Nate Thayer

Babysitting the Press in Kuwait: A PAO's work is never done.

The Weekly Standard The Magazine Babysitting the Press in Kuwait A PAO's work is never done. Apr 7, 2003 By Matt Labash         Kuwait City IT IS EASY and fashionable to ridicule journalists. They can be loutish and rude, obsequious and mercenary. Their careers are made off of others' misfortune, and they're forever thrusting themselves forward just to bring you the bad news. According to media-bashing stereotypes, they are chiselers and corner-cutters, spitball artists and confidence men. But I will say one thing for the species--and here, I don't count myself among them--they are, almost to the man and woman, some of the ballsiest people I know. Some 500 of my colleagues have literally gone into combat by embedding with troops. Scores of others have made suicide runs into Iraq without the benefit of being escorted by M-16-toting Marines. What many lack in brains, they make up for in balls. They are guys like Slate's Nate Thayer, who is camped out in Baghdad, and more willing to become a human shield than a journalistic deserter. They are guys like Newsweek's Scott Johnson, who just flipped his truck in the desert after having it riddled with bullets, barely escaping with his life. They might not do these things for the lofty, noble purposes of duty, honor, and country. But they do them--often for no other reason than that they're there to be done. The counterpart to the war reporter is the military public affairs officer. They too suffer sometimes unfair stereotypes--many of them perpetuated by journalists. We often cast them as neutered soldiers and company men--the friends of bureaucracy and obstructionism, the enemies of access and truth. But Major Chris Hughes, a Marine public affairs officer, is not one of these. The Magazine Babysitting the Press in Kuwait A PAO's work is never done. Apr 7, 2003, Vol. 8, No. 29 • By MATT LABASH Single Page Print Larger Text Smaller Text Alerts         Kuwait City IT IS EASY and fashionable to ridicule journalists. They can be loutish and rude, obsequious and mercenary. Their careers are made off of others' misfortune, and they're forever thrusting themselves forward just to bring you the bad news. According to media-bashing stereotypes, they are chiselers and corner-cutters, spitball artists and confidence men. But I will say one thing for the species--and here, I don't count myself among them--they are, almost to the man and woman, some of the ballsiest people I know. Some 500 of my colleagues have literally gone into combat by embedding with troops. Scores of others have made suicide runs into Iraq without the benefit of being escorted by M-16-toting Marines. What many lack in brains, they make up for in balls. They are guys like Slate's Nate Thayer, who is camped out in Baghdad, and more willing to become a human shield than a journalistic deserter. They are guys like Newsweek's Scott Johnson, who just flipped his truck in the desert after having it riddled with bullets, barely escaping with his life. They might not do these things for the lofty, noble purposes of duty, honor, and country. But they do them--often for no other reason than that they're there to be done. The counterpart to the war reporter is the military public affairs officer. They too suffer sometimes unfair stereotypes--many of them perpetuated by journalists. We often cast them as neutered soldiers and company men--the friends of bureaucracy and obstructionism, the enemies of access and truth. But Major Chris Hughes, a Marine public affairs officer, is not one of these. More by Matt Labash The Kids Are Alright Semper Fly Weekend Reading Assignments: Superhuman Runners, ... Miami Vice ‘The Mad Dog of the Middle East’ Hughes works the graveyard shift at the Coalition Press Information Center here at the Kuwait City Hilton. (It's actually the day shift back home, on account of the time difference.) My advance men in Kuwait told me to get to know him, and to become his fluffer--that he was a gregarious sort you could do business with, which is necessary for unembedded reporters, since what stands between us and any military access is the often uncooperative figure of the public affairs officer. When I initially called him, we set up an appointment for midnight, which he had to move to 1:00, then 2:00 A.M. Still overwhelmed with calls at the appointed time, he kicked our interview to 5:00 A.M., which he then moved back once more until he knocked off at 8:00 in the morning. I initially tried to sweeten the pot, offering to bring over some special-recipe "Listerine." But he declined politely. "Can't do it," he said. "There's a war on, man." When I met up with him outside the press desk at the end of his normal 12-16 hour shift, he was bleary-eyed and haggard. The night shift, he says, is "kind of a self-inflicted wound. Bad things happen at night. And last night was a bummer." Indeed, it was. After this conflict is over, historians will debate its various turning points. But Sunday, March 23, will be known as the day the war became realer and darker--when bad things happened to good people. A British RAF Tornado had been accidentally blown out of the sky by a U.S. Patriot missile. An attempted fragging incident at the 101st Airborne Division's camp in northern Kuwait left one soldier dead and 16 injured. Throughout southern Iraq, soldiers and Marines were getting chewed up by non-uniformed militia types after towns had supposedly been taken. Dead Americans began showing up on Al-Jazeera, their bodies set out like grocery window displays. Unembedded journalists, cowboying around hostile territory without military protection, were being felled. Three ITV news crew members were missing and presumed dead after coming under fire in southern Iraq. And in the north, an Australian television cameraman was the victim of a car bomb. After spending all night discussing these horrors, Hughes makes his way with me to the incongruous Songbird Café, where pretty Filipina waitresses offer salmon on focaccia to anyone who still has an appetite. Hughes doesn't. He sticks with the Diet Coke he brought himself. He's much more interested in sleeping than eating. Looks-wise, Hughes is all Marine, squared off and squinty, a young James Caan whose eyes slant upward from their outside corners in, forming quotation marks around his expressions. He has worked numerous media operations in some pretty hairy settings--places like East Timor and Afghanistan. And it never ceases to amaze him the cavalier attitude journalists often bring to war. "With the old guys and gals," says the 37-year-old Hughes, "they know the deal. Unfortunately, a lot of people don't. With the work-up for the whole embed [of which he was a big champion], the mentality was kind of 'We're going camping.' No you're not. You're going to war. People will die."

In Iraq, journalists tread warily

 

In Iraq, journalists tread warily

The Christian Science Monitor

April 3, 2003

Byline: Peter Ford Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

AMMAN, JORDAN -- Foreign journalists in Baghdad who expected to be terrified by bombs say they have discovered an even more frightening prospect following the disappearance of four of their colleagues last week.

All four - two reporters from Long Island-based Newsday and two freelance photographers - sent word Tuesday that they were safe, and were crossing over the Iraqi border to Jordan.

Newsday correspondent Matthew McAllester and photographer Moises Saman had been out of contact since March 24, when they e-mailed the Long Island, N.Y.-based newspaper from Baghdad to say they would be filing material.

Molly Bingham, a freelance photographer based in Louisville, Ky., called her family Tuesday to report that she, too, was safely out of Iraq.

Also leaving the country was Danish freelance photographer Johan Rydeng Spanner, according to Abi Wright, a spokeswoman for the Committee to Protect Journalists.

Coming after the four were apparently taken from their hotel rooms by Iraqi security officials eight days ago, the group's release was the source of much relief for relatives and co-workers. But their detainment was a sobering reminder of the potential dangers facing reporters working in the heart of a war zone.

"People are being incredibly cautious," says Craig Nelson, a reporter with Cox News Service in Baghdad. "They know they are walking on eggshells and could be expelled at a moment's notice for the slightest infraction."

Western journalists in Baghdad suggest the four missing reporters may have been arrested because they entered the country on nonjournalist visas.

Mr. McAllester and Mr. Saman had procured the type of visa issued by the government to volunteer "human shields," say colleagues in Baghdad.

Ms. Bingham was on a tourist visa, according to her companion, freelance writer Nate Thayer, who was also traveling as a tourist before being expelled from Iraq Saturday.

Newsday's Mr. McAllester and Mr. Saman had acquired journalistic credentials from the Iraqi Ministry of Information the weekend before their disappearance, according to Newsday managing editor Charlotte Hall.

Iraqi officials say some 350 foreign reporters, including 16 Americans, remaine in Baghdad to cover the war from the Iraqi side. Iraqi ministers give daily press conferences to present their version of events.

