That is a good question, and I do not know the answer to it. I went over there to help my girlfriends hair dresser, a woman named Ana. Initially I tried some political pull, where I tried to get Ana's sister and niece out through state department sources. When that failed, I said what the hell, why don't I just head over there and see what is going on in person. I knew a guy, Meyer Berman, a big time trader in Boca Raton, and he was able to get some visas (by having a member of the house of representative get it) for us to macedonia (which at the time was closed to americans because of the war,) and I posted that I was heading over there. Tony contacted me after he saw me put up the post that I was heading over there, and said that he wanted to go. So the first time I met him was in the plane ride over there, when we met at JFK airport.
Once we arrived, we got some press passes from TV Era, and went to the refugee camp on the border. That is when both Tony and Ana started acting differently. After the second day, they stopped heading to the refugee camps with me and the other reporters, and started going some place by themselves and would not tell anyone where it was. So myself, a translator from OSCE, and some other reporters would go to the camps everyday.
One day, a group of reporters I was hanging with, decided to sneak out of the camp gate a young woman who spoke perfect english, but was a refugee. We gave her a levi jacket to put on from one of the guys, and stuck her in the middle of our group, and walked out of the gate with me walking off to the side distracting the guards by yelling that I was tired of walking around in this big mud hole. I acted pissed off, and kept asking the guards when were they going to put some rock down to deal with the mud. As a result they never checked our press passes, because we did not have one for the girl. When we got outside, she started crying hysterically that she was so happy we got her out of that hell hole, and that she had a relative somewhere in skopje. We said that we would try to find him for her. We went back to Tv-Era's studios, which was one building, that was adjoined to another building that had some kind of living quarters in it. She had been sleeping in the dirt for three weeks, so I told her that she could go next door and a take a shower, when all over a sudden, Tony burst out of an adjoining room and started screaming. I had not seen him in a few days since he had disappeared. The OSCE translator was with me, along with some of the staff of TV ERA. Tony started screaming that who was I to tell a "muslim woman" anything, that it was disrespectful for me to do that, and he started cursing me out in a "manic range."
I and others told him to calm down, I said that all I did was tell her that she could take a shower next door, what was the big deal. Then the real freaky stuff happened. He launched into an anti-american tirade and talked about some brotherhood of his muslim brothers in lebanon, and how they hated americans. He then launched into an anti-semitic tirade about how the jews were responsible for destroying everything and how hitler should have killed Greenspan? There was a couple other guys with him at the time who I did not know, nor did anyone else at the tv station for what that was worth.
I thought for sure he was going to walk over and try and get in a fist fight with me, because his manic rage was beyond anything I had ever witnessed before. He finally walked out of the tv station, and I said wtf was that all about? After that he and Ana continued doing stuff by themselves, and I along with my OSCE translator, would go with other reporters to the camps. At night we went to a hotel bar to hang with these reporters, and hear their stories from the other wars they had covered in their careers. They were some hard drinking guys and it was fascinating to hear about their experiences.
I never saw Tony visit the camps again, and I ended up heading back to greece by myself. So the only time I saw him and Ana at the refugee camp was on the first and second day. Thus I have no idea about who they got out of the camps.
I kept in touch with the OSCE translator, who ended up moving to england and going to school there. I sent him an IBM thinkpad as a present back in 2000 or 2001, and have not heard him in five years. |
