Reflections From the Hot Zone: Covering Conflict

Kevin Sites talks about some defining moments in his career as a war reporter.

Kevin Sites recently participated in a Q&A forum at the Frontline Club in London. The club, dedicated to journalists who risk their lives covering war zones, invited Kevin to share his experiences as a journalist in conflict.

The talk, moderated by the BBC's Vin Ray, ranged from Kevin's start in journalism to his current assignment, Kevin Sites in the Hot Zone.

Kevin also talked about a defining moment in his career as a war reporter: while embedded with the Marines in 2004, Kevin captured video of a Marine shooting a wounded, unarmed insurgent at point-blank range in a mosque during the battle for Fallujah.

The following is a transcript of that portion of the event, during which Kevin plays the mosque shooting video for the crowd, and explains how he handled the aftermath of capturing the controversial moment.

KEVIN SITES: Let me set up the mosque incident just a little bit before I show you the video because you really have to know what's going on here to understand it. What had happened, on the Friday before this particular mosque shooting, there had been an all out battle with insurgents that had positioned themselves within a mosque in south Fallujah and it was a pretty fierce firefight.

We got in there after it was over. It was pretty much, it was like hell in there, bodies all over, just blood splattered everywhere. It was really strange because it was a mosque. There hadn't been that kind of combat. Mosques were basically no-fire zones to the Marines and to the soldiers up until that point.

Insurgents knew that and they had been using mosques as firing positions all along. But, not to anger the populace, Marines weren't firing back. When they went into Fallujah they said, "Gloves off. We're going to start attacking these mosques if we're shot at from those mosques that are used as firing positions."

So they attack this mosque. They kill 10 insurgents in there. Huge weapons caches everywhere in the mosque. And they wounded five other insurgents.

Now, at that point when I came in there, I started shooting [video] right away. I got insurgents being put into body bags. And, I also videotaped the five insurgents who had been wounded. They had been shot but their wounds didn't look life threatening. They certainly looked painful but they were being treated by Marine medics. They were getting bandaged up.

And I ask the commander at that point, "What happens to these men?" He said, "Well, of course, we are going to take them back to the rear because we need to interrogate them. We need to give them proper medical treatment. That's what happens." I said, "Fair enough."

We finished up the interview and with my unit we continued to push south. They were trying to push as fast as they could to clear all of Fallujah.

The next day we woke up, we were getting attacked from the rear, from the same positions we had cleared the day before including the mosque. I don't think there was shooting coming from the mosque but it was the same positions as the mosque. So the Marines had to move back over territory they had cleared that day before and the mosque was one of the target areas they saw.

"It was like hell in there..."— Kevin Sites

So I'm following a platoon on the ground right now and it's split up into squads. One squad goes around back to the mosque and the squad that I'm with at the moment goes around the front. The squad that went around the back got in there first. We hold the position where we're at. We hear shots being fired from inside the mosque, not concussive, repetitive shots but single shots.

Bang.
Bang.
Bang.

We don't know what that is, but we know it's definitely coming from the mosque. At that point I go in with the squad that I'm following and that's what you'll see from here. And, I'll pick it up again when I show you the specific video but this is the squad that I'm following into the mosque following this particular shooting.

(Video begins.
Audio: Single gunshots followed by shouting. A Marine yells,
"Are there Marines in here?")

KEVIN SITES: they didn't even know these guys were in the mosque. They didn't know the other squad had gone in.

(Video continues.
Marines' audio: "Hey, who's in here? You guys almost got shot by tanks... inaudible...we had two of them in there. You shoot them? They have any weapons on him?)

SITES: Did you hear that? "You shoot them? Do they have any weapons on them?"

I'm going to stop [the video] one second.

At that point I'm in there, and I see these wounded insurgents. And I tell the lieutenant, ‘These are the same guys from yesterday.' I'm kind of shocked. The body bags are still in there and so are the wounded insurgents but this time most of them are bleeding from fresh wounds, the five guys that are in there. I'm completely surprised to see this, that these are fresh wounds.

So the lieutenant goes out to radio headquarters and tell them what's happened. I stay in there and go over to some of the wounded guys that I had seen before and start shooting them.