Otherwise, however, the government has tightly restricted the movement of reporters herded into the Palestine Hotel, near the banks of the Tigris river, a 17-story, French-built building that "was probably fine in its day," says Lindsey Hilsum, diplomatic correspondent for Britain's Channel 4 News who has been in Baghdad for the past two months.

"It is not necessarily what you would choose for a summer holiday, but it is perfectly adequate," she says. Staffed by friendly Sudanese, the hotel serves food that at least some of the hotel guests are eating, she says, though others rely on canned foodstuffs they had stored before hostilities began and fresh vegetables fetched by drivers.

Since the war started, Western reporters have been allowed out of the hotel only on bus trips organized by the Ministry of Information. The Iraqi officials who accompany them - described by their wards as "minders" and by the Iraqi government as "guides" - "try their best to help," says Ms. Hilsum. "They are not spies trying to stop us working."

Correspondents in Baghdad do not have to submit their copy or scripts to government censors, but many of them know their articles and TV reports are being monitored by the authorities. The main constraint, however, is the lack of freedom to move about. "The restrictions on our movement are so great that I don't know what I am not able to report," Hilsum points out.

The persistent heavy bombing of the Iraqi capital, she says, is less frightening than she had expected, though sometimes her hotel does shake. "Like most Iraqis, we have got used to things that go bang in the night, but most of the bombing is not that close to us, and I slept through it last night."

But with US and British troops closing in on the capital, and Baghdadis growing increasingly angry at civilian deaths, "the mood on the streets is changing," says Mr. Thayer. "If you have an American or a British passport it is not a good thing."

To pass the time, and to restore his composure, Mr. Nelson says he is reading a biography of Saddam Hussein and listening to Miles Davis and Bob Dylan. Hilsum listens to the "Maestro" classical music channel on her digital radio for an hour a day. To stay informed, she uses the radio's crystal clear reception to tune in to the BBC World Service and the CNN International soundtrack. When she can, she reads W. H. Auden's poetry.

Despite the rigors and dangers of life in a war zone, she says she is happy she stayed in Baghdad after other reporters either left of their own accord or followed editors' orders to leave the city before the war began.

"This is the heart of the story," she says. "We can't report everything we want to, but this is what the story is about and I've spent lots of time and energy preparing for it."

With the roads to Jordan and Damascus subject to US and British bombardment, and controlled at different points by Iraqi and US troops, "I've told my editors who want me to leave that it's safer to be holed up here with 350 foreign journalists than to be on the roads," says Nelson.

But, like many of her colleagues, Hilsum worries about the prospect of house-to-house fighting in Baghdad.

"It would be very difficult to leave then," she says. "At the moment, the regime wants us to be here and feels an obligation to keep us safe if our papers are in order. But if street-fighting broke out, some of that might crumble. That is when we will have to be most careful."

Material from the Associated Press was used in this report.

(c) Copyright 2003. The Christian Science Monitor

JOURNALISTS TELL OF CAPTIVITY IN INFAMOUS IRAQI PRISON

 

JOURNALISTS TELL OF CAPTIVITY IN INFAMOUS IRAQI PRISON

The Boston Globe (Boston, MA)

April 3, 2003 | Colin Nickerson, Globe Staff

1

AMMAN, Jordan - The terrifying ordeal of the four Western journalists began before dawn March 24. Iraqi intelligence officers rounded them up at their Baghdad hotel and bundled them off to Iraq's notorious Abu Ghraib prison, where screams of torture victims rang through corridors and the walls reverberated to the blast of American bombs.

They were held incommunicado in separate cells for seven days and nights before they were released Tuesday night.

"From the time we realized we were being taken to prison until the time we crossed into Jordan, we felt our lives were in danger," said Matthew McAllester, Middle East bureau chief for Newsday.

"At times, the Iraqi antiaircraft artillery and surface-to-air missiles were going off incredibly close, and the bombs would shake the walls and the floors where we slept," he said during a press conference in the Jordanian capital yesterday. "But we were more concerned about being killed by our hosts."

