Chasing the Flame: Sergio Vieira de Mello and the Fight to Save the World (78 page)

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Authors: Samantha Power

BOOK: Chasing the Flame: Sergio Vieira de Mello and the Fight to Save the World
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From the moment they disembarked from the airplane, Loescher and Helton felt uneasy in Baghdad. Even though the men were not UN staff, a UN vehicle came to the airport to pick them up. Here they were fortunate, as UN rides had grown scarce in recent weeks. Mounting attacks on Coalition personnel had caused the UN to tighten its security regulations and require two-vehicle convoys. The airport road, which was known as Ambush Alley, was notoriously dangerous. The two men were relieved to reach the downtown, where, with the exception of the attack on the Jordanian embassy, civilians had not yet been deliberately attacked.
 
 
They traveled straight from the airport to the Green Zone, where they met with Paul Bremer, who gave them a full hour of his time. He presented a rosy picture. “There are a few security issues,” he said, “but we are getting everything under control.”
 
 
The two men were not scheduled to meet with Vieira de Mello until 4 p.m., so they used the gap in the schedule to drop their bags off at their hotel.Vieira de Mello’s secretary had made them a reservation in a hotel that was considered secure. When they arrived at the front desk, however, the receptionist told them she had no reservation on file. The UN driver took them to another hotel, but when they went up to their rooms, they discovered the doors had no locks.The men decided to find a different hotel after they returned from their meeting at the Canal Hotel.
 
 
Over at UN headquarters it had been a routine day. Larriera spent the morning away from the Canal, visiting the leading human rights, women’s rights, and legal organizations in Baghdad, in order to extend personal invitations to them to attend the Saturday human rights workshop. Bob Turner, the humanitarian official, chaired a communications strategy session on “UN messages to the Iraqi people” at 10:30 a.m. Khaled Mansour, a spokesman for the UN World Food Program, presented a paper on how to improve the UN’s standing. “The main goal,” he wrote, “is to present a UN distinct from the U.S.-led coalition as subtly as possible.”
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In their dealing with Iraqis, Mansour argued, UN officials had to emphasize their desire “to ensure the earliest possible end of occupation.”
2
 
 
Marwan Ali, the Palestinian political officer, also felt the rage of Iraqis mounting. He had been pressing Vieira de Mello to criticize the Coalition for a recent attack in the Sunni triangle that had killed an eight-year-old boy and his mother. His boss had approved the statement the previous day.“I’ve done all I can do to influence the Americans behind the scenes,” he had told Ali. “I have to start speaking out.” Ali was relieved. This would be the first-ever public UN condemnation of a Coalition human rights violation. Finally, he thought, the UN would begin to carve out an identity truly distinct from the Coalition. He hoped it wasn’t too late.
 
 
At 1:30 p.m.Vieira de Mello was scheduled to meet with Bremer and a U.S. congressional delegation in the Green Zone. Alain Chergui, the head of his close protection team, had gone on leave five days before, along with Jonathan Prentice, his assistant, and Ray, his secretary. Gaby Pichon, another French bodyguard, prepared the three-vehicle convoy, which lined up at the entrance to the building. But he soon got word that the flight of a group of American senators and representatives, including Harold Ford, Jr., Lindsey Graham, Kay Bailey Hutchinson, and John McCain, had been delayed.
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At 2 p.m.Vieira de Mello ran into Marwan Ali in the hall and inquired about whether the critical statement had been issued. He knew Ali was heading away on leave and asked where he was going. Ali said he was flying to Amman the next day. "Try to come back refreshed,” Vieira de Mello said, adding, “Don’t do anything to get yourself arrested by the Israelis!”
 
 
At 3 p.m. he met with a pair of senior International Monetary Fund (IMF) officials visiting from Washington, Scott Brown and Lorenzo Perez. Larriera, who was responsible for liaising with financial institutions, also attended. It was the most senior IMF delegation in Iraq in more than three decades.Vieira de Mello offered his advice on working with Bremer, warning Perez to walk a very fine line and to engage in such a way that Bremer felt ownership over the IMF initiatives (or else he would block them) but that Iraqis also saw the IMF programs as independent. When the meeting ended at 4 p.m., Larriera walked out with the visitors. As she exited, Vieira de Mello beckoned her back toward him, but she motioned that she needed to catch another meeting that would soon be ending. He gave her a playful hangdog look. As she raced down the stairs to catch the last few minutes of the NGO coordination meeting, she heard a woman from the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) deliver a panicked report that somebody had spotted people taking down the numbers of all car license plates leaving the ICRC compound. Larriera believed the alarm serious enough to telephone Vieira de Mello, who was just about to start his next meeting.
“En serio?”
he asked in Portuguese. “Really?” He said his meeting with Loescher and Helton was about to start, but he wanted to discuss the details later.
 
