Ghost Troop Home Page April Fools Part 2
Skip the
Covering Letter – Go Straight to the Essay
Jeff Cohen, Executive VP & Editor
Frank Michel, Associate Editor
David Langworthy, Essay Editor
News Department
Gentlemen:
All three
of you, along with your news department, received my essay “3/7
Cavalry, tragedy and travesty,” telling about the cover-up of the Battle of Baghdad. The Chronicle signed for your copies April
13. Frank, you might want to go pull
yours out of your desk drawer, where you said you were putting it in case I
turned out to be right. Well,
unfortunately, I’ve turned out to be right.
How about
giving a little help to a loyal friend?
I have already told you – and am repeating it here – that I am in as
much danger as the late Dr. David Kelly, the British WMD scientist who died
under mysterious circumstances after telling the media about his government’s
lies. I take the possibility of political
assassination for similar reasons very seriously, and have taken care to
preserve myself if possible, and my book and evidence
at all costs.
I’ve
attached my essay, “Private
Jessica, the military and the media.”
As I told Frank yesterday, according to Amnesty International, remaining
an active political dissident is my best course of action now, since it makes
anything that happens to me all the more suspicious. I think that when Dr. Kelly backed down from
his allegations, it cost him his life, don’t you? Backing down isn’t in my character, though.
As for the
essay, I’m indifferent on editing, so please slice it and dice it any way you
choose. If it’s too bold for you, even
cut it down to Viewpoints length. Just
do me a favor and offer me some protection through its publication in some
form. And how about getting a reporter
to talk to me about the cover-up? It’s
time for real pros like you guys at the Chronicle to take up the slack for an
amateur like me.
From the
day the cover-up began I told and wrote you about it, but you haven’t
investigated. Why not? Isn’t it as good a story as Watergate
was? When you took up your profession,
didn’t you all dream that one day you’d get a chance at a Pulitzer? In dozens of calls, letters and emails, I
have given you data, media sources, even the name of a confirming officer: Colonel Dennington, a chaplain at
I know that
doing the right thing is often the hard thing, but it’s the only thing that
proves real character. Will you please
do your duty as journalists and Americans by supporting my cavalry charge for
the First Amendment? No guts, no glory,
gentlemen. Be safe and be shamed.
Hope you
like the essay.
Captain May
PS: This letter and essay will together comprise
a chapter in my pending book “April Fools, Captain May.” The other eight documents I’ve sent you are
chapters, too. I’ve sent out hundreds of
manuscripts to date, and you all figure prominently. Let me know if you want autographed copies.
So at last we know the
real Private Jessica Lynch: She was
moving north across the desert in a lost convoy when a rocket slammed into her
vehicle, causing her to crash, breaking her bones and knocking her out. She is a brave young woman who served her
country, bled for it, and sustained life-long injuries as a result. Like all the other casualties, she deserves our
deep respect and gratitude.
But the truth above wasn’t what we were told when Army public affairs created the “Private Jessica” hoax that tantalized the nation for the weekend of April 5/6. No, that was a far different person, described in terms like these:
Private Jessica
killed four Iraqi soldiers in a desperate firefight before her rifle
jammed. She then continued to fight,
broken-boned and bayoneted, until captured.
After being held captive, she was heroically rescued in a bold Special
Forces raid.
Now we know that the Army made it all up, but at the time we thought it was the truth. As a former Army public affairs officer, I’m outraged that my colleagues so abused the public trust. [Editor’s Emphasis] We have no excuse for our unethical conduct, since every one of us has been trained to tell media the truth so that they could tell it to the people, not lie to the media so that they could lie to the people. We fought the American Revolution for the right to say and learn the truth, after all.
Some people have cynically argued that the media itself bears some responsibility, that they went along with the Private Jessica lie to boost their ratings over the weekend of April 5/6, but that doesn’t make any sense to me for a couple of reasons: First, every journalist knows that publishing or broadcasting a lie is the profession’s most serious ethical breach, and I can’t name a single reason why so many journalists would do so. Second, when the media lifted and shifted their attention to Private Jessica, they lost the best story of the war: the Battle of Baghdad. You’ll probably remember that it was pending, now that you think about it…
On Friday night, April 4, the 3rd Infantry
Division had seized control of the
I was hoping to find out what would happen the next day, but that was when the media switched to the Private Jessica story – and they stayed with that story until the whole battle was over! It must not have been much of a battle…
The English-language web site for Al Jazeera paid events in
Thankfully, there were very few American battle
deaths. According to Pentagon figures,
the number of soldiers killed in subduing a city larger than
It’s a crazy world where the embedded media turns from the grit of real combat to a mirage, and where more Arab journalists die covering the big battle than American soldiers died fighting it. Thomas Jefferson and George Orwell must be scratching their heads as they roll over in their graves…
When all is said and done, I believe the people of
the
Captain May was the Public
Affairs Officer for the