This is scary stuff. Mick, sorry it's so long.

Friday, March 25th, 2005

Naomi Klein Reveals New Details About U.S. Military Shooting of Italian
War Correspondent in Iraq

Three weeks after being shot by US forces in Iraq, veteran Italian war
correspondent Giuliana Sgrena is released from a military hospital. New
details are emerging about the killing of the Italian agent who saved
her life. We speak with independent journalist Naomi Klein, who just
returned from meeting with Sgrena in Rome. [includes rush transcript] In
Rome, journalist Giuliana Sgrena has been released from a military
hospital where she was being treated for a gunshot wound she suffered
when US forces shot up the car bringing her to freedom after a month
being held hostage in Iraq. The head of Italy's Foreign Military
Intelligence Nicola Calipari was killed in the attack when he shielded
Sgrena from the bullets.

Yesterday, Italian newspapers reported that the justice minister has
asked U.S. authorities to release the car so it can be examined by
Italian ballistics experts. The papers said the request came after the
U.S. command in Iraq reportedly blocked two Italian policemen from
examining the car.

* Naomi Klein, award-winning journalist and author of "Fences and
Windows: Dispatches From the Front Lines" of the "Globalization Debate
and No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies." She just met with
Giuliana Sgrena in Rome.

RUSH TRANSCRIPT

AMY GOODMAN: : We're joined in Washington, D.C. by journalist Naomi
Klein, who has just met with Giuliana Sgrena in Rome. Welcome to
Democracy Now!, Naomi.

NAOMI KLEIN: Thanks, Amy.

AMY GOODMAN: : Can you talk about what she told you?

NAOMI KLEIN: Yeah. At first I want to say that I know Giuliana really
would have liked to have been on the show herself to talk to your
listeners and viewers, but one of the things that surprised me when I
met with Giuliana is that she was quite a bit sicker than I think we
have been led to believe. Her injuries were described as fairly minor;
she was shot in the shoulder. But when I met with her, she was clearly
very, very ill, and that's why she's not on the show this morning. She
was fired on by a gun at the top of a tank, which means that the
artillery was very, very large. It was a four-inch bullet that entered
her body and broke apart. And it didn't just injure her shoulder, it
punctured her lung. And her lung continues to fill with fluid, and there
continues to be complications stemming from that fairly serious injury.
So that was one of the details.

She told me a lot about the incident that I had not fully understood
from the reports in the press. One of the most – and at first, the
other thing I want to be really clear about is that Giuliana is not
saying that she's certain in any way that the attack on the car was
intentional. She is simply saying that she has many, many unanswered
questions, and there are many parts of her direct experience that
simply don't coincide with the official U.S. version of the story. One
of the things that we keep hearing is that she was fired on on the road
to the airport, which is a notoriously dangerous road. In fact, it's
often described as the most dangerous road in the world. So this is
treated as a fairly common and understandable incident that there would
be a shooting like this on that road. And I was on that road myself,
and it is a really treacherous place with explosions going off all the
time and a lot of checkpoints. What Giuliana told me that I had not
realized before is that she wasn't on that road at all. She was on a
completely different road that I actually didn't know existed. It's a
secured road that you can only enter through the Green Zone and is
reserved exclusively for ambassadors and top military officials. So,
when Calipari, the Italian security intelligence officer, released her
from captivity, they drove directly to the Green Zone, went through the
elaborate checkpoint process which everyone must go through to enter
the Green Zone, which involves checking in obviously with U.S. forces,
and then they drove onto this secured road. And the other thing that
Giuliana told me that she's quite frustrated about is the description
of the vehicle that fired on her as being part of a checkpoint. She
says it wasn't a checkpoint at all. It was simply a tank that was
parked on the side of the road that opened fire on them. There was no
process of trying to stop the car, she said, or any signals. From her
perspective, they were just -- it was just opening fire by a tank. The
other thing she told me that was surprising to me was that they were
fired on from behind. Because I think part of what we're hearing is
that the U.S. soldiers opened fire on their car, because they didn't
know who they were, and they were afraid. It was self-defense, they
were afraid. The fear, of course, is that their car might blow up or
that they might come under attack themselves. And what Giuliana Sgrena
really stressed with me was that she -- the bullet that injured her so
badly and that killed Calipari, came from behind, entered the back seat
of the car. And the only person who was not severely injured in the car
was the driver, and she said that this is because the shots weren't
coming from the front or even from the side. They were coming from
behind, i.e. they were driving away. So, the idea that this was an act
of self-defense, I think becomes much more questionable. And that
detail may explain why there's some reticence to give up the vehicle
for inspection. Because if indeed the majority of the gunfire is coming
from behind, then clearly, they were firing from -- they were firing at
a car that was driving away from them.