Iraqi officials never explained why they arrested McAllester; Newsday photographer Moises Saman, 29; freelance photographer Molly Bingham of Louisville, Ky.; and Danish photographer Johan Rydeng Spanner. American peace activist Philip Latasha was also held with the group, which was freed at the Jordanian border late Tuesday.

Almost daily, they were each led blindfolded from their dingy 6- foot-by-10-foot cells to interrogation rooms, where they were questioned closely about their activities in Iraq.

"We had no idea what they were going to do to us," said Bingham. "They kept blindfolding us and taking us away. Every day it was a question of, `Are they going to kill me or just ask questions?' "

The journalists stressed that they were never beaten or otherwise physically abused.

"They wanted to know if I was a spy," Bingham said. "I told them I was a journalist who came to Baghdad to cover the situation of the Iraqis in the war. But I was not physically harmed in any way."

Iraqis held in the same prison block were not so lucky, according to the journalists.

The four described Iraqi prisoners being led off to torture chambers. Other prisoners bore bruises, cuts, and other signs of beatings. Some hobbled about as if the soles of their feet had been whipped.

"We could hear screams, especially at night," McAllester recounted. "They were being beaten a few yards from my cell, beaten with some sort of implements."

Meanwhile, Newsday was making frantic efforts to locate them and secure their release, making appeals for help to world figures including Pope John Paul II and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, who called Iraq authorities on the journalists' behalf, according to Newsday's deputy editor for foreign news, Jim Rupert.

On the eighth night of their incarceration, the four journalists and the peace activist were allowed to stay together in a single cell, apparently because officials of the regime had decided to grant them release.

But during the first seven days, the Westerners were not allowed to speak to one another, although Bingham and McAllester, in adjoining cells, devised a crude code system of knocks on the wall.

"It was basically just a way to say: `Are you there? Are you OK?' " said Bingham, who was in Baghdad on assignment for Esquire magazine, along with journalist Nate Thayer.

She credited Thayer, who was questioned and released the same morning of her incarceration, with raising the alarm. "Nate Thayer saw me taken off and said, `I promise I will do something,' " said Bingham, who served as photographer for Al Gore during his presidential campaign. "It was bad being led off at 4:45 in the morning by men with guns. Knowing that someone knew I was missing was all that gave me hope."

Abu Ghraib is the largest prison in the Arab world and is in famous as the place of torture and murder of enemies of the Iraqi regime.

McAllester and Saman entered Iraq legitimately as journalists, but had been issued visas restricting them to covering the activities of so-called human shields, Western peace activists who camp outside Iraqi water pumping stations, hospitals, and other facilities with the idea that their presence will deter attacks from warplanes of the British-American coalition.

McAllester acknowledged that he and his photographer colleague "stretched the envelope" by covering the war from Baghdad in a broader way. "We were there to tell a story," he said. "But we knew we were breaking a rule."

Bingham and Spanner, who have no professional connection, entered Iraq as tourists, an infraction that would result in rebuke and perhaps expulsion from most countries, not imprisonment.

The journalists slept on the concrete floors of their individual cells and were fed three meals a day.

"Breakfast was hard boiled eggs and chai," said Bingham, using the word for tea most commonly used in the Middle East, Africa, and Asia. "Lunch was rice or potatoes. Dinner was chicken broth and bread."

During their confinement, they said, they were forced to wear prison uniforms and instructed to sign confessions that were essentially transcripts of their interrogations.

"They quoted passages that I had never written; they said I'd described Iraq as a `devil regime,' a term I've never used," said McAllester, who refused to sign an Arabic language confession but instead wrote out a statement stating that he was a journalist and not an agent of the CIA or any government.

Especially frightening to the journalists was hearing the sound of B-52s and other coalition warplanes and the blast of bombs and missiles.

"We didn't know if anyone knew we were there," Bingham said. "We didn't know if the prison might be targeted as a military facility."

As a woman, Bingham received slightly preferential treatment, she wryly acknowledged. "I was given a towel and a piece of soap," she said. "In that, I fared better than the gentlemen."

Journalists Tell of Captivity in Infamous Iraqi Prison.

 

Journalists Tell of Captivity in Infamous Iraqi Prison.

Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News

April 3, 2003

By Colin Nickerson, The Boston Globe Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News

Apr. 3--AMMAN, Jordan--The terrifying ordeal of the four Western journalists began before dawn March 24. Iraqi intelligence officers rounded them up at their Baghdad hotel and bundled them off to Iraq's notorious Abu Ghraib prison, where screams of torture victims rang through corridors and the walls reverberated to the blast of American bombs.

They were held incommunicado in separate cells for seven days and nights before they were released Tuesday night.

"From the time we realized we were being taken to prison until the time we crossed into Jordan, we felt our lives were in danger," said Matthew McAllester, Middle East bureau chief for Newsday.

"At times, the Iraqi antiaircraft artillery and surface-to-air missiles were going off incredibly close, and the bombs would shake the walls and the floors where we slept," he said during a press conference in the Jordanian capital yesterday. "But we were more concerned about being killed by our hosts."

Iraqi officials never explained why they arrested McAllester; Newsday photographer Moises Saman, 29; freelance photographer Molly Bingham of Louisville, Ky.; and Danish photographer Johan Rydeng Spanner. American peace activist Philip Latasha was also held with the group, which was freed at the Jordanian border late Tuesday.

Almost daily, they were each led blindfolded from their dingy 6-foot by 10-foot cells to interrogation rooms, where they were questioned closely about their activities in Iraq.

"We had no idea what they were going to do to us," said Bingham. "They kept blindfolding us and taking us away. Every day it was a question of, 'Are they going to kill me or just ask questions?' "

The journalists stressed that they were never beaten or otherwise physically abused.

"They wanted to know if I was a spy," Bingham said. "I told them I was a journalist who came to Baghdad to cover the situation of the Iraqis in the war. But I was not physically harmed in any way."

Iraqis held in the same prison block were not so lucky, according to the journalists.

The four described Iraqi prisoners being led off to torture chambers. Other prisoners bore bruises, cuts, and other signs of beatings. Some hobbled about as if the soles of their feet had been whipped.

"We could hear screams, especially at night," McAllester recounted. "They were being beaten a few yards from my cell, beaten with some sort of implements."

Meanwhile, Newsday was making frantic efforts to locate them and secure their release, making appeals for help to world figures including Pope John Paul II and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, who called Iraq authorities on the journalists' behalf, according to Newsday's deputy editor for foreign news, Jim Rupert.

On the eighth night of their incarceration, the four journalists and the peace activist were allowed to stay together in a single cell, apparently because officials of the regime had decided to grant them release.

But during the first seven days, the Westerners were not allowed to speak to one another, although Bingham and McAllester, in adjoining cells, devised a crude code system of knocks on the wall.

"It was basically just a way to say: 'Are you there? Are you OK?' " said Bingham, who was in Baghdad on assignment for Esquire magazine, along with journalist Nate Thayer.

She credited Thayer, who was questioned and released the same morning of her incarceration, with raising the alarm. "Nate Thayer saw me taken off and said, 'I promise I will do something," " said Bingham, who served as photographer for Al Gore during his presidential campaign. "It was bad being led off at 4:45 in the morning by men with guns. Knowing that someone knew I was missing was all that gave me hope."

Abu Ghraib is the largest prison in the Arab world and is infamous as the place of torture and murder of enemies of the Iraqi regime.

McAllester and Saman entered Iraq legitimately as journalists, but had been issued visas restricting them to covering the activities of so-called human shields, Western peace activists who camp outside Iraqi water pumping stations, hospitals, and other facilities with the idea that their presence will deter attacks from warplanes of the British-American coalition.

McAllester admitted that he and his photographer colleague "stretched the envelope" by covering the war from Baghdad in a broader way. "We were there to tell a story," he said. "But we knew we were breaking a rule."

Bingham and Spanner, who have no professional connection, entered Iraq as tourists, an infraction that would result in rebuke and perhaps expulsion from most countries, not imprisonment.

The journalists slept on the concrete floors of their individual cells and were fed three meals a day.

