Chasing catastrophe, p.3
Chasing Catastrophe, page 3
We were told to pack flak jackets, helmets, sleeping bags, and a limited amount of clothes and gear. Whatever we brought we’d be carrying ourselves.
For the TV guys, it was a bit of an unusual arrangement. We’d take turns each day filming live shots and packages. All of our reports would be pooled, meaning every network could use any correspondent’s pieces. Even our live shots would be generic, reporting for any channel that wanted a hit from Afghanistan that day. It wouldn’t be “In Afghanistan, Rick Leventhal, Fox News” at the end. It would be “Rick Leventhal with U.S. Marines in Afghanistan.”
We’d be flown first to the USS Kearsarge, an amphibious assault ship carrying harrier jets and attack helicopters, deployed to the gulf ferrying troops back and forth to the fighting. There were thousands of sailors and Marines on board, and we’d be given opportunities to interview them and tell their stories before heading back to base and boarding one of their massive, lumbering, and loud C-17 cargo planes for what we were warned would be an “ugly trip” with “multiple stops in unidentified locations,” loading freight along the way before the dangerous last leg to a remote compound in the middle of the Afghan desert.
I saved my reporter notebook from this trip, in which I documented our journey from late November 2001 until late December 2001.
Eleven of us left the hotel at 1600 [military time for 4 p.m.] in a bus with a U-Haul trailer full of gear to an airbase in Bahrain. I had a double cheeseburger and waited 2 ½ hours, then brought our gear into a small terminal building, where they checked bags as you would in any airport. All went thru a heavy-duty X-ray machine, then were loaded onto a C-17, a big wide fat bodied 4 engine jet.
After another two-hour wait, we walked onto the airfield and boarded the C-17. The inside looks like a hollowed out, wide body jumbo jet with exposed walls and ceiling, wires, hoses, and compression pipes visible, with rows of jump seats running along each wall.
Parked in the center, a big hydraulic fork-lift for loading and unloading the palettes of supplies stored in the back. They opened the cargo door to back the aircraft out of its “parking spot.”
Our final destination was forward operating base Rhino, a dirt landing strip and a series of stone buildings behind a wall, surrounded by long stretches of sand. We were told it was formerly used by drug dealers moving opium out of the country. Now it was in the hands of thirteen hundred U.S. Marines, who called it Camp Rhino.
There we met up with the 15th Marine Expeditionary Unit and Marine Task Force 58, led by Brigadier General James Mattis, who told us that ground forces intended to help to encircle the Taliban, block escape routes, and serve as a jump-off point for attacks by Special Forces and conventional troops.
The Taliban were believed to have Stinger missiles and other smaller arms, such as rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs) capable of bringing down the Marines’ Cobra helicopter gunships, Huey Reconnaissance choppers, and troop transport helicopters. The base was “within striking distance” of Kandahar, the Taliban’s political and spiritual capital. The days would be dry and hot, the nights near freezing. The terrain was sand and rock.
We were reminded of the strict rules we’d need to follow: no reporting of future military plans or operations; nothing on command strength, equipment, or supplies; no mention of specific locations, progress, numbers deployed, their positions, or downed aircraft during rescue operations.
The fighting was already fierce and deadly. Three Special Forces soldiers were killed, and twenty Afghans wounded, in a friendly fire incident, when a B-52 bomber missed its target with a two thousand pound “smart bomb,” exploding within a hundred yards of American forces and a group of opposition fighters. The victims were flown to Camp Rhino, where the dead Marines were held in a makeshift morgue until they could be transported to ships and on to the base at Bahrain before being flown back to the states. The wounded Afghans were also flown out for medical treatment aboard the USS Peleliu and other locations equipped with medical facilities.
One of the Marine officers told us: “Seeing the wounded coming in, being aware of personnel killed in action, brings it home that it’s no longer a game.”
Our group of embedded journalists’ home at the base was a stone warehouse designated the “press center,” where we ate, slept, and wrote our stories. Every day began with briefings from the Public Affairs Officers (PAOs) who gave us the latest facts on the fighting and laid out our plans for the day. Most afternoons we were treated to another briefing from General Mattis himself, a tough-talking no-nonsense “man’s man” who chomped on cigars and cussed and insisted that most of what he told us was off the record or on background, meaning we couldn’t use it or couldn’t quote him.
Our time at Camp Rhino was frustrating to say the least. It was completely unlike the embed I’d experience in Iraq fifteen months later, when we ate, worked, slept, and traveled with the Marines all the way to Baghdad and were part of every mission. On this first trip to Afghanistan, our movements were severely restricted. Every day we asked to join the Marines when they headed outside Rhino’s walls, and every day we were denied.
Instead, we received briefings on what the Marines did, had to report on them without seeing or recording any of it, and took occasional field trips to tamer locations where the enemy had already been cleared and threats neutralized.
The base was growing by the day, as more troops and supplies were flown in, with massive C-130s delivering food, water, and supplies multiple times a day. We were assured that the base was well protected by “Stinger and Avenger teams,” with a “strong defensive perimeter supported by a significant air defense.”
