Editor's note: On February 23, New Times sent staff writer Darrin Hostetler to Saudi Arabia to cover the Gulf War. Shortly after his arrival, Hostetler gained access to Kuwait City and witnessed the final days of Operation Desert Storm.
Hostetler is the only Arizona reporter covering the liberation of Kuwait. This is the last in a series of stories by Hostetler from the Middle East.
When it was over, nobody cheered.
George Bush's announcement of a cease-fire barely stirred the reporters lounging around media headquarters on February 27 at the International Hotel in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia. A few journalists shook hands and smiled weakly before slouching downstairs to the Sand Coffee Shop--the unofficial Gulf War press hangout--to sip a celebratory nonalcoholic beer, the only kind available in the Islamic kingdom.
The drink matched the feelings of many reporters about the war--it looked like beer and tasted like beer, but the giddy rush was somehow missing.
Even in newly liberated Kuwait City, where jubilant Kuwaitis danced in the streets, the mood of the press corps fell just south of somber and a little to the north of cynical. The war was over, and the United States had won. But the press was feeling defeated.
For many reporters, the war had proved frustrating. They had come thousands of miles expecting to find the mysterious, alluring Middle East, and had instead bumped heads with a repressive Saudi Arabian society that required them to alter their daily habits, speech and demeanor.
They came to live out their Hemingway fantasies--all war reporters have them--only to find harsh censorship and virtually no access to the front lines. Most were relegated to watching the war on CNN from the press center, just as they would have done at home. A few had come to earnestly seek out the truth and report it, but their movements, and sometimes it seemed even their thoughts, were restricted by what everyone called "the Jib," the military bureaucracy's Joint Information Bureau.
As the foreign correspondents sat in the coffee shop, they joked that the real winner of the war was CNN, their video lifeline to a war still raging only a few miles away. It seemed as though everyone in the Middle East believed that CNN was the only news source in the universe. A common lament was that "the goddam Arabs think everyone works for CNN."
"Tell an Arab over here that you are a journalist," one reporter said, "and they immediately ask, with this big, admiring look--like you are a god or something--if you are with CNN. And after a while, it just gets easier to nod, smile and say yes.
"Pretending is far easier than explaining that there are other networks and newspapers out there."
Pretending. That's what the war was about for many journalists. Pretending to have seen things they never saw--and writing about them. Pretending they were fighting the elaborate network of military censorship and disinformation when, in reality, they had become accomplices to it. Most of all, pretending that the blame for the shortage of journalism emanating from the war zone fell solely on the military, which simply didn't allow reporters to do their jobs.
It's not that there weren't stories; newspapers and TV networks flooded the American public with them. But very few journalists were with the troops, actually witnessing the sweaty nightmares of American kids fighting on foreign soil. In practically every other war, reporters had been on the scene to chronicle the carnage, heroism and inevitable snafus. In this war, most reporters rewrote press releases.
Perhaps the most telling critique of the American press took place in Saudi Arabia during the war, when an informal cluster of reporters (mostly Canadians and other foreigners) and military types lumped most of the American journalists into four cruel categories: "head cases," "toy soldiers," "trouble tourists" and "climbers."
Many of the hundreds of journalists in the Gulf would object to such a rundown. Among themselves, reporters swapped story after story of how military officials deceived them--ranging from outright lies to delaying tactics that wasted precious time. Certainly "the Jib" did its part to prevent journalists from covering the war completely and accurately. If questions linger about weapons performance and enemy casualties, it is largely because of the Jib. Newsday correspondent John Howell, one of the reporters who proved it was possible to circumvent the censors and travel to the front, was so angry that in a fit of hyperbole one night in Kuwait City he described the Jib to a fellow reporter as "the closest re-creation of pure, total fascism to appear on this planet since the Third Reich."
But when the American press surveys its lackluster performance in the Gulf, it should note that it was also beaten by itself. WHEN THE AIR-RAID SIRENS started wailing on the night of February 25, the staff at the Ramada Inn of Bahrain locked themselves in their rooms and jammed wet towels under the doors (the better to keep the feared gas from seeping in).
But the handful of Western journalists in the building, many of whom were spending their first night in the Middle East, grabbed their gas masks and ran to the roof to try to catch a glimpse of an incoming "Scud" missile. So eager to "see the action" were the half-dozen correspondents that they forgot their shoes and were clad in sweat pants, pajamas or bathrobes.
Suddenly it appeared--a thin trace of light racing through the sky above Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, a few miles across the Persian Gulf from the island nation of Bahrain. A Patriot missile intercepted the "Scud," but the warhead continued to plunge downward. A second later it hit the earth, and a flash, like lightning, illuminated the horizon.
There was no noise; we were too far away for that. Later it would be reported that the missile had hit an American Army barracks in Dhahran, killing more than twenty U.S. soldiers. But this tragedy was far from the minds of the reporters on the roof.
After the missile's impact, an assistant camera operator for one of the television networks ripped off his mask and brushed his hair away from his eyes, which were wild with excitement. "Did you see that?" he exclaimed. "Welcome to the Middle East, huh? Isn't this great?"
Reluctantly, everyone admitted that it was great. The fact is that while war is indeed hell, for the spectators it can be very exciting. Some said they were bothered that they felt so much enthusiasm about covering the war and wrestled aloud with the question: Is it a mortal sin to be surrounded by death, destruction and raw human misery in appalling quantities and still admit you are having a good time? The camera operator, still flushed with adrenaline, answered quickly: "If it is, reserve a place for the press corps in hell."
Later, Greg Seigle, a young freelance journalist from Connecticut who had been the only reporter on the scene at the U.S. barracks that night--hustling out to the site while other Dhahran correspondents slept--laughed when he heard the comment. "Of course journalists have fun covering a war," he said. "It's exciting, despite the horror of it. Maybe it doesn't say too much about us as people, but a certain voyeuristic attitude is necessary to do the job. It's just too bad that so few reporters over here managed to keep that sense of excitement and purpose."
In fact, the scene at press headquarters in Dhahran throughout the short war indicated that few reporters managed to keep awake.
THE CONSENSUS among the non-U.S. media in the Gulf was that although most American reporters had been eager to cover the war in the beginning, they soon fell prey to one of a number of diseases that crippled their ability or desire to report. Hundreds spent hours, days and weeks locked in front of television sets at the hotel, stirring only for meals and never making an effort to hunt down original stories. Others went through the motions, but failed to produce meaningful work.
So prevalent was this syndrome--call it complacency, burnout or simple laziness--that foreign reporters came up with a condescending system of classification for afflicted U.S. journalists.
First there were the "head cases." These were the reporters who suffered from extreme bouts of loneliness and alienation, spending time missing their families and complaining about the living conditions. They exhibited signs of debilitating stress--quivering hands, chain-smoking and poor appetite.
They fell prey to a variety of neuroses. For instance, even after the cease-fire, many of these reporters complained that they were afraid to sleep or run the air conditioning in their rooms at night, fearful that Saddam Hussein would restart the war by lobbing a few "Scud" missiles at Dhahran and that the noise from the clunky old cooling units would drown out the alert sirens. Some sat up night after night, watching the sky for missiles that never came.
These reporters, numbering in the dozens, grew tired of the war so quickly that most never even attempted to do original reporting. Instead, they simply rewrote "pool reports"--the stories compiled by a few select journalists who had been taken into the field by the military. They would change a few details in these pool reports, sign their own names, and send them home to their newspapers.
One East Coast reporter, nicknamed "Rewrite Richard" by his colleagues, spent most of his days in his room downing sleeping pills, passing his time in total unconsciousness. In the afternoons, he would venture out, collect the pool reports from the day's action and scrawl out his versions by hand on a big yellow legal pad. He would then fax them to his newspaper and return to his room.
An older reporter from a prominent Midwestern daily, nervously pacing the floor of the press center during the final days of the war, was the prototypical "head case." As dozens of reporters and soldiers watched, he began talking to himself. "I am sick of this war," he muttered. "I am sick of the Army. I have been here too long. I am starting to fall apart." When he began weeping, a colleague led him away. He flew home the next morning.
THEN THERE WERE the "toy soldiers." These were the correspondents, primarily "pool" reporters from the networks or major print outlets like Newsweek and the New York Times, who surrendered faster than the Iraqis to the sustained flow of military psychobabble and doublespeak. They reveled in the mystique of the Army, proudly wearing the uniforms and flak jackets and enjoying the rest of the perks that went along with playing the "pool game."
The "toy soldiers" were the privileged few who had authorized access to the war, or at least the war as the military chose to show it to them, and the Army outfitted them fully, as they would a real GI Joe, for field action--minus, of course, the guns. They went out regularly on "field missions," which were mostly Boy Scout hikes carefully orchestrated by the Jib to give reporters a taste of the war without allowing them into areas where real news was breaking. Then the reporters would write accounts of what they had seen and distribute copies to all of the less-fortunate journalists.
They could be seen daily, slogging through the lobby of the International, back from a "trip to the front," some clad in still-pressed Army fatigues. A reporter from the Boston Herald, who had become disenchanted with pools and had stopped going out on the "missions," scoffed: "Look at them. Most have never even seen a shot fired in anger, but they all act like they just stepped out of a Rambo movie."
These reporters represented the big guns of print and broadcast journalism, and they could have pressured the Jib to open up the battlefield to more reporters. But instead of protesting, they were protective of their exclusive status and access to the military, even going so far as to chastise other reporters who tried to subvert the hard and fast rules that barred nonpool reporters from the front. "Get the hell out of here," a Time reporter told a Korean television team that was begging Jib officials to be included with a pool heading for the field. "Don't push them. It makes it more difficult for us to function."
Indeed, many pool reporters seemed to become part of the military system itself. During the first hours of the Battle of Khafji, the pool reporters near the area were twice told that Saudi forces had recaptured the town. Failing even to attempt to verify the information, the "pools" reported it as fact both times. In reality, it was several days before Khafji had been secured.
"A lot of reporters were led around like dogs on a leash," said Bruce Wallace, a correspondent for Canada's Maclean's magazine. "They got caught up in the trappings of war."
CLOSELY RELATED to the "toy soldiers" were the "trouble tourists." These were the high-profile network anchors and stars, television journalists who spend their careers jetting in and out of the world's hot spots. They, too, could have pressured officials to open up the reporting atmosphere. But knowing that their status would bring them access denied to others, they instead graciously courted the military.
Every day in the early morning hours, the news anchors would stir from the inner reaches of the compounds the networks had established at the International and make their way, entourage in tow, to a huge platform erected behind the hotel. "Little Hollywood," as it was dubbed, was the site of all three network broadcasting centers. Promptly at 6 p.m. New York time during the height of the war, Dan Rather, Tom Brokaw, and Peter Jennings would mount their stages--located only a few feet from one another--receive a few dabs of makeup, and do the evening news with the mysterious "blue domes" in the background over their shoulders.
(One New York radio station received 100 calls a day from listeners wanting to know what exotic Middle Eastern function the domes served--they were, in reality, coverings for swimming pools and Jacuzzis).
Afterward, the TV bigwigs would disappear back into the networks' compounds, usually not to be seen again until late in the afternoon, when they could be viewed dining with the Jib's officers or other officials, picking up tidbits of data or arranging trips for network correspondents. Occasionally, a "trouble tourist" would foray into the field--leaving the natives and other journalists to wish he had stayed in his suite.
Sam Donaldson, the well-known, abrasive ABC correspondent, showed up at a hotel in Kuwait City a few days after its liberation, looking agitated. Pounding on the front desk, he demanded a room, a hot shower and some service. The befuddled Kuwaiti staff, still recovering from rocket attacks and beatings at the hands of the Iraqis, offered a room key and politely said that there was no hot water or food available. "What kind of place is this?" Donaldson screamed. "Can't you people do anything?" He then threw the key back at the stunned desk clerk and stomped out of the lobby.
