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American Morning
Interview With 'The New Yorker''s Jon Lee Anderson
Aired April 15, 2003 - 08:45 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
PAULA ZAHN, CNN ANCHOR: There has been a breathtaking series of events in Baghdad during last two weekS. U.S. troops battled their way into the city, took over presidential palaces, bombs targeted Saddam Hussein and his sons, journalists were killed when the fight came right to their hotel. A giant statue of Saddam Hussein was pulled down, looting erupted in the city, and Jon Lee Anderson was in the middle of all of it.
He has been in Baghdad since mid-February and has been covering it for "The New Yorker" magazine. Jon Lee Anderson joins us now from Baghdad.
Welcome, Jon Lee. Thank you very much for your time this morning. Can you give us a flavor of what Baghdad was like in these days leading up to March 20?
JON LEE ANDERSON, "THE NEW YORKER": Yes. There was an air of -- I guess you could say surrealism, as the regime trotted out one minister after the other, telling us that they were going to stand and fight and destroy the regime. We had an air of panic, I would say, and a certain amount of hysteria, both by the residents of this city who feared the worst once President Bush's ultimatum came through, which was followed by Saddam Hussein's rejection of his ultimatum, that he leave the country within 48 hours.
Those final 48 hours saw an exodus of quite a few journalists from this town, the last of the diplomats who had been leaving in the previous week or so. And it coincided with -- with typically here with the sandstorms, such as we're having right now, which made it all feel a bit apocalyptic.
I remember the afternoon before the first bombing strikes and the streets were mostly deserted. Many people had boarded up their -- their shops, left their homes. Those who could afford it had left Iraq or left Baghdad. We saw people we knew suddenly vanish. Some people moved to cities outside Baghdad. Others who could afford it, to Syria or Amman. And there was a last scramble for emergency items like cooking oil or rice or fuel for generators.
And I remember that night, the night of the bombing strikes, we were all waiting with baited breath. I stayed up writing very, very late in the Rashid Hotel. It was about 4:00 my time. I finally decided I couldn't function anymore. I laid down in my bed and before I could close my eyes, the earth shook, rather the hotel shook as in an earthquake, and I knew that the war had begun.
ZAHN: Let's fast forward... ANDERSON: That was March 20.
ZAHN: Let's fast forward a bit to when you sat through a number of the news conferences held by the Iraqi information minister. When you knew that U.S. troops had penetrated that city limits area of Baghdad, and the information minister was saying the Americans aren't here, they'll never come here, how did you react? How did the other journalists react?
ANDERSON: It was extraordinary. Every day, Minister Sahaf would come to this hotel, sit in a room, cleanly shaven, perfumed, radiating good will and kindness to all mankind, except the Americans, whom he denigrated with a series of colorful epithets like "desert rats" and "desert animals" and "snakes in the grass," and the most extraordinary of all, I think, his press conferences, probably his last, where he appeared here briefly while not 600 yards away there were American tanks visible on the opposite side of the Tigris River, and he came here to say that what we thought we were seeing was very far from the truth, and that he gave everyone a sermon about accuracy in media and reporting, and disappeared again. Of course, we've never seen him since. And the next day, the American tanks had a huge battle, appeared on the bridges, and the fall of the city began.
ZAHN: But Jon Lee, when you were hearing him say this stuff...
ANDERSON: But just to answer...
ZAHN: ... and you knew he was so blatantly lying to you, could you have any kind of honest response? Did anybody have anything to say back? Did anybody laugh?
ANDERSON: Well, you know, the press was quite intimidated here. We had been subjected since -- under the war, those of us who remained, to raids by intelligence men of our satellite phones, there were some of our colleagues who were actually abducted from the hotel and held for a week in the notorious prison, Abu Ghraib (ph), here. We didn't know their whereabouts. There was all kinds of mutterings by the people in charge about military rules and things that could happen to us if we didn't obey them.
We were the -- the information service was in essence taken over by the security services. Towards the end, I even had to ask permission to go shave down the street at a barber. I had to give the barber's name. It was quite intimidating. Sahaf was the adornment to what was actually a scary apparatus.
And all I could think of, though, when he lied baldly in our faces, was that he had come and they had come to see us much as they saw their own citizens. That is, a completely cowed people, who had no ability to speak out, who had not been able to call a liar a liar in 30 years. And I think because we were here and we would sit and listen to him, he actually had come to think of us as his own willing fools, or willing tools, if you will.
There was one very good remark by a British journalist, I remember the day the airport was seized, he said that -- Minister Sahaf said, they are trapped everywhere. They are trapped in the desert. They are trapped here. They are trapped like rats.
And she piped up and said, Are they trapped in the airport, Minister Safaf? Which got a titter from all of us, but went completely over his head. So we knew, but we weren't able to boldly say it. It was a difficult period for us.
ZAHN: Well, your pieces in the "The New Yorker" have been extraordinary, particularly the level of detail. Jon Lee Anderson, thanks for sharing some of your experiences with us here this morning. Appreciate your time.
ANDERSON: Not at all. Thank you. Thanks for having me.