We were safe, but we weren’t satisfied. We could only watch as reconnaissance assets left the base, followed by armored, mobile hunter-killer teams in high-backed Humvees with anti-tank missiles and fifty-caliber machine guns, interdicting military targets and searching for mine fields.
We did get a tour of the base, including a mosque that had been taped off so Marines couldn’t use it, “preserving the sanctity” of the building.
The Marines had their own satellite dishes for communications, a command post, officer’s quarters, a maintenance bay, and a warehouse for vehicles and storage.
The 2.1-kilometer sand airstrip was smoothed and graded daily with a heavy roller, since it would get rutted by the landings, and we saw an outbuilding blown to bits during the fierce fight the Marines encountered when they seized the facility in a raid on November 25.
One day we were told of the first significant offensive ground operations, when U.S. Marine hunter-killer teams engaged enemy forces along road networks near Kandahar, killing seven and destroying three vehicles. The engagement started when one of the vehicles approached the Marines “at a high rate of speed,” and after the Marines lit it up, they called in air support, and the fighter jets took out the other two vehicles and killed others fleeing on foot.
One night our base went on high alert, after recon units outside the walled compound spotted vehicles and more enemy fighters on foot, “probing the perimeter in more than one location.” The Marines fired illumination rounds, mortars, and automatic grenade launchers in their direction, so-called indirect fire, thwarting any possible attack.
“They were probing to find defensive weaknesses in our lines,” Marine Captain David Romley told us, “and I think they found out there are none.”
There was also a helicopter crash. A Huey went down and burst into flames along the edge of the airstrip, apparently caused by the thick dust stirred up by the chopper’s spinning blades. Two Marines suffered only minor injuries, one on board and one on the ground, and they were back at work the next day.
After a much quieter night, we got another briefing from Marine Captain Stewart Upton, who told us: “Things may look calm, but it could be the calm before the storm. A lot of Marines out there want to kill something,” hunting not just for Taliban soldiers but also for identified terrorists, including Al-Qaida members, known to be in the region. The Marines carried the pictures of these terrorists on missions.
“We hope [the enemy] knows the war is over, lays down his weapons, and goes away. We are closing down and continuing to monitor all avenues of exodus for terrorists.” Upton told us.
“The day of reckoning in regard to September 11th is close at hand. Those who haven’t realized it yet will soon.”
AMERICAN TALIBAN IN THE HOUSE
The biggest story I covered while at Rhino was the arrival of John Walker Lindh, the “American Taliban,” who was temporarily held in a shipping container turned prison cell at Camp Rhino. He’d been captured earlier by U.S. forces during the invasion and held in a prison where a violent Taliban uprising broke out, leaving hundreds of foreign fighters dead along with CIA agent Johnny “Mike” Spann who was there to question Lindh when the riot started.
Lindh and some eighty-five other survivors took refuge in the prison’s basement and were eventually recaptured; sometime in the middle of the night, Lindh arrived at our base, where our photographer snuck out of our building and captured some grainy footage of the helicopters landing and Lindh being moved to a shipping container on the base.
We were told he was being treated as an Enemy Prisoner of War, and the Marines refused to let us get video of him, since “parading” him in front of our cameras would be a violation of the Geneva Convention. We were told this could change if he was reclassified as an “illegal combatant.” He was guarded twenty-four hours a day, given food, water, shelter, and medical attention, and while we put in daily requests for an interview or a chance for him to make a statement, we never saw him, and the Marines wouldn’t let us anywhere near his metal box home. He was only there for a few days, and we also weren’t able to see him leave. The Marines flew him to a ship and eventually back to the states to face charges and his trial.
We continued our coverage of ongoing Marine interdiction operations from our remote desert outpost, which was growing by the day with new equipment and reinforcements flown in. The hunter-killer teams were moving to new tactical fighting positions every day and night, blocking roads used by Taliban or Al-Qaida fighters.
“Unless they drop their weapons immediately, they’ll die,” the Marines told us.
One day a team rolled through a village and “got a lot of smiles” they told us, and the Marines handed out food, candy, warm socks, and other clothes to the villagers.
“It’s a whole different world out there,” one told us. “It makes you appreciate the little things in life, like running water, toilets, and a hot meal.”
In two weeks, Rhino’s airfield had eight hundred sorties by fixed-wing aircraft, almost exclusively C-130s, moving more than two million tons of cargo, over a million pounds of fuel, food, water, and almost four thousand troops in and out. Most of the takeoffs and landings were at night, which made sleep more difficult.
We had the same sleep challenges when we moved from Rhino to Kandahar Airport, where we staged for a few days and nights before heading back to Bahrain. It was far more uncomfortable than the building we’d just left. We were now eating, sleeping, and working in the airport’s terminal, which didn’t have a single window left intact. It was freezing cold at night, and we were barely able to sleep because of the constant takeoffs and landings of fighter jets and massive cargo planes on the runway right next to us. We also had no working toilets, so unlike the port-a-potties we’d used at Rhino, we now had to pee in designated holes outside and take dumps sitting on tires placed on boards over a ditch, three or four of them in a row, completely out in the open.
