The Operators: The Wild and Terrifying Inside Story of America’s War in Afghanistan (39 page)

Over the next three weeks, Eric and I went through two more drafts of the story. Under his guidance, the piece took shape. Eric had more than twenty-five years’ experience in reporting and editing investigative pieces, earning seven National Magazine awards, the industry’s highest honor. I knew McChrystal’s team wouldn’t be happy with the way the story was shaping up. It was the classic journalist dilemma. Janet Malcolm had famously described journalism as the art of seduction and betrayal. Any reporter who didn’t see journalism as “morally indefensible” was either “too stupid” or “too full of himself,” she wrote. I disagreed. Without shutting the door on the possibility that I was both stupid and full of myself, I’d never bought into the seduction and betrayal conceit. At most, journalism—particularly when writing about media-hungry public figures—was like the seduction of a prostitute. The relationship was transactional. They weren’t talking to me because they liked me or because I impressed them; they were talking to me because they wanted the cover of
Rolling Stone.

Should I not write it? On a personal level, part of me didn’t want to disappoint McChrystal and Dave and Casey and Flynn and Duncan—part of me wanted to write a story that pleased them. Dave had even called me and left a voicemail, asking what I’d been up to. The month I spent with them was exciting, and I’d gotten a privileged view from inside a top military command. If I wrote the story I wanted to write, it would be years before I ever had that view again. The access I’d gotten was unprecedented. But what do you do with it? Bury the story? Write a puff piece to ensure further access? Or write what actually happened?

I knew, too, that McChrystal and his team could play rough with reporters and hadn’t hesitated in the past to launch personal smear campaigns against them. Three months earlier, Jerome Starkey, a reporter for
The Times
of London, had broken a story about the killing of two pregnant Afghan women, a teenage girl, and two other men by a Special Forces team. McChrystal’s command had tried to cover it up, originally issuing a press release and claiming to CNN that the Taliban had killed the women in an “honor killing.” That wasn’t true, and the more Starkey dug, the more horrible the story became: The killings happened during a night raid, and the ISAF soldiers even dug bullets out of the bodies of the Afghan women to hide the atrocity. Rather than own up to what had happened, Admiral Gregory Smith and Duncan Boothby called up rival outlets and reporters to “brief” against Starkey, saying he wasn’t a credible journalist because he used to write for
The Sun
, a British tabloid. Smith sent out a press release which named Starkey twice, saying his allegations of a “cover-up” incident were “categorically false”; the release also said he “incorrectly quoted” Admiral Smith. Within days, though, Starkey’s reporting was confirmed by a UN investigation, an Afghan investigation, and a story in
The New York Times
—there had been an atrocity, there had been a cover-up, and Smith and ISAF had been lying. Sheepishly, Smith released another statement, acknowledging ISAF’s responsibility for five deaths. They quietly took the press releases down from the ISAF website.
No one on McChrystal’s staff, or anyone in command of the Special Forces unit responsible for the killing, was punished.

It was June 15. I took a break from writing to check the Internet. There was an incredible headline on the Drudge Report about General David Petraeus. I clicked through and watched the clip from C-SPAN.

Petraeus was testifying in Washington at the Dirksen Senate Office Building on Capitol Hill. I’d learn later that he was jet-lagged from a trip to the Middle East. I’d watched him testify half a dozen times before—most memorably when he was the commander of U.S. troops at the height of the Iraq War. I didn’t notice anything wrong, but a source close to him would later tell me that Petraeus didn’t drink enough water that morning: “No one wants to be sitting there with a full bladder,” a senior military official close to Petraeus told me. “Those who ask the questions get to go in and out—but if you’re the one sitting there in front of the cameras, you have to stay there the entire time.”

Senator John McCain took the floor. McCain wanted Petraeus, the commander of all U.S. forces in the Middle East and Central Asia, to say that the deadline President Obama had set for withdrawing U.S. troops from Afghanistan—July 2011—was a bad idea. Petraeus was no fan of the deadline, but he was too shrewd to be drawn into such an obvious spat with his commander in chief. As he evaded McCain’s badgering with an almost Clintonian ease, McCain started to get frustrated.

“Do you believe that we will begin a drawdown of forces in July 2011, given the situation as it exists today?” McCain prodded, rephrasing his question for the third time.

“It’s not a given as the
situation
exists today,” Petraeus corrected. “It’s given as
projections
are for that time.”

“You believe we can begin a drawdown in July 2011, under the projected plans we have?” McCain persisted.

“That’s the policy, and I support it,” Petraeus answered, taking a sip of water.

“I understand you support the policy,” McCain snapped. He tried again to press Petraeus for an answer, and even resorted to quoting Vice President Joe Biden: “In July of 2011, you’re going to see a whole lot of people moving out—bet on it.” But a minute later, the expression on McCain’s face suddenly changed from one of exasperation to befuddlement. Petraeus had fainted, slumping forward in his chair. “Oh my God,” McCain gasped.

The general regained consciousness a few seconds later. He was escorted out of the hearing room with the help of his aides. He returned under his own power a half hour later. He’d gotten dehydrated, a combination of missing breakfast, jet lag, and, critically, not enough water. But the committee, shaken by the unexpected turn of events, decided to adjourn for the day.

It seemed like a strange omen. A crack in the facade of Petraeus over the most critical issue of the war—the military still bucking Obama’s promise to start drawing down American troops.

That week, Duncan called me. He’d been in contact with the fact-checkers from
Rolling Stone
.

I went outside on my porch to smoke a cigarette.

We talked for about forty minutes. I went through the story with him—I told him again I was writing about the night in Paris. I told him I was writing about the tensions between the civilian and military sides.

“That night in Paris,” he said. “That was sort of off the record.”

Sort of off the record? What did that mean? That was the first time he had said that. It wasn’t true, either.

“Come on, man, you had asked that I put it in proper context. I’ve done that.”

“Your story,” he said. “It sounds serious. I was expecting it to be fun.”

“No, it’s pretty serious,” I said.

“Should I be worried about it?”

How to answer?

“Well, it’s probably going to cause you a headache for a few days, but
you guys have been through worse,” I said, thinking of the London conference, the
60 Minutes
interview, and the leak of the strategic assessment.

“I’d like to work with you again,” he said. “There’s another story you could do—about Karzai and the palace.”

“Sounds great,” I said.

“If, that is, we like your story.”

“Yeah, well, it’s been good working with you. I appreciate all your help. Hope we can work together again sometime.”

He hung up. I hung up. It was business. Everyone involved was a professional. I’d heard from other sources that Duncan was worried about what the story would say—he’d been telling people about the wild times in Paris and Berlin. He’d told a State Department official that the story would “either be fun, or end my career.”

Rolling Stone
closed the story. It was set for publication next week. Lady Gaga, not Stan McChrystal, was going to be on the cover.

On Saturday, I got back on a plane from the Burlington International Airport to JFK to Dubai, then another Safi Airways flight to Kabul. By Monday morning, I’d taken a C-130 from Kabul to Kandahar Airfield. My next assignment for
Men’s Journal
was to embed with a Kiowa helicopter unit.

The Kiowas were small, two-seat scout helicopters that had been around since Vietnam. Lately they were being used like attack helicopters for close-quarters fighting, flying near constant patrols in southern Afghanistan. It was one of the more dangerous jobs in the war—certainly one of the most dangerous aircrafts to pilot. The Kiowas were shot at regularly and had a reputation for crashing—the second-highest crash rate among Army aircraft.

I was staying in a room at the media support center, a two-floor building with a series of dorms on the first floor and a second floor with a public affairs staff. It looked like a metallic barn with a flat roof. It had been a long day. I’d spent it outside on the flight line, getting briefings
about the helicopters. I was feeling dehydrated. The temperature had risen to about 120 degrees.

I figured I would have a couple of days on the ground to finish my Kiowa story before the McChrystal story dropped on Thursday. I assumed the story would get some attention in Washington, maybe get in the news for a few hours. But I didn’t expect much else. I’d been writing about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan for the past five years. Usually, most news stories and the wars themselves were ignored. Back in the United States, the media were focused on the Deepwater Horizon explosion and the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

I didn’t have Internet access, and only had two cell phones with me—one with an international number and another with a local Afghan number.

I was about to go to bed around one
A.M
. My cell phone buzzed. It was a text message from a friend. It said that the Associated Press was running with a story, quoting my article, saying that McChrystal had felt “betrayed” by Eikenberry over the leak of the cable he’d written to Washington.

Huh. The story had leaked. I shut my phone off and tried to go to sleep. I wasn’t very successful. A few hours later, I turned my phone back on. There were about fifteen new text messages.

Lucian Read, the photographer I was on assignment with, was getting his cameras ready.

“Hey, man, looks like my story is getting some pickup,” I said.

We had breakfast, then waited for our ride across the base to take us out to the flight lines. We were going to get a demonstration of how the Kiowas worked.

The airfield had undergone a massive expansion in recent months. There were row after row of helicopters parked, separated by stalls made up of blast walls, each parking spot marked with a letter and a number. There were Apache helicopters, Blackhawks, and Kiowas, lined up like rental cars at Hertz. The temperature was already more than 100 degrees.
The metal on the aircraft burned bare skin; an egg could literally be cooked on the concrete runway.

We were hanging out with the pilots and mechanics, climbing in and out of the aircraft.

An Apache pilot and I started chatting.

“Hey, man, have you seen this McChrystal story everyone is talking about?”

“Uh, yeah, I wrote it.”

“What? That’s fucking crazy!”

I got a call from a friend at
The Washington Post
. Could I send him a copy of the story? I didn’t have my own copy of the PDF from
Rolling Stone
, but a contact at CNN had sent a leaked copy to me.

I ran in off the flight line, logged on to a computer, and forwarded him the PDF that had been forwarded to me from CNN.

It was the first time I’d checked my e-mail since I’d arrived in Kandahar. That was unusual, but it had been a hassle finding good Internet connections. There were dozens of e-mails regarding the story. I was surprised by how fast it was spreading. It wasn’t up on the website yet, but it seemed dozens of people in the government and the media had copies.

There was also an e-mail from Duncan.

“Michael, read your story. It has certainly created a reaction. What are you planning for promotion? Doing broadcast?”

“D, thanks for the note,” I responded. “Yes, a bit surprised. Not sure what RS has planned, but will give you heads up.”

There was another e-mail from a McChrystal staffer.

“McChrystal’s been called back to Washington,” the e-mail said.

I took Lucian aside.

“Dude, McChrystal just got called back to Washington. It looks like I’m going to have to deal with this now.”

I spent another few hours with the Kiowa unit, then headed back to the media support center. I had free time until three
A.M.
the next morning, when the Kiowa unit was going to come pick us up and bring us out
on a morning flight. The pilots would wake up at three
A.M.
to be ready for a six
A.M.
flight.

I spent the next ten hours on the phone, doing radio and television interviews.

I had a bad sunburn. I was dehydrated and wasn’t eating anything. I didn’t know which way the story was going to go. I kept getting texts about whether or not McChrystal would be fired.

I didn’t think it was possible for him to be fired. No way.

Without good communications and e-mail, I felt vulnerable. I felt like the situation could at any minute spiral out of control.