 
Benon Sevan, an under-secretary-general of the UN and the longtime head of the UN’s Oil for Food Program (who in January 2007 would be indicted in a New York federal court on charges of bribery and conspiracy to commit wire fraud), happened to be visiting Baghdad to help liquidate the program. He was preparing for a 4 p.m. meeting with a visiting WHO delegation on the construction of hospitals in northern Iraq. His meeting was to take place in the office directly beneath Vieira de Mello’s.
 
 
Shortly before 4 p.m. Sevan poked his head into Lopes da Silva’s office and said he’d prefer to meet there instead. “Your secretary makes good coffee, I like looking at your goldfish,” he said,“and I want to smoke a cigar.” Lopes da Silva’s office had a balcony with sliding doors, ideal for a smoker.
 
 
When Loescher and Helton arrived at the Canal Hotel for their meeting with Vieira de Mello, they passed easily through security at the front gate and were ushered up two flights of stairs. Pichon, Vieira de Mello’s bodyguard, escorted the two guests from the hallway on the third floor through the small office outside Vieira de Mello’s, where his two secretaries were at their desks. Ranillo Buenaventura, a forty-seven-year-old Filipino, was subbing for Ray. Lyn Manuel, the fifty-four-year-old Filipina and eighteen-year UN veteran who had served with Vieira de Mello in East Timor, seated the guests around a knee-high glass table in the alcove near the window that looked out on the access road and the spinal hospital.
 
 
Vieira de Mello greeted his guests with warm handshakes.Younes joined the meeting, as did Fiona Watson, the Scottish political officer, who was a last-minute addition. Watson had just returned the day before from New York, where she had attended a budget-based management training program. She had been selected for Vieira de Mello’s A team because she had worked in Kosovo but also because in February she had helped the secretary-general pull together a strategic plan weighing the options for a UN postwar role in Iraq. She used to joke that the best-laid plans often led to the lousiest mandates.
 
 
Vieira de Mello sat closest to the window, next to Younes, on a black leather sofa. Loescher and Helton sat directly opposite them, with Loescher nearest the window. Watson sat on a chair at the end of the table facing the wall and window. Pichon and Manuel returned to their offices. It was 4:27 p.m.
 
 
Rick Hooper, one of Marwan Ali’s closest friends, was in Baghdad subbing for Prentice. Ali stopped into Hooper’s temporary office, which abutted Vieira de Mello’s, and reminded him that they were supposed to be interviewing an Iraqi lawyer who had been hired by the UN as a driver but who they both felt could be put to better use.“Give me fifteen minutes,” Hooper said. “I just need to finish one thing first.” Ali, who was leaving Baghdad the following day, shook his head. “I’ve got to buy gifts for my children before the curfew,” he said. Hooper, who had known Ali’s children since they were born, said, “Okay, I’ll do this afterward. Be right there.”
 
 
Just as Ali was leaving Hooper’s office and Vieira de Mello was getting reacquainted with Loescher and Helton, a Kamash flatbed truck was driving along Canal Road, a multilane thoroughfare divided by a fetid canal. Kamash trucks were Russian-made and had been purchased in bulk in 2002 by Saddam Hussein’s government for use in mining, agriculture, and irrigation. These flatbeds looked similar to the commercial trucks that were becoming ubiquitous around town now that reconstruction had finally begun picking up. This truck had a brown cab and an orange base. At 4:27 p.m. the driver made a right turn onto the narrow, unguarded access road that ran along the back of the Canal Hotel complex. Nobody paid much attention to the truck’s turn or to its load.
 