I remember one time struggling to take care of business and looking over to my left to see a Marine sitting right next to me doing the same thing.
“Hey what’s up?” I think I said, trying to defuse the awkward moment.
My journey back was as uncomfortable as the trip in, but I wasn’t dissuaded from continuing to cover the “Global War on Terrorism” overseas. I went back to Afghanistan four more times, and to Iraq four times as well, spending many months on the ground, with far greater access each trip to the brave souls doing the fighting, who were determined to deliver payback to those responsible for bringing terror to American soil.
I never wavered in my support of the soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines in service to our country. I was proud to tell their stories, and still am.
CHAPTER 3
HILLARY’S COLLAPSE AT GROUND ZERO
Because I was one of the first reporters at Ground Zero after 9/11, I was an obvious choice to cover the memorial ceremonies held at the World Trade Center site on September 11 every year since. I was only absent twice (once I was sick, and another year I was on assignment overseas) and considered it a duty and an honor to report on the events of the day, the ongoing heartache of the families of the victims, and the progress in clearing the debris and rebuilding Downtown.
It took years for the city, developers, and victims’ families to agree on how to move forward, with lengthy debates over what would rise on the “sacred ground” where the Twin Towers had stood. I was there for the news on almost every update along the way, like the reveal of the plans for the memorial plaza and the planning and opening of the museum. I was also the first reporter to get a guided tour of the museum before it opened and highly recommend this incredibly moving and powerful tribute.
I covered the design changes and ultimate construction of the Freedom Tower (later renamed One World Trade), was there when it opened in 2014, and was there when the Observatory opened in 2015.
I had also been given a first-hand look at the still-unfinished skyscraper in early 2012, riding in a construction elevator to the highest level, wearing a hardhat on what would become the top floor before it was enclosed by walls and a roof. It was fifteen degrees colder up there than on the sidewalk below. We did interviews and got B-roll from this spectacular location, with ironworkers walking on beams 1,268 feet in the air, exposed to the wind and elements.
It made my legs weak to look over the edge, but the views were absolutely incredible in every direction, high above lower Manhattan, a helicopter-like vista of the rivers and bridges and all of the city, hundreds of feet above the peaks of the tallest skyscrapers around us.
It was a remarkable and exhilarating experience to stand on the top of what would become the tallest building in America and the Western Hemisphere, with only some orange nylon netting separating me and my producer and cameraman from the hard cement of the sidewalks and streets far below.
The September 11 ceremonies were incredibly somber affairs. Family members read the names of every person who died in the attacks. There were poems and prayers and tributes with songs and trumpets playing taps.
In the early years, survivors and family members and first responders would walk down into the pits where the towers once stood, where the waterfalls of the 9/11 Memorial Plaza would eventually be built. The press was always kept at a distance to give the families room to grieve. Strategically placed pool cameras shared footage with all the networks for live coverage, while the reporters and crews were positioned in a designated area nearby.
For a while, we all worked from a terrace of one of the buildings at the World Financial Center (now named Brookfield Place) across the West Side Highway from the WTC complex. Eventually we moved further down the road to a spot on the sidewalk of the wide promenade in Battery Park, next to the highway, with clear views of the tower in the distance.
On September 11, 2016, I was at this Battery Park location, hanging out in our satellite truck between the live shots I would do once or twice an hour. The fifteenth anniversary of the attacks was even more significant because it was less than two months before one of the most hotly contested and unlikely presidential races in modern times.
Builder, entrepreneur, reality TV star, and self-proclaimed billionaire Donald Trump rocked and shocked the political establishment by winning the Republican nomination, and Democrat Hillary Clinton, then a U.S. senator, was vying to become the first female President in the nation’s history.
Both candidates were attending the memorial ceremonies at Ground Zero, along with dozens of other prominent dignitaries, including current and former governors, mayors, senators, representatives, fire and police commissioners, and more.
Some believe that what happened during the event that morning changed the course of the election and put Donald Trump in the White House. If that’s true, I may have unintentionally helped to alter history by breaking a huge story, thanks to one of my best law enforcement sources who happened to be in a perfect position to witness what went down and called me immediately after.
I was truly fortunate to have developed strong, deep ties to a large number of officers and agents with numerous local, state, and federal agencies. I know that working for Fox News Channel helped me to gain their respect and confidence, because many of them appreciated the more conservative tone of the network.
It also helped that I spent so much time overseas with the nation’s Armed Forces, since many who work in law enforcement once served in the military. Finally, I believe my solid, accurate, and reliable reporting gave me street cred. I was tough, focused, respected, unafraid, and known as someone who always protected his sources (except for one incident, when I failed to do so, that I detail in a later chapter on the Minneapolis bridge collapse).
Over the years, I developed strong connections with members of the FBI, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency, the U.S. Marshals Service, and the U.S. Secret Service. I had friends in the NYPD, from street cops to the commissioner’s office, and great contacts with members of the New York and New Jersey State Police, along with officers and supervisors in other various local departments.