(Video plays again.
Marine: "These are the wounded."
Camera zooms in on a wounded insurgent.
Marine audio: "He's fucking faking he's dead. He's faking he's fucking dead."
The Marine fires a round point-blank into the insurgent.
Marine audio: "He's dead now.")

SITES: I'm going to stop it for a second.

I'm so shocked at what's just happened - I've seen a lot of things - that I pan back over to the guy I had been shooting. It was a strange reaction. I think I had to process it. When I heard him say, "He's faking he's fucking dead" I thought he was going to cover him. Maybe he'd hold his weapon there while someone else was going to search him if they thought he was booby-trapped or something like that. But then he pulled the trigger and blew his brains up against the wall.

"I was certain this was going to become propaganda for the insurgents."— Kevin Sites

At that point I wasn't a journalist anymore. I stopped cold. I wasn't exactly sure what I needed to do. And this guy in front of me is still breathing. So there's all kinds of conflicting thoughts that are going through my mind. He just shot this guy, spun on his heels and walked out. If he's completely fearful of what's happening here, then why isn't he checking the guys in front of me. And at the same time why isn't he checking this guy who just pops out from under this blanket.

(Video: Camera pans to a man under a blanket who is still alive. The man speaks to the camera in Arabic after Kevin asked him what happened.)

KS: He's telling me - and I don't speak Arabic, I had it translated later - 'you were the guy who was here yesterday and you saw me. You saw all of us here and we were shot again.' He was under a blanket; he didn't get shot again. He was the only one out of those five that didn't. But, you notice everybody just kind of walked out of there.

My feeling at this, and it's not necessarily that I want to judge it at all, but it wasn't a tactical move. You know you can kill everybody in the room, if that's what you need to do as a soldier, if that's the goal. And in some cases, maybe that was the goal in Fallujah.

But at the same time, they have rules of engagement. And the rules of engagement are that if someone doesn't pose a threat to you, combatant or not, you don't shoot them. You disarm them and disable them and do what you need to do to transport them. If they are wounded, treat them.

Again the controversy that came out of this was an absolutely firestorm on a number of levels. And we can talk about this. I think it would be best in a question and answer forum.

We never showed this full video clip on my network, at NBC. FOX never showed this full video clip. None of the American networks to my knowledge showed this full clip. Al Jazeera did. I think BBC did?

VIN RAY: I'm not sure, actually.

SITES: There was a lot of self-censorship in this. And we did a report; I wish I had it here.

It was probably one of the worst stories that I've ever done where we completely backed into this where we talked about: "The Marines face all kinds of dangers, booby trapped bodies. The kind of battle intensity has been tremendous. And by the way, you know, a Marine shot an unarmed insurgent in a mosque today. The video is a little too graphic for us show."

RAY: This was the NBC report.

SITES: This is the NBC report.

RAY: So you didn't do the NBC report.

SITES: I did the NBC report. I'm complicit in this. And at the time period, I even argued not to show this completely because I felt this is going to create...

You know, part of our ethical code in terms of searching out the truth and reporting the truth is to minimize the harm. That's the one I was thinking of. Are we going to be able to minimize the harm by this particular report? Are we going to be able to handle the impact that this has?

I was certain this was going to become propaganda for the insurgents. And I was also certain that in the aftermath of this that there would be no one spared if there were any prisoners taken, you know if insurgents took prisoners of marines or soldiers. The other thing is that I didn't think there would be any surrendering by insurgents once they saw this video.

So all of those elements played into the thought process with this particular piece of video. But I argued at the time, quite vehemently, we shouldn't show it, we shouldn't show it. Let's just show right up to it. I never saw the cut piece. I would have let it go on a little bit past that; we stopped it before he raised his rifle up. It was just very, very...a piece that had no resonance whatsoever. All the fight was taken out of this particular story.

I think we contributed to the confusion out there. We contributed to the confusion about what happened in that mosque. There were a lot of accusations that I had just wanted to further my career and just betray the Marines with this piece of video, that I was anti-American, blah, blah, blah. But I think if I had shown anyone in America this piece of video, there wouldn't be any questions.

Still questions about what's going on in this guy's mind. You know, posttraumatic stress? Anger? Whatever else. But, in terms of a tactical move, which is how this thing has to be judged in war - it's sad that's how we have to judge this strictly on a tactical basis - it wasn't a tactical move. I could show this to anybody, any Marine, and they'd say this isn't the case.

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