Clip A 3:15 28.1MB
(Small 4.3MB)
Clip B 4:51 43.2MB
(Small 6.4MB)
Clip C 3:13 27.9MB
(Small 4.1MB)
Clip D 2:15 19.5MB
(Small 2.9MB)
Clip E 2:42 23.5MB
(Small 3.5MB)
Clip F 3:14 29.0MB
(Small 4.3MB)
Clip G 3:18 28.5MB
(Small 4.3MB)
Clip H 3:19 29.3MB
(Small 4.3MB)
Clip I 3:38 32.3MB
(Small 4.7MB)
TONY FITZGERALD,
PRESENTER: Hello, I’m Tony Fitzgerald. Tonight’s
program continues the story of renowned journalist
Michael Ware. When he was a young law graduate,
Michael worked as my associate on the Queensland
Court of Appeal. Now he’s famous in the United States
for his brave reporting from Middle Eastern war
zones. Michael Ware’s story concludes tonight, but
first this recap.
DAVID BELLAVIA, FMR STAFF SERGEANT, US ARMY: The face
of combat journalism is Michael Ware. He gets the
story that no one has the guts to cover.
LARA LOGAN, REPORTER:
Michael Ware is the only western journalist in
regular contact with
insurgents.
MICHAEL WARE: Once I was in these conflicts, there
was a sense of belonging.
KIMBERLEY HAMMOND, SISTER: I just presumed he would
give it all up when he had Jack.
MAN: Oh behalf of your Bad Boys, we present this as a
birthday present.
JOHN MARTINKUS, JOURNALIST: He built up a really,
really good team of people.
MICHAEL WARE: The Iraqi staff weren’t a second
family, they were just family.
That’s the only film I have of my kidnapping.
You see a member of Al Qaeda stepping out from the
median strip pulling the pin on a grenade.
I was being readied for my execution.
Through gritted teeth they literally shoved me back.
Straight after my kidnapping by Al Qaeda, I didn’t
leave my bedroom for three days. Every time I got
into a car of any description, going anywhere, I had
-- I immediately wanted to throw up. At the same
time, I was under threat from Al Qaeda, they were
specifically targeting me for something I’d
published. We knew that there was a team coming to
kill me. Weapons dealers and others had warned us. We
knew the attack would commence with a bomb. Suddenly
at our main checkpoint a massive car bomb went off.
At that instant we all looked at each other and went,
‘It has come upon us, they’re here’. And we all stood
there ready and waiting for those first masked
fighters to come spilling around the corner. As it
turns out it was a false alarm but the lesson of that
morning was that in that moment, not a single one of
my boys took a backward step. Not one.
I knew Al Qaeda was still after me so I effectively
went into hiding and it was then that I went into the
battle of Fallujah with the US Army.
Hey Jack. It’s your
Dad here, mate. I’m just about to go into the battle
of Fallujah. Just want to say I love you, son, and I
love your mother. You take really good care of her.
She’s a very special person. I’ll see you soon, Jack.
Bye, mate.
I was talking to Jack and
to his mum, Shannon, even though we weren’t together.
I just wanted to let them know that I loved them no
matter what.
DAVID BELLAVIA, FMR STAFF SERGEANT, US ARMY: I met
Michael Ware on Halloween of 2004. We were set to go
to Fallujah, the epicentre of all Al Qaeda at that
point. I didn’t really want to get to know Michael
Ware because I saw him as the guy who got beheading
videos and the guy who hung out with the people that
were killing my friends.
MICHAEL WARE: We were literally in the first three
American vehicles that entered the city of Fallujah.
DAVID BELLAVIA, FMR STAFF SERGEANT, US ARMY: At one
point Michael Ware is facing me with the camera as I
shoot at people that are shooting back at me. He
actually was protecting me from a bullet with his
head and his camera. It made no sense but that was
the photo, that was the moment.
He will risk his life to get to where the action is.
We are looking for
weapons caches and we're also going to be looking
for...
MICHAEL WARE: The American platoon I was with was
searching a block of houses for a group of six or
seven Al Qaeda fighters.
DAVID BELLAVIA, FMR STAFF SERGEANT, US ARMY: My
platoon walked into a house and there were guys that
were behind cover with machine guns and they opened
up on us.
MICHAEL WARE: The bullets were literally coming
through the wall and so this American platoon and I
were forced to spill out of that house firing
desperately to cover our withdrawal.