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com
Aired April 15, 2003 - 08:45 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
PAULA ZAHN, CNN ANCHOR: There has been a breathtaking series of events in Baghdad during last two weekS. U.S. troops battled their way into the city, took over presidential palaces, bombs targeted Saddam Hussein and his sons, journalists were killed when the fight came right to their hotel. A giant statue of Saddam Hussein was pulled down, looting erupted in the city, and Jon Lee Anderson was in the middle of all of it.
He has been in Baghdad since mid-February and has been covering it for "The New Yorker" magazine. Jon Lee Anderson joins us now from Baghdad.
Welcome, Jon Lee. Thank you very much for your time this morning. Can you give us a flavor of what Baghdad was like in these days leading up to March 20?
JON LEE ANDERSON, "THE NEW YORKER": Yes. There was an air of -- I guess you could say surrealism, as the regime trotted out one minister after the other, telling us that they were going to stand and fight and destroy the regime. We had an air of panic, I would say, and a certain amount of hysteria, both by the residents of this city who feared the worst once President Bush's ultimatum came through, which was followed by Saddam Hussein's rejection of his ultimatum, that he leave the country within 48 hours.
Those final 48 hours saw an exodus of quite a few journalists from this town, the last of the diplomats who had been leaving in the previous week or so. And it coincided with -- with typically here with the sandstorms, such as we're having right now, which made it all feel a bit apocalyptic.
I remember the afternoon before the first bombing strikes and the streets were mostly deserted. Many people had boarded up their -- their shops, left their homes. Those who could afford it had left Iraq or left Baghdad. We saw people we knew suddenly vanish. Some people moved to cities outside Baghdad. Others who could afford it, to Syria or Amman. And there was a last scramble for emergency items like cooking oil or rice or fuel for generators.
And I remember that night, the night of the bombing strikes, we were all waiting with baited breath. I stayed up writing very, very late in the Rashid Hotel. It was about 4:00 my time. I finally decided I couldn't function anymore. I laid down in my bed and before I could close my eyes, the earth shook, rather the hotel shook as in an earthquake, and I knew that the war had begun.
ZAHN: Let's fast forward... ANDERSON: That was March 20.
ZAHN: Let's fast forward a bit to when you sat through a number of the news conferences held by the Iraqi information minister. When you knew that U.S. troops had penetrated that city limits area of Baghdad, and the information minister was saying the Americans aren't here, they'll never come here, how did you react? How did the other journalists react?
ANDERSON: It was extraordinary. Every day, Minister Sahaf would come to this hotel, sit in a room, cleanly shaven, perfumed, radiating good will and kindness to all mankind, except the Americans, whom he denigrated with a series of colorful epithets like "desert rats" and "desert animals" and "snakes in the grass," and the most extraordinary of all, I think, his press conferences, probably his last, where he appeared here briefly while not 600 yards away there were American tanks visible on the opposite side of the Tigris River, and he came here to say that what we thought we were seeing was very far from the truth, and that he gave everyone a sermon about accuracy in media and reporting, and disappeared again. Of course, we've never seen him since. And the next day, the American tanks had a huge battle, appeared on the bridges, and the fall of the city began.
ZAHN: But Jon Lee, when you were hearing him say this stuff...
ANDERSON: But just to answer...
ZAHN: ... and you knew he was so blatantly lying to you, could you have any kind of honest response? Did anybody have anything to say back? Did anybody laugh?
ANDERSON: Well, you know, the press was quite intimidated here. We had been subjected since -- under the war, those of us who remained, to raids by intelligence men of our satellite phones, there were some of our colleagues who were actually abducted from the hotel and held for a week in the notorious prison, Abu Ghraib (ph), here. We didn't know their whereabouts. There was all kinds of mutterings by the people in charge about military rules and things that could happen to us if we didn't obey them.
We were the -- the information service was in essence taken over by the security services. Towards the end, I even had to ask permission to go shave down the street at a barber. I had to give the barber's name. It was quite intimidating. Sahaf was the adornment to what was actually a scary apparatus.
And all I could think of, though, when he lied baldly in our faces, was that he had come and they had come to see us much as they saw their own citizens. That is, a completely cowed people, who had no ability to speak out, who had not been able to call a liar a liar in 30 years. And I think because we were here and we would sit and listen to him, he actually had come to think of us as his own willing fools, or willing tools, if you will.
There was one very good remark by a British journalist, I remember the day the airport was seized, he said that -- Minister Sahaf said, they are trapped everywhere. They are trapped in the desert. They are trapped here. They are trapped like rats.
And she piped up and said, Are they trapped in the airport, Minister Safaf? Which got a titter from all of us, but went completely over his head. So we knew, but we weren't able to boldly say it. It was a difficult period for us.
ZAHN: Well, your pieces in the "The New Yorker" have been extraordinary, particularly the level of detail. Jon Lee Anderson, thanks for sharing some of your experiences with us here this morning. Appreciate your time.
ANDERSON: Not at all. Thank you. Thanks for having me.
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com
