Category Archives: War & Peace

Quaker Hostage In Iraq: Tom Fox

The phone call came as I was driving home from a holiday weekend in Brooklyn, headed to Fayetteville NC. It was ten years ago today, November 27, 2005.
It was John Stephens, a younger Friend from Alexandria. I wasn’t expecting to hear from him. His message was a shock: our friend Tom Fox, