It was a bitterly chilly evening in March 1997 in a mud hut excessive within the mountains of japanese Afghanistan and we have been surrounded by well-armed al-Qaeda fighters.
Peter Arnett asked their chief a easy query: “What are your future plans?”
Osama bin Laden replied, “You’ll see them and hear about them in the media, God willing,”
It was bin Laden’s first TV interview, and he and his crew had chosen Arnett and NCS to conduct it, an interview I produced.
In the next 12 months, bin Laden made good on his chilling menace with al-Qaeda’s near-simultaneous attacks on two US embassies in Africa that killed greater than 200 individuals. In 2000, his males bombed the USS Cole in Yemen, killing 17 American sailors. Then, in fact, there have been the 9/11 assaults which killed virtually 3,000 individuals and resulted in a “Global War on Terror.”
I first acquired to know Arnett, who died on Wednesday, in 1993. He was then one of many world’s most well-known individuals and positively its most well-known international correspondent. It was solely two years after the primary Gulf War and Arnett’s courageous choice to stay in Baghdad after different Western reporters left, whereas American bombs have been raining down on Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq, reworked NCS’s standing amongst viewers world wide. And it turned Arnett into a worldwide movie star.
You typically heard Arnett earlier than you noticed him coming; a stocky man with a booming New Zealand-accented voice that would reduce thorough glass. And you then noticed the person himself: Larger than life doesn’t do him justice; Arnett was a newsman’s newsman, stuffed with tales of derring-do in Vietnam and plenty of different wars across the globe.
I used to be thirty once I first met Arnett and I’d by no means been to a battle zone. And quickly, we have been flying into Afghanistan in the course of the civil battle there. Kabul, the capital, was in ruins resembling Dresden after World War II; numerous warlords have been preventing block to dam. Child troopers have been a typical sight. Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, the Afghan prime minister, had the excellence of probably being the one prime minister in historical past to shell his personal capital every day.
Arnett interviewed all the key gamers within the civil battle for NCS together with Hekmatyar, Hekmatyar’s important opponent Ahmad Shah Massoud — who could be assassinated by al-Qaeda two days earlier than 9/11 — and Afghan President Burhanuddin Rabbani who was killed by the Taliban in 2011.
During the Afghan civil battle, shells have been dropping continually on Kabul and numerous ethnic and sectarian militias have been battling one another in steady firefights, but Arnett appeared utterly content material. He needed to be the place the motion was and Afghanistan in 1993 had motion aplenty.
One piece of recommendation Arnett gave me then has stayed with me: “Never do anything for fun in a war zone,” which struck me as sensible counsel.
We have been in Afghanistan as a result of we have been monitoring the bombers of the World Trade Center in 1993, a gaggle of males – a few of whom had fought in Afghanistan in opposition to the Soviets within the Eighties or had supported that effort – who had parked a van filled with explosives within the basement aiming to carry down the Twin Towers. They failed to take action however six individuals have been killed.
In 1997, I spent weeks negotiating with a gaggle of bin Laden associates dwelling in London to attempt to safe an interview with the al-Qaeda chief. We believed that bin Laden might need had a job within the 1993 Trade Center bombing. (We didn’t realize it then, however Ramzi Yousef who masterminded the 1993 bombing, was the nephew of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, al-Qaeda’s operational commander of the 9/11 assaults.)
Other networks have been additionally pursuing an interview, together with the BBC, and CBS “60 Minutes”. I consider that Arnett’s fame for equity in overlaying the Gulf War was essential in NCS securing the interview.
Back on the Afghan mountaintop, Arnett asked bin Laden why he was declaring a jihad, holy battle, in opposition to the United States.
Bin Laden gave an extended reply critiquing American help for Israel and US allies within the Middle East equivalent to Saudi Arabia.
This reply undercut President George W. Bush’s frequent later claims after 9/11 that the United States was attacked due to its “freedoms.”
In his NCS interview 4 years earlier than 9/11, bin Laden mentioned his rationale for jihad in opposition to the United States was American international coverage within the Middle East.
It was a privilege to spend many weeks in Afghanistan with Arnett in 1993 after which once more 4 12 months later producing the primary TV interview with bin Laden.
Arnett was a person who worry appeared to haven’t any maintain over. And I’ve by no means achieved something for enjoyable in an lively battle zone since.