An interesting post on war coverage
Austin Bay
Here’s an interesting and provocative post concerning combat reporting by a former NY Times correspondent. Benjamin Blatt writes “An Open Letter to Chris Hedges.” Specifically, he questions Hedges’ reporting on the battle of Khafji in 1991. Spurious charges are the bane of the Internet – I will be interested in reading Mr. Hedges’ response
An Open Letter to Chris Hedges
Having just finished War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning; I must say that Chris Hedges provides a good read, if you enjoy fiction. In particular Chris, I found your tale of the Battle of Khafji during Desert Storm on page 23 of your book to be particularly entertaining, seeing as how it is spun of whole cloth. Sadly, although your version of events in 2002 has you standing “on rooftops with young Marine radio operators who called in air strikes” watching the Marines who “were called in to push the Iraqis (out of Khafji),” your story just does not pan out. You see, in 2004 a book that may very well become known as the definitive study of Khafji was published. The author of Storm on the Horizon, David J. Morris, researched the battle extensively and interviewed the Marines (all thirteen of them) who had called in the air strikes. And yet, none of those Marines remembered you, the French photographers who were with you, or circumstances in which the presence of Journalists by their positions wouldn’t have gotten them killed. Did you really think that the story would never come out? That carrying on the grand tradition of those who covered Vietnam from the Caravelle’s bar would drown out the voices of the Marines whose story you have dishonored with your lies? But please, don’t take my word alone, let the evidence speak for itself.
In the past Mr. Hedges, you have crowed loudly about having fled the Pentagon’s Gulf War press pool, choosing instead to cover a shooting war on your own. But even though in Morris’s book there is a brief mention of the presence of “Unilateral” or “Pool breaker” journalists being around the area of Khafji during the battle, these journalists are mentioned as being British and French, and no mention is made of them having interacted with the two trapped and hidden Marine recon teams in Khafji. But I’m sure the presence of these journalists provided you excellent cover when you started to make your claims years later. Speaking of Morris, I was surprised to discover he had referenced three of your Gulf War articles (written for the New York Times) for his book. So I took the liberty of reading those articles along with your report on the Gulf War in the May/June 1991 Columbia Journalism Review. Now, I think, would be a good point to congratulate you on your wonderful fiction writing. Have you ever considered writing mystery novels? For it is certainly a mystery as to how the New York Times could employ you for so long, and accept so many articles from you based on interviews and encounters in which the only witnesses are you and people who can’t be found later. A good chunk of your book is about your experience in the Balkans. Can you produce any of the people you claim to have talked to there? Or were they all visiting Indonesia last Christmas?
Getting back to the articles which Morris referenced for his book, I am struck by the second-hand nature of your then-current reports on the Battle of Khafji. “In a Ghost Town, a Deadly Skirmish,” published in the New York Times on January 31, 1991, is full of examples of you obtaining information from other people who were there, but is curiously lacking in first-hand information, although, again, in your 2002 book you claim to have been in an excellent position to provide first-hand information on the battle. Instead, this article relies on information from pool reporters (NYT A11 1/31/91) and the statements of military officers not involved in the fighting. In addition, your article mentions the deaths of twelve marines in the fighting, which at the time may have been the assumed fate of what were actually thirteen military personnel in two teams trapped in the city. If you were there with them, wouldn’t you have reported them alive? This curious second-hand reporting is further emphasized in your next article, “Town Regained, Moral of Arab Allies Is Lifted.” As a wrap-up to the battle, you report that the twelve marines were actually alive (without mentioning the previous report of their deaths) while still missing the fact that there were actually thirteen Marines present (although to be fair, the two medics present were only detached to the Marines and were actually Navy enlisted men). What I found really interesting about this article, in light of your spurious claims in 2002, was the use of the phrase “stationed on a rooftop to help direct fire (NYT 5 2/2/91)” in reference to the Marine recon teams. Even there, with the battle still fresh, you couldn’t get the facts right. The Marines were in two separate locations (rooftops, not rooftop, an error you corrected for your tale later) and were not stationed to support the battle but rather found themselves good positions to call down air strikes and artillery while hiding from the surrounding Iraqi forces.
But wait, there’s more. While Morris states that the only Marines in a mostly Arab fight were liaison teams and units tasked to rescue their trapped brethren, a statement backed up by official documents, studies of the battle from the nineties, and interviews with most of the key Marine participants at Khafji, you, Chris Hedges, claim that it was Marine units that pushed the Iraqis out of Khafji. So why the discrepancy, if you were there and observed a Marine-led effort, why are you the only one to have commented on it? I think the answer may lie in your 1991 report for the Columbia Journalism Review. In “What We Saw, What We Learned,” you basically discuss going rogue from the Pentagon press poll shortly after arriving in Saudi Arabia, and describe your actions as a unilateral journalist on the run from the MPs. In paragraph 15 (14 if you discount the sloppy editing) of your article, you mention that an AP reporter, tagging along behind the advancing forces in Khafji, was the first to report American forces being heavily involved in the fighting to retake the city. But if your report on American forces in Khafji is actually based on that of another reporter, then how could you have watched the Marines who “were called in to push the Iraqis (out of Khafji),” on a rooftop with Marines calling in air strikes who don’t remember you? In hindsight, it seems obvious that the AP reporter encountered a liaison or rescue team in the city and misinterpreted what he saw in his reports. Had you actually been there, or even seriously researched the foundation upon which your fiction rests, you might have known that.
Finally, while you may very well have been near Khafji and witnessed Saudi Arabian forces retreating pell-mell, with a little effort you would have found out that they were elements of a poorly trained handful of battalions of the Saudi Arabian National Guard, an organization of tribesman whose sole purpose is to essentially counter-balance the regular army. In fact, the regular army units performed quite well with the assistance of American air support and liaison teams, despite being set upon by one of the best divisions in the Iraqi army. Of course, had you been better informed, you probably wouldn’t have been running around dressed as an American soldier sans unit and rank markings in the middle of a combat zone. For if you had considered that any soldier in the area, regardless of nationality, could have shot you with cause, you might have reconsidered and chosen to dress like your peers in the region.
Well Chris, your version of the events in Khafji doesn’t appear to correspond with objective reality. It makes me wonder about the content of the rest of your book.
Awaiting your response,
Benjamin Blatt - An Objective Historian
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