AMY GOODMAN: : Now, can you talk about when Nicola Calipari arrived in
Baghdad? For people who have not been following this story so much, the
U.S. version of events of them driving to the airport very fast on a
road with many checkpoints as you pointed out, not the secured road,
that the U.S. soldiers fired into the air, tried to stop the vehicle,
that they just kept on coming, and so eventually, they shot at them.
Can you talk about how the Italian military intelligence official first
came to Iraq?

NAOMI KLEIN: My understanding is he came the day before, and that he had
checked in. U.S. authorities were aware of his presence. There was some
kind of a negotiation process, but these details actually haven't come
to light. The details that led to the negotiation, if there was a ransom
paid. We don't know those details yet. What Giuliana knows is simply
what happened from the moment of her release to this day, and her
description is that she didn't see any of those signals, and she really
wants people to know that she was not on a road with any checkpoints,
and in fact, she told me many times that Iraqis are not in any way able
to access this road. It's not the road that we hear described so many
times as being a road with roadside bombs going off all the time, with
checkpoints that you have to pass through. It's a completely separate
road, actually a Saddam-era road, it would seem, that allowed his
vehicles to pass directly from the airport to his palace. And now that
is the U.S. military base at the airport directly to the U.S.-controlled
Green Zone and the U.S. Embassy.

JUAN GONZALEZ: And Naomi, what did she tell you about Calipari? He was
sitting in the car with her in the back, or what happened when the
shooting began, and -- with him?

NAOMI KLEIN: Yes. I mean, she feels a tremendous amount of guilt, as you
can imagine, and one of the reasons why she feels so much guilt is that
Calipari chose to sit with her in the back seat. There were only three
of them in the vehicle. So, he could have sat in the front seat with the
driver. But because she was so afraid and she had just emerged from this
horrifying ordeal of being in captivity for a month, he told Giuliana,
let's sit together in the back seat, and I’ll tell you -- she said that
he was telling her stories to try to reconnect her with her life,
because she had been incredibly disoriented. One of the things that she
has told me was most disorienting about her month in captivity was just
that she didn't know what -- the difference between day and night. She
didn't have control over the light switches, and because of Baghdad’s
constant blackouts, the lights would go on and off at all hours, and she
couldn't control the switches. So she really didn't know where she was.
She says she has kind of a black hole of that month. She said one of the
most terrifying things was that she would often hear U.S. helicopters
over the house, and she was obviously very afraid that the house that
she was in would come under fire, because obviously it was a resistance
house. It was a resistance stronghold. So she had many reasons to fear.
She was afraid of her captors. She was afraid of U.S. soldiers. And so,
Calipari sat with her in the back seat, and he just told her stories
about all of her friends, about her husband, about everyone who had been
worried about her, about Italy, and that was the context in which he was
killed. So it was his decision to sit with her in the back seat, and he
was telling her these stories and reconnecting her with her past life,
with her current life, when he died protecting her from a bullet. And
she told me that that moment is really all she's able to remember
vividly. That's the only moment that feels real to her is the moment of
his death. In fact, her month in captivity, horrific as it was, she said
feels like a far-away dream. All she can think about is the moment where
he died really in her arms, protecting her.

JUAN GONZALEZ: What about the driver of the car? Did she tell you
anything about what happened with him, or did she recall that part?

