avila recalled. "There were people stumbling around, there was dust and smoke." Finding an NBC sound man injured and a hotel staffer dead, Avila felt lucky -- and grateful for the warning from Centurion.
" They have their own intelligence," said David Verdi, NBC's executive director for news. "They're wired to local Iraqis, to the Iraqi police, to the U.S. military, and they do their own reconnaissance on the roads. We do not travel without our security firm escorting us."