"Who was that?" the Kuwaiti clerk wondered aloud, flashing a tight, embarrassed smile at the other journalists watching the scene. When told it was "Sam Donaldson, a TV guy," he frowned and furrowed his brow.
"He's not like the men from CNN," he said. "They are so very nice."
MORE PREVALENT THAN the "head cases," "toy soldiers" or "trouble tourists" were the "climbers." Mostly young, enterprising journalists from small newspapers and local network affiliates, these reporters spent the war as salesmen. The product? Themselves.
Cary Sanders, a TV reporter from the CBS affiliate in Tampa, explained his purpose for being in the Gulf while wolfing down a plate of chicken in a hotel restaurant. While other reporters talked about what they wanted to do when they returned home--have a drink, pick up girls, eat Mexican food--Sanders said the first thing he planned to do stateside was "get a new job."
"This is a game I'm going to win," he grinned. "Being a war correspondent is a ticket up. I'm going to use this to move on. The contacts and experience are going to pay off."
The "climbers" treated the war as one giant job fair. One print reporter carried hundreds of business cards everywhere, all embossed in silver type with a small, full-color photo of him on one side and a miniaturized resume on the other. He spent days hanging around the network compounds, shoveling out cards and offering to buy lunch for producers, reporters, even technicians and gofers. "I want to move into TV," he explained. "I figure it only takes an hour or two a day to file my story [from the pool reports] and I might as well take advantage of the rest of the time."
So many reporters approached CNN personnel at the International that the cable network finally put a sign on its door: "We aren't hiring. Be grateful you have a job and go away."
Undeterred, reporters started pinning business cards to the sign, with notes that read: "Just in case, I can be reached at . . . "
THE JIB CLOSED UP shop March 7, and the reporters who didn't take up posts in Kuwait went home. But first some of the journalists, still feeling dissatisfaction with their war experience, made it clear who they blamed.
The Jib's commander, Colonel Bill Mulvey, a generally well-liked officer despite the fact that the censorship system he administered represented evil incarnate to some reporters, posted a notice asking for "input." All pool reporters were asked to write Mulvey at the Pentagon, detailing the "improvements" needed in the pool system.
"Yeah, right," one reporter said as he read the colonel's notice. "I'll give Mulvey a suggestion about what he can do with the Jib." He smiled mischievously, sliding quietly toward the sign, red marker in hand.
The notice had been up for scarcely an hour when obscene messages, scrawled out in red ink, completely covered it. A Jib officer, noticing the graffiti, quickly took the notice down and put up a fresh copy, but during the night more reporters defaced the poster. All the frustrations of the past months spilled out through these anonymous cathartic messages, as reporters furtively lined up to vent their anger. The reporters were getting their childish revenge, and it was the happiest the press corps had looked in weeks.
Late that night, while getting ready to leave the hotel for the last time, a reporter for one of the wire services lurked near the Jib's "input" notice. By this time, it was again awash in a sea of ink; there was no room for any more impolite messages to Mulvey. So, to get his message across, the reporter taped a sign above the Jib notice: "AT THE NEXT WAR, PLEASE SERVE COCKTAILS."
The reporter stepped back, surveyed his work and sighed. "Now," he said, "I can go home."
Pretending. That's what the war was about for many journalists.
Four cruel categories: "head cases," "toy soldiers," "trouble tourists" and "climbers."
Is it a mortal sin to be surrounded by death, destruction and raw human misery in appalling quantities and admit you are having a good time?
"Look at them. Most have never even seen a shot fired in anger, but they all act like they just stepped out of a Rambo movie."
"What kind of place is this?" Sam Donaldson screamed. "Can't you people do anything?"
CNN finally put a sign on its door: "We aren't hiring. Be grateful you have a job and go away.