Are you alright, man?
Have you been hit?
There was only one way that this situation could be
resolved with any one of us getting out alive really,
and that was someone had to go back in there.
DAVID BELLAVIA, FMR STAFF SERGEANT, US ARMY: And he
looked at me and he had this like glazed look on his
eyes like, ‘what are we doing’ and I just was like,
ya know, ‘I’m going back in there’ and I’m thinking--
I’m saying this out loud my inner monologues bleeding
out and I look, and I look at Michael Ware and I’m
like ‘f**k it’ and he looks at me and he’s like ‘f**k
it’ and I’m like, ‘do you know what you’re doing? You
don’t have a weapon, do you know what you’re doing?’
And he was like ‘absolutely, let’s do this’.
I want to go in there
and go after him.
And so we did it.
Hey dude, I’m telling
you right now, this guy is shooting from point blank
range.
MICHAEL WARE: Yeah, I know.
DAVID BELLAVIA, FMR STAFF SERGEANT, US ARMY: You want
to stay right there?
MICHAEL WARE: I’ll
stay here.
DAVID BELLAVIA, FMR
STAFF SERGEANT, US ARMY: Alright, well, you stay on
my right shoulder.
So Michael Ware and I
were in that house alone, you know, for what felt
like an eternity. There were like three times I
almost shot Michael Ware. He kept screaming that he
was a journalist and I’m like ‘who is that?’
Who is it?
MICHAEL WARE: [yelling] Mick! Mick, the
journalist!
DAVID BELLAVIA, FMR STAFF SERGEANT, US ARMY: And he’s
like ‘I’m a journalist’. He was whispering it to me,
‘I’m a journalist, I’m the journalist, it’s Mick.’
And I’m like, ‘dude, I am going to shoot you unless
you tell me who you are’, ‘cos I was, and we were all
freaked out there are guys every, like boogiemen, we
were fighting boogiemen.
MICHAEL WARE: And when it was all over, the soldiers
dragged the bodies out. As a result, this guy who I
had only recently met who now is bound to me for
life, was nominated for America’s highest military
award, the Congressional Medal of Honour.
DAVID BELLAVIA, FMR STAFF SERGEANT, US ARMY: Michael
Ware was a warrior. He wasn’t just a guy with a
camera. We started to understand that he knew more
about the enemy than our own intelligence officers
were telling us. He gave us a lesson. When Michael
Ware would talk to my platoon, everyone was writing
things down as if it was an operations order. That
stuff saved our life.
MICHAEL WARE: It was the battle of Fallujah that
cleansed me. Somehow, you know, all that stomach
churning, gut wrenching guttural fear that I had
after the kidnap, dissolved after the baptism of
combat in Fallujah and I don’t know why.
KIMBERLEY HAMMOND, SISTER: It would often be me that
Michael would ring and he just debriefs really for
hours on end. Sometimes when he is in the thick of
awfulness over there, we will talk endlessly about
his love life. And I really think that that’s his way
of, a little bit of an escape, obsessing about girls,
women.
MICHAEL WARE: You find love in the strangest of
places. I’ve found it on American air bases. I’ve
found it in the midst of the battle, literally. I was
involved in a relationship with a woman who was on
American ‘Sixty Minutes’.
LARA LOGAN: On our
way back to the base, we started taking fire. One
Marine was hit right in front of
me.
KIMBERLEY HAMMOND, SISTER: He wears his heart on his
sleeve. When he falls in love that is it.
KIMBERLEY HAMMOND, SISTER: You can’t really put the
two people together, this, you know rough and tough
war man. And then he rang me one night planning a
romantic attempt to win a girl back. He had music and
he had placards with ‘I love you’ and ‘ring me’ and
all this, you know, really over-the-top romantic
stuff.
MICHAEL WARE: Oh, the mad things I have done in
love's name. I’ve almost been killed more than once
in the name of love.
MICHAEL WARE: One,
two, three…
MEN: Merry Christmas, Jack!
KIMBERLEY HAMMOND, SISTER: Michael gets really close
to the boys, he calls them ‘his boys’ who work for
him. It was like a family.
YURI KOZYREV: Happy
Christmas!
JOHN MARTINKUS, JOURNALIST: At any time any one of
them could have easily sold him out to be kidnapped
or killed or whatever. They didn’t. They stuck with
us and, you know, put their lives at risk.