NAOMI KLEIN: Well, what she told me, and this is once -- an incident
that I know that has been reported on in the Italian press, but not so
much in the American press, is that after the shooting, she was very
injured. They took her out of the car and lay her down, I think -- I
don't know if they had a stretcher, but they -- she was being tended to,
her wounds were being tended to. And the driver who was another
intelligence officer called Italy and was on the phone, I think, with
Berlusconi, she said, and he said, our car has just been fired on by 300
to 400 bullets. And as he was saying this, the U.S. soldiers ordered him
to hang up the phone. So, but I asked her whether she had connected with
him since the incident, and she said that she had not, with the driver.

AMY GOODMAN: : We're talking to Naomi Klein, independent journalist, who
just met with Giuliana Sgrena, saw her in her hospital room in Rome. I'm
looking at Jeremy Scahill's piece in the most recent Indypendent called
“Checkpoint Killings Unchecked,” that says the Italian government, a
close ally of the Bush administration is disputing what the U.S. says.
According to Italy’s foreign minister, Calipari arrived in Baghdad that
Friday after making contact with the kidnappers. Calipari and a fellow
agent checked in with U.S. authorities at the airport as well as the
forces patrolling the area. The agents had been given security badges by
the U.S. to allow them to travel freely in the country after picking up
Sgrena from the abandoned vehicle where her kidnappers left her. They
drove slowly to the airport, keeping the car lights on to help identify
themselves at U.S. checkpoints. It says, news of Sgrena's release was
already on the Reuters newswire and on Al-Jazeera. The mood in the car
was one of celebration until the vehicle came under intense gunfire. So
this is also not only what you and Giuliana Sgrena are saying, but quite
something that one of Bush's closest allies to the top, Prime Minister
Silvio Berlusconi is now refuting his ally's claims and also demanding
an investigation that the U.S. is stopping at this point. Naomi?

NAOMI KLEIN: Well, Berlusconi is facing elections at the beginning of
April, which is partially why he needs to be seen to be taking somewhat
of a tough line with the U.S. He doesn't -- he is not facing
presidential elections. That doesn't come for another -- I think until
2007, but there are regional elections, and this was a national,
obviously, a national incident, and he needed to be seen to be standing
up to the U.S. in some way. But he's really been going back and forth,
and this is another thing that Giuliana Sgrena was very frustrated
about, because as we know she is very, very opposed and continues to be
strongly opposed to the ongoing occupation of Iraq, believes that
Italian and all, indeed, all foreign troops should withdraw. And in the
– one thing that she told me that was very moving was, she believes that
her release really came as a result of anti-war organizing in Italy
across incredible coalitions, and she said that she feels like her life
is a testament to what people can do when they get organized, and when
they work together. And she is frustrated that that same pressure forced
Berlusconi to announce that Italian troops would be withdrawn in
September, and she really felt that the left opposition parties should
have really maintained pressure on Berlusconi to insist on Italian troop
withdrawal now. But in fact, Berlusconi has been allowed to backpedal on
this claim, and now he is saying he didn't really say that; they will
withdraw when Iraqi security forces are strong enough. And of course,
Iraqi security forces -- it's not a training problem, it's an occupation
problem. The reason why Iraqi security forces are not strong enough is
because they're being massacred, because they're seen as an extension of
the occupation. They don't have independence. And the continued
occupation is the greatest problem to Iraqi security independence. It is
not helping.

AMY GOODMAN: : Naomi, we have to break. When we come back we will
continue this discussion and also talk about Paul Wolfowitz to be
President of the World Bank.

[break]

AMY GOODMAN: We continue with independent reporter, Naomi Klein. She
just met with Giuliana Sgrena, who has just been released from a Rome
hospital to her home though she is still very ill, dealing with having
been shot on the way to the airport after her release by -- in Iraqi
captivity. Naomi Klein, the news that the checkpoint -- that the road
that they -- that Calipari was killed on, that she was driving on,
Sgrena, when she was being driven to the airport, had been set up for –
that there had been a checkpoint set up for the trip of U.S. Ambassador
John Negroponte to a dinner that night with General George Casey,
commander of U.S. forces in Iraq to provide security. U.S. soldiers
established mobile checkpoint, clusters of humvees armed with 50 caliber
machine guns on top. It was one of the details that opened fire on the
Italians' vehicle. Have you heard anything about this?