"Breakfast was hard boiled eggs and chai," said Bingham, using the word for tea most commonly used in the Middle East, Africa, and Asia. "Lunch was rice or potatoes. Dinner was chicken broth and bread."

During their confinement, they said, they were forced to wear prison uniforms and instructed to sign confessions that were essentially transcripts of their interrogations.

"They quoted passages that I had never written, they said I'd described Iraq as a 'devil regime,' a term I've never used," said McAllester, who refused to sign an Arabic language confession but instead wrote out a statement stating that he was a journalist and not an agent of the CIA or any government.

Especially frightening to the journalists was hearing the sound of B-52s and other coalition warplanes and the nearby blast of bombs and missiles.

"We didn't know if anyone knew we were there," Bingham said. "We didn't know if the prison might be targeted as a military facility."

As a woman, Bingham received slightly preferential treatment, she wryly acknowledged. "I was given a towel and a piece of soap," she said. "In that, I fared better than the gentlemen."

To see more of The Boston Globe, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.boston.com/globe

(c) 2003, The Boston Globe. Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.

JOURNALISTS TELL OF CAPTIVITY IN INFAMOUS IRAQI PRISON

 

JOURNALISTS TELL OF CAPTIVITY IN INFAMOUS IRAQI PRISON

The Boston Globe (Boston, MA)

April 3, 2003 | Colin Nickerson, Globe Staff

AMMAN, Jordan - The terrifying ordeal of the four Western journalists began before dawn March 24. Iraqi intelligence officers rounded them up at their Baghdad hotel and bundled them off to Iraq's notorious Abu Ghraib prison, where screams of torture victims rang through corridors and the walls reverberated to the blast of American bombs.

They were held incommunicado in separate cells for seven days and nights before they were released Tuesday night.

"From the time we realized we were being taken to prison until the time we crossed into Jordan, we felt our lives were in danger," said Matthew McAllester, Middle East bureau chief for Newsday.

"At times, the Iraqi antiaircraft artillery and surface-to-air missiles were going off incredibly close, and the bombs would shake the walls and the floors where we slept," he said during a press conference in the Jordanian capital yesterday. "But we were more concerned about being killed by our hosts."

Iraqi officials never explained why they arrested McAllester; Newsday photographer Moises Saman, 29; freelance photographer Molly Bingham of Louisville, Ky.; and Danish photographer Johan Rydeng Spanner. American peace activist Philip Latasha was also held with the group, which was freed at the Jordanian border late Tuesday.

Almost daily, they were each led blindfolded from their dingy 6- foot-by-10-foot cells to interrogation rooms, where they were questioned closely about their activities in Iraq.

"We had no idea what they were going to do to us," said Bingham. "They kept blindfolding us and taking us away. Every day it was a question of, `Are they going to kill me or just ask questions?' "

The journalists stressed that they were never beaten or otherwise physically abused.

"They wanted to know if I was a spy," Bingham said. "I told them I was a journalist who came to Baghdad to cover the situation of the Iraqis in the war. But I was not physically harmed in any way."

Iraqis held in the same prison block were not so lucky, according to the journalists.

The four described Iraqi prisoners being led off to torture chambers. Other prisoners bore bruises, cuts, and other signs of beatings. Some hobbled about as if the soles of their feet had been whipped.

"We could hear screams, especially at night," McAllester recounted. "They were being beaten a few yards from my cell, beaten with some sort of implements."

Meanwhile, Newsday was making frantic efforts to locate them and secure their release, making appeals for help to world figures including Pope John Paul II and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, who called Iraq authorities on the journalists' behalf, according to Newsday's deputy editor for foreign news, Jim Rupert.

On the eighth night of their incarceration, the four journalists and the peace activist were allowed to stay together in a single cell, apparently because officials of the regime had decided to grant them release.

But during the first seven days, the Westerners were not allowed to speak to one another, although Bingham and McAllester, in adjoining cells, devised a crude code system of knocks on the wall.

"It was basically just a way to say: `Are you there? Are you OK?' " said Bingham, who was in Baghdad on assignment for Esquire magazine, along with journalist Nate Thayer.