 
Most flatbed trucks in the vicinity of the Canal Hotel carried building supplies to fortify the wall around UN headquarters or to renovate offices in nearby buildings. But this truck wasn’t carrying cement or building tools. All that was visible on its bed was a metal casing that resembled the shell of an air-conditioner unit. Underneath the casing, though, was a cone-shaped bomb the size of a large man, which had been bundled up in 120mm and 130mm artillery shells, 60mm mortars, and hand grenades. All together some one thousand pounds of explosives were heading toward the Canal Hotel.
 
 
The truck didn’t have far to go. It drove at high speed a hundred yards down the access road, past the edge of a UN parking facility.
4
It sprayed gravel that hit the ground-floor windows and startled UN staffers.
5
When the driver reached the Canal Hotel, he turned the vehicle toward the unfinished brick wall that ran alongside the back of the building, two stories beneath the unsuspecting occupants of Vieira de Mello’s office.
 
 
After Pichon left his boss’s office, he crossed the hallway and reentered the small office for close protection officers. Just as he sat down, an enormous blast ejected him from his chair and carried him through the air. He landed fifteen feet from his desk, next to the elevator at the end of the corridor. Everything went black. Loescher, who sat across from Vieira de Mello, saw not darkness but light—the bright and sudden glare of “a million flashbulbs.”
 
 
Larriera was sitting in her small third-floor office at the top of the staircase. When she first arrived in Iraq in mid-June, she had occupied a desk beneath a tiny grated window. But because she had been visible to anyone who came up the stairs, dozens of people stopped to ask her for directions. Larriera had tired of feeling like the third-floor receptionist, and Vieira de Mello had helped her prop her desk against the wall, out of visual range of people in the hall.This move saved her life. She heard a deafening popping sound and in the same instant saw the steel grate that covered her window go flying the length of the office, along with shards of glass. Ripped from its hinges, the metal door over her left shoulder crashed down into the center of the office. The suction from the blast also caused the door to the adjoining office, that of Rishmawi, to fly open. Rishmawi stood up slowly and looked in Larriera’s direction. Larriera spotted a tiny cut in the center of her colleague’s forehead, from which blood began to trickle slowly.
 
 
Jeff Davie, Vieira de Mello’s military adviser, who had been lent to the UN from Australia, had spent the afternoon escorting a pair of UN aviation advisers around Baghdad airport. The meetings had run longer than he had expected, partly because the experts had stopped to pose for pictures at the airport. Davie had finally freed himself of his guests and was hurrying back to the Canal Hotel for a meeting with Younes.
 
 
Davie was several minutes from the Canal when his UN vehicle trembled from the force of a shock wave.When he looked to the side, he saw an enormous gray plume of smoke emerging from the area around the Canal. He called Colonel Rand Vollmer, the Coalition’s chief of operations, on his cell phone. “There was a large explosion at the hotel,” Davie said. “It’s bad. Call in a medevac now.” Vollmer immediately called the medical brigade evacuation number, and a dozen Black Hawk rescue helicopters marked with white crosses were deployed to the scene.
 
 
When the bomber struck, Bremer was in the Green Zone meeting with the congressional delegation that had arrived late.The palace shook with the force of the distant blast. One of his aides passed him a yellow slip of paper: “There has been an explosion at the Canal Hotel.We are attempting to raise people on the telephone there.” Ten minutes later the aide handed him a second note: “The situation looks very bad.” When the Jordanian embassy was bombed twelve days before, Bremer’s chief of staff, Patrick Kennedy, had served as the liaison between the Jordanians and the U.S. military. Now Kennedy excused himself from the meeting, called his deputy Dennis Sabal, a Marine colonel, gathered radios and a pair of cell phones, and headed to the Canal. Sabal had already seen footage of the burning UN base on CNN. He had an unusual CV in that he was the person called to manage the aftermath of the U.S. embassy bombing in Kenya, which had killed 212 people, including 12 Americans. Then, on 9/11, he had been in the Pentagon watching television coverage of the burning Twin Towers when it too was hit, and he had helped set up a morgue for the deceased. Because of these attacks, which had a common perpetrator, he had a sudden epiphany in Iraq that others would not have for many weeks: “Al-Qaeda is here,” he thought. “The minute I saw on CNN, ‘UN attacked,’” he recalls, “that was when the switch went on: Al-Qaeda had come to Iraq.”

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