FBI Invites Embedded Journalist Art Harris to Share War Stories on U.S. Marines Birthday
By Art Harris, The Bald Truth
© 2017, artharris.com, all rights reserved
ATLANTA–It was a bit daunting: an invitation by the FBI field office here to be its keynote speaker for the U.S. Marine Corps’ annual birthday. Their request–share personal war stories from riding shotgun with a camera and a laptop in the Iraq invasion as a former CNN journalist embedded with the U.S. Marines 2nd LAR.
What was it like to chronicle life and death, hear about the hopes, dreams and fears, witness courage and victory courtesy of young guns who put lives on the line for each other? What was it like to play confidant after a Dear John letter, then watch them light up when offered a SAT phone to call home from the desert?
As a journalist, I’d covered the FBI’s big crime stories over the years– serial killers, mad bombers, mobsters, monsters and terrorists hunted by agents in the room. I mused it was a mighty warm welcome for a reporter , but then again, they gave a nod to my “cred” as a journalist who’d actually served in the military, too (as a Navy officer), experienced war first-hand, and like many here, been shot at (and missed).
At the same time, tensions in North Korea were ratcheting up on the USMC’s 242nd birthday– a reminder the U.S. Marines are ready for war when war is ready for them.
Only should a mini- Armeggedon come to pass, it would be unlike any other: no American unit had ever faced radioactive fallout from a nuclear blast. In Iraq, we dressed for possible WMD, and chemical weapons we were warned Saddam might unleash. I lost 20 pounds wearing heavy protective MOP gear to protect against deadly nerve gas Saddam didn’t use or we couldn’t find. But I did observe an Iraqi Republican Guard camp stocked with German gas masks and decontamination kits for chemical exposure.
After Iraq, I was invited to speak to the U.S. Army War College about the embedding experience — a win-win for the press and the military–giving journalists and TV crews a front row seat on war in real time, and rare access to tell the human stories we so often miss.
Now, here I was years later, invited by U.S. MARINES turned career FBI agents, to share tales they’d known. It was an honor–and and a hard act to follow.
Last year, Special Agent Mike Green, a decorated U.S. Marine, shared the tragic saga of the Marine Barracks bombing in Beirut. He was there and paid a tribute to the fallen, an emotional reminder that the price of freedom is never free.
Now, he was on the front row, as agents packed into a cavernous classroom, with enough TV screens to pass for The Varsity Drive In or a sports bar, an audience dappled with veterans of other services, too, heroes all who had fought enemies overseas, and now hunt terror in our backyards, hellbent on protecting our families and theirs and the country we love.
Among them: agents whose investigations I’d covered over the years as a journalist from The Washington Post, to CNN and beyond – mass murders, terror from Columbine High to Oklahoma City to Atlanta’s Olympic Park Bombing…the Gold Club and the mob, 9-11, sex trafficking in the capital of the New South and more—reporting that had won awards, but more importantly, friends in their ranks who trusted me to get it right.
Only now, we also shared something else–an equation of life and death. For more than a handful in the audience — U.S. Marines and other military veterans and law enforcement types with a history in SWAT, Hazmat and bomb squads…All American heroes in my book. I’d venture many of us now had something in common–we’d been “shot at and missed.”
It does make your blood pump, exhilarating, if scary stuff. One Marine described it as long stretches of boredom interrupted by bursts of stark -raving terror.
“When I came home everyone wanted to know, ‘Were you scared?’” I told them. “I can only say what one Marine General told me in Iraq, ‘Art if you’re not scared, you’re either lying or psychotic.’ Now, I look at every day above ground as a bonus.”
Indeed, the young Marines of 2nd LAR told me when to duck, kept my batteries charged, shared their hopes, dreams, fears and heartaches.
I wrote their love letters home, chronicled the badges of courage earned in the face of withering enemy fire, from racing across the “burm” at the Kuwait to the battle of Nasirya, where, surprise, unknown to U.S. intelligence 5,000 Fedayeen were hiding, waiting with AKs and RPGs and the hell of enemy and friendly fire took a toll.
Also in the audience was my oldest son…Josh. I flashed a photo of him at 6 years old saluting the heroes of WWII buried at the Allied cemetery in Normandy, a symbolic moment that, for me, was a salute to all of the Marines I was with in Iraq, and beyond…to veterans among FBI ranks in the audience, and those who still serve in uniform and out.
A salute that honors the military tradition in the family. After German snipers had a field day killing American troops by moonlight on the beaches of Normandy, my late father, then an Army Major on the War Production Board, set about developing packaging for supplies sent ashore with non-reflective coating that denied snipers an easy shot and saved U.S. lives…
A late stepfather flew 167 sorties as a Marine dive bomber pilot in the Pacific; another was General Patton’s aide as his tanks marched across France. He brought home guns from the war, a collection I got to keep in my room growing up, firing pins removed, of course.
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Coming soon: full story of riding shotgun with the U.S. Marines at www.artharris.com, along with links to a podcast of the full FBI talk.
Many of the stories and photos in this short excerpt from the talk have never aired before, are copyrighted, and remain exclusive intellectual property that cannot be used or republished without the written permission of Art Harris or Baldtruthtv.com.
To contact Art Harris with tips, story ideas, appearance requests or more: e mail art@artharris.com or fax 770 234 4233.
(c) 2017, art harris, all rights reserved