She credited Thayer, who was questioned and released the same morning of her incarceration, with raising the alarm. "Nate Thayer saw me taken off and said, `I promise I will do something,' " said Bingham, who served as photographer for Al Gore during his presidential campaign. "It was bad being led off at 4:45 in the morning by men with guns. Knowing that someone knew I was missing was all that gave me hope."

Abu Ghraib is the largest prison in the Arab world and is in famous as the place of torture and murder of enemies of the Iraqi regime.

McAllester and Saman entered Iraq legitimately as journalists, but had been issued visas restricting them to covering the activities of so-called human shields, Western peace activists who camp outside Iraqi water pumping stations, hospitals, and other facilities with the idea that their presence will deter attacks from warplanes of the British-American coalition.

McAllester acknowledged that he and his photographer colleague "stretched the envelope" by covering the war from Baghdad in a broader way. "We were there to tell a story," he said. "But we knew we were breaking a rule."

Bingham and Spanner, who have no professional connection, entered Iraq as tourists, an infraction that would result in rebuke and perhaps expulsion from most countries, not imprisonment.

The journalists slept on the concrete floors of their individual cells and were fed three meals a day.

"Breakfast was hard boiled eggs and chai," said Bingham, using the word for tea most commonly used in the Middle East, Africa, and Asia. "Lunch was rice or potatoes. Dinner was chicken broth and bread."

During their confinement, they said, they were forced to wear prison uniforms and instructed to sign confessions that were essentially transcripts of their interrogations.

"They quoted passages that I had never written; they said I'd described Iraq as a `devil regime,' a term I've never used," said McAllester, who refused to sign an Arabic language confession but instead wrote out a statement stating that he was a journalist and not an agent of the CIA or any government.

Especially frightening to the journalists was hearing the sound of B-52s and other coalition warplanes and the blast of bombs and missiles.

"We didn't know if anyone knew we were there," Bingham said. "We didn't know if the prison might be targeted as a military facility."

As a woman, Bingham received slightly preferential treatment, she wryly acknowledged. "I was given a towel and a piece of soap," she said. "In that, I fared better than the gentlemen."

Four missing Western journalists may be still detained by Iraq authorities, friend says

AP Worldstream

April 1, 2003

By Shafika Mattar         

00-00-0000
Dateline: AMMAN, Jordan A colleague of four Western journalists and another American who entered Iraq without visas at the start of the war said Tuesday he believed they were being detained by Iraqi authorities.

Nate Thayer, an award-winning freelance journalist from Washington, D.C., said Iraqi authorities arrested him and his photographer, Molly Bingham of Louisville, Kentucky, at their hotel on March 24.

"After five hours of detention and questioning, I was released, but Molly did not come out with me," Thayer told The Associated Press. "I believe she is with the others, although I did not see their detention and no one else did."

He drove out of Baghdad to Jordan last Friday with an Italian photographer who was also being expelled.

"We believe they were detained by the Iraqi security forces, who believe they are something other than what they are," Thayer said. "We want to correct this misunderstanding and get those people back to their homes."

In addition to Bingham, Newsday correspondent Matthew McAllester, 33, Newsday photographer Moises Saman, 29; Danish freelance photographer Johan Rydeng Spanner, and an American peace activist, Philip Latasha, are unaccounted for in Iraq.

Thayer said that he, Bingham, Spanner and Latasha entered Iraq during the first hours of the U.S.-British bombing of Iraq and claimed they were tourists because they couldn't get press visas. McAllester and Saman went on the same day but with another group, he said.

Journalists expelled from Iraq have told Newsday that security officials came last Monday to the hotel where McAllester and Saman were staying and questioned reporters. No one saw McAllester and Saman removed, but their room was empty when a friend went to check on them, Newsday reported.

Spanner's photos of damaged official buildings in Iraq were printed in Denmark's Jyllands-Posten. The newspaper said Monday that Spanner was being held by Iraqi authorities on suspicions he could be a spy.

"Johan is an independent photographer and innocent," Thayer said. "He wanted to show the world the horror of the war."