MICHAEL WARE: Many of my Iraqi staff paid dearly, I
mean, three of them were kidnapped and tortured
mercilessly by Al-Qaeda because of me. I managed to
get all three back.
SALAH DAWOOD, FORMER INTERPRETER: Everybody believed
that there is a danger for us and for our families. I
was always worried when and where we will be attacked
and suddenly the explosion happened.
MICHAEL WARE: Salah was blown up just as a hundred
metres or so from his house by Al Qaeda.
SALAH DAWOOD, FORMER INTERPRETER: Michael Ware was on
the phone, I can’t forget the tone of his words and
telling me how he care about me. He was telling me
just to stay alive, stay alive. He gave me the power
to stay alive, actually.
JOHN MARTINKUS, JOURNALIST: Mick used his influence
and his clout and Time Magazine’s money to basically
get him to Jordan, get him properly treated, then to
get him a refugee visa.
MICHAEL WARE: I moved from working as a print
journalist for Time Magazine, and I say this with
great fondness, sold my soul and moved into
television in 2006.
MICHAEL WARE: There's
at least three known Taliban
checkpoints...
DAVID BELLAVIA, FMR STAFF SERGEANT, US ARMY: All
these reporters are wearing, like, crisp clean
khakis. I know reporters in Iraq that brought hair
gel.
MICHAEL WARE: We're
here in Kandahar. This is a city
surrounded…
DAVID BELLAVIA, FMR STAFF SERGEANT, US ARMY: He’s
got, like, not even five o’clock shadow, this is like
four o’clock the next day shadow, you know, he’s
hairy, he looks like he’s been sleeping outside.
MICHAEL WARE: Well,
Wolf, it's just three a.m. here in Iraq…
The US effort is barely touching the Taliban's war
machine…
That time for departure may be coming sooner than
many people think.
DAVID BELLAVIA, FMR STAFF SERGEANT, US ARMY: Michael
Ware became the litmus test for success and failure
in Iraq by his reports.
MICHAEL WARE: I don't
know what part of Neverland Senator McCain is talking
about when he says we can go strolling in
Baghdad.
I would be able to write ten words in Time magazine
and those words would sink like a stone. But when I
would say those same ten words verbatim on television
the American Secretary of Defence would have to
respond to them in the next day’s Pentagon press
briefing.
On a day where
there's only three or four bombing incidents, none of
them major, that's a good day. What on earth does
that tell you about what the Iraqi people are living
through?
KIMBERLEY HAMMOND, SISTER: He would ring me often, he
would say, there’s just blood everywhere or I just
saw a child my son’s age, you know, dead or badly
injured.
DAVID BELLAVIA, FMR STAFF SERGEANT, US ARMY: Michael
Ware has been in the combat zone far too long. He has
completed the equivalent of eight to nine combat
tours. There’s no soldier in our military that’s done
that. Michael Ware has done that.
KIMBERLEY HAMMOND, SISTER: It’s nearly like a drug.
He just kept going back for more. I know I do wonder
whether his bosses should have just said ‘enough is
enough’ and there is a bit of anger there from me
that I think they’ve overused him and abused him.
MICHAEL WARE: There was an incident that I filmed
back in 2007. It was in a remote Iraqi village, a
village that had pretty much been owned by Al Qaeda.
A young man who turned out to be 16, 17, maybe 18
years of age, you know like so many Iraqis had a
weapon to protect himself, approached the house we
were in and the soldiers who were watching our backs,
one of them put a bullet right in the back of his
head. Unfortunately it didn't kill him. We all spent
the next 20 odd minutes listening to his tortured
breath as he died.
I had this moment that I realised despite what was
happening to this man in front of me, I'd been more
concerned with the composition of my shot than I was
with any attempt to either save him or at the very
very least, ease his passing. I indeed had been
indifferent as the soldiers around me whose
indifference I was attempting to capture. Technically
being it a breach of the Geneva Convention at least
or arguably a small war crime, if there's such a
thing, that film, to this day, it’s never seen the
light of day.
JOHN MARTINKUS, JOURNALIST: When I went back to
Baghdad in 2007, one of the first things he showed me
was that tape and he was watching it over and over
and over again. Part of him was like ‘how could I,
how could I just stand by and watch that happen’. It
was a really horrible stark moral choice that he
faced and he still wrestles with that.
MICHAEL WARE: There came a point where something
inside me started to tell me that it was time to
leave Iraq. That was a hard thing for me to come to
terms with. I was sitting in the garden of the CNN
house with one of my great mates Tommy the producer,
I said ‘Tommy I think I need to leave’ and it was an
enormous comfort for Tommy to say ‘I think so, mate’.
I hit New York like a meteor plunging into the earth,
I mean, those first six months I felt nothing but
pain and I suspect I caused nothing but pain.
DAVID BELLAVIA, FMR STAFF SERGEANT, US ARMY: The last
time I saw Michael I didn’t even recognise him. He’d
aged eighty years in his eyes. He just looked tired.
He looked exhausted.
MICHAEL WARE: I couldn’t walk to the corner store and
buy milk. I couldn’t go to a dinner party. I couldn’t
stand in a crowd. I couldn’t catch the subway. I...
you know, I couldn’t live.
GAIL WARE, MOTHER: He was in New York at the time
doing local work, but he was sent back to Iraq three
times and Afghanistan twice.
MICHAEL WARE: There's
a Taliban here that wasn't here just a few years
ago...
JOHN MARTINKUS, JOURNALIST: He was travelling with
some Afghan police. They were doing a routine patrol
in Kandahar.
MICHAEL WARE: A
hidden Taliban roadside bomb is about to hit this
Afghan police gun truck a CNN cameraman and I are
riding in. By some miracle it detonates a heartbeat
too soon; otherwise we'd all be
dead.
KIMBERLEY HAMMOND, SISTER: He rang me and he said
‘something really bad has happened. You’ll hear on
the news that a car bomb went off and that an
Australian journalist was involved and it was me but
I’m okay’. He just started rambling, not making much
sense, crying.
JOHN MARTINKUS,
JOURNALIST: And I think that really, in a way, I
think it was like the last, you know, one near-miss
too many.
MICHAEL WARE: Originally I came home for my yearly
visit for Christmas and I tacked on the end three
months book leave, because I’ve signed a book deal.
JOHN MARTINKUS, JOURNALIST: As that May 1 deadline
for him to go back to work approached, I could tell
from talking to him that he was dreading it, that he
fully expected to be back at work on May 1 and by May
2 being shot at.
MICHAEL WARE: It’s turned out that I’m not ready to
go back to work yet and it’s turned out that I’m not
quite ready to write the book. I open a box brimming
with notebooks and souvenirs and memorabilia and
everything I touch is rich with memory and yet most
of those memories are not pleasant and yeah, it’s
been ripping my heart out.
DAVID BELLAVIA, FMR STAFF SERGEANT, US ARMY: You
almost have to pretend every day to not let people
know what you are thinking in your head, or what
you’ve been through. Every time Michael Ware-- every
time I see someone I imagine what they’d look like if
they got blown up. Every time I hear something, I
imagine what it would look like if a bomb went off.
You can’t share that with people, you‘ll freak them
out.
MICHAEL WARE : I
mean, I never cease to be amazed at the age. The baby
faces when we send our children into war. I mean,
look at these kids. At this point, they think that
they've killed a sniper
team...
When our young men and our young women do go to war,
one becomes enormously divorced from oneself, just as
a survival mechanism. The place someone has to go to
in their head to endure 12 or in some cases with the
Americans, 15 months of that without respite, is a
very dark place indeed.
You can actually
sometimes you see the innocence just slip away right
before your eyes.
These are our kids, and they're coming home. And you
owe them.
The Michael that shot
this film is long dead.
I've been left, at least in part, the custodian of
the shadow of a lot of lives. Some of them I knew and
some, I never met them. But, yeah, I walk with them.
Now and I daresay forever. It's an honor. But
sometimes it doesn't make living very easy.
GAIL WARE, MOTHER: He has horrendous night terrors
and nightmares. He wakes up screaming and very
distressed.
MICHAEL WARE: It just
sucks not to feel anything, sometimes, other times
it’s quite handy.
I’m here facing the demons from the war and the
demons that are plaguing me out of war. Now, I’ve
turned to all sorts of things to try to survive, or
to get by. Many of which don’t actually help,
actually make things worse, but anything to keep the
demons at bay.
KIMBERLEY HAMMOND, SISTER: I do worry about Michael
trying to deal with the Post Traumatic Stress by
self-medicating, because he just gets so desperate to
get some peace. And I say you can’t self-medicate.
You have to deal. Recently, when he has started
feeling so bad, he will be open and say the only
thing that has kept him going is Jack.
MICHAEL WARE: Well,
that's what I was wondering -- how old is Nana?
JACK: Um, three?
MICHAEL WARE: She's older than
three.
Until of late, war was home and there was an odd
comfort in that. And to be amongst that brotherhood,
I mean it’s every old soldier, every old digger’s
story, nothing ever replaces it. And back in
so-called civilian life, obviously it's hard but
until of late I never found anything that even came
close to matching that experience or that existence.
I want that one.
You're mine, buddy.
This is the longest I’ve ever spent with my son since
he was born.
Don't knock me over.
I'll look silly.
KIMBERLEY HAMMOND, SISTER: It’s amazing. Jack
obviously adores him and loves spending time with
him.
MICHAEL WARE: For me the great cost of what I’ve done
was missing those Jack years.
Here, bring it on.
Bring me down! Come on, drive it
over.
KIMBERLEY HAMMOND, SISTER: Michael really has forged
a deeper bond with Jack which I’m so relieved,
because that really has been my major worry that he
would never be able to pick that up again.
A few times Michael has brought girls home and I have
said to my children ‘do not get attached, there will
be a new one soon’. This time he’s brought home
Kelly. After three weeks my eldest daughter said
‘Mum, you’re the one who said do not get attached.
You are attached to her, cut it out'. I’ve broken
the golden rule.
MICHAEL WARE : Yeah this is a, from memory it’s an
eight year old boy. His parent’s were killed in
Fallujah in 2004. He became a fighter.
JOHN MARTINKUS, JOURNALIST: Mick’s done a lot already
in terms of helping people leave Iraq. He wants to
bring out the few members of his staff who remain
there because he sees it like, as something that he
hasn’t finished.
MICHAEL WARE: I’ve been able to get many families out
of Iraq, not yet enough. A death sentence hangs upon
them all if ever it’s revealed that they worked for
me or they worked for CNN or they worked for Time
Magazine. But Australia has taken two of my families
and have given them homes. I’m going to see them for
the first time since they’ve come to Australia and
it’s very confusing. They’ve been here for years now
and I’ve not been able to bring myself to visit them.
As much as I want to, I just haven’t been able to.
I’m ashamed. I don’t know. It’s something about being
indebted, I dunno. Perhaps not being good enough, I
don’t know.
MICHAEL WARE: You ready
to come meet the boys? Come on, mate.
Where are you, big fella? Salah, salaam alaykum.
Brother, I know, look at you, look at you. You look
fantastic! Oh, mate! I want to present to you… this
is Jack. Come over, mate. This is Salah, he used to
work with Dad. Oh my god. Oh my
god.
It’s overwhelming. It has been like taking a dip in a
pool that I haven’t been in for a long time.
To the Baghdad tribe. Good onya. Cheers.
WOMAN: I can't thank you, Michael.
MICHAEL WARE: Oh, no, I can't thank you. I can't
thank you.
WOMAN: We are reborn here. You gave us life.
MICHAEL WARE: What do you think -- I am still in the
debt of your family. I'll always be.
SALAH DAWOOD, FORMER INTERPRETER: It is really really
one of the best days I ever had. I want to show
Michael that I am good here, I am really happy, he
did a great job for me and for my family
We call your dad, Abu Jack, that means the father of
Jack.
MICHAEL WARE: Jack, you
are very famous in Iraq. I’m not sure that’s a good
thing.
When I’ve been talking about Iraq, I can’t think of
the good times. Until today I’ve struggled to recall
them. This trip has bought some light back I think,
that’s what I’m hoping. Certainly it feels like that
right now.
KIMBERLEY HAMMOND, SISTER: I still do have hope that,
you know, your soul really can regenerate. That’s
probably what I want him to have, a bit more peace.
MICHAEL WARE: I'll never again live war. But for sure
I suspect it's a mistress that I will certainly
visit. For its truth, you know, that noble sense of
journalistic intent with which we cloak ourselves
when we act so devilishly selfish and go. I’m
assiduously, you know, making an attempt at coming
home. I want to reconnect. I just haven’t got a clue
how, not yet. In time, inshallah, in time.