NAOMI KLEIN: Well, this would support what Giuliana told me, which is
that the road she was on was not the public road that other journalists
have traveled on, and that contractors and so on travel on, the very
dangerous road. It was a secured road reserved for top Embassy
officials, like obviously like Negroponte. But one thing that's very
clear is that if she is on this road, and the way she explains it, she
had to go through a U.S. checkpoint in order to get into the Green Zone.
You can only access this road through the Green Zone. It's very, very
difficult to get into the Green Zone. When I tried to get into the Green
Zone, I had to go through six checkpoints -- six different passport
checks. So, the idea that the American military didn't know that they
were on the road, that they -- that didn't know about their presence is
impossible, if she was, in fact, on a road that emerged out of the Green
Zone. And I think that the idea that there was a mobile checkpoint set
up for Negroponte obviously supports this claim very strongly. What
Giuliana was talking about was what she was -- the only thing she could
figure out is that the people who they checked in with in the Green
Zone, the U.S. soldiers they checked in with in the Green Zone in order
to get in, didn't radio ahead to these mobile checkpoints and warn them
that they were coming. And from her perspective, that could have either
been a mistake, or it could have been some sort of act of vengeance and
anger, you know, and we know that there's a lot of anger at the idea
that Italians may be paying very large ransoms for the release of
prisoners. She's not alleging some grand conspiracy. There could have
just been a broken down communication. But the idea that they didn't
know, I think, is impossible, if she was on this secured road, because
it emerged out of the Green Zone and you cannot get into the grown zone
without passing through a checkpoint.

JUAN GONZALEZ: But even if there was broken down communication, it
would seem that the issue of even just firing on a car that is moving
away from you and is posing no threat to you on this secured road
certainly raises questions of at least extreme negligence on the part
of the U.S. soldiers.

NAOMI KLEIN: I think so. And I think that the -- all of these details
will obviously emerge from the investigation, and we'll be hearing it
directly from Giuliana herself and presumably from the driver.

AMY GOODMAN: Did Giuliana talk about her time in captivity and who held
her, Naomi Klein?

NAOMI KLEIN: Yes, she did. I mean, she talked about this incredible
disorientation. I think -- I know that you have covered the case on your
show, and you have really stressed the fact that Giuliana's experience
is not at all unique from the perspective of Iraqis who are living in
this sort of pincer of the fear of being caught in a bombing by the
resistance or a fear of being shot by U.S. soldiers at a checkpoint, and
this is an ongoing fear every time Iraqis leave their home, and we're
only hearing about this because there was foreigner involved, because it
was such a dramatic incident. But I think the other part of the story is
the implications for journalists and for independent journalists,
because Giuliana Sgrena is really a hero, and she is an incredibly
committed war correspondent who has put herself in situations of
tremendous risk around the world. She has been to Iraq many, many times.
And she went back to Iraq after Simona Pari and Simona Torretta had been
kidnapped and released. She told me she has met with the Simonas in her
hospital room, as well as several other people who had been kidnapped.
She referred to it as the ex-kidnapped club. And she went knowing these
risks, but one thing she told me that I think is an issue that you have
discussed often on the show is the implications for all of this, for
whether independent journalists can do their job in Iraq. And coming
from someone who has been willing to take such tremendous risks, she
said she just cannot figure out how it's possible at this point. This is
because the people who held her made it very clear to her that they
don't want independent journalists working in Iraq talking to Iraqis.
And this was really one of the most disturbing details and, I think, a
very telling detail. She told them that that made them just like Bush,
because the Bush administration has also made it clear that they don't
want independent witnesses talking to Iraqis, counting the bodies,
highlighting the civilian toll of the war, but there are also clearly
some elements of the resistance that feel the same way, and this makes
it very, very difficult for independent journalists to do their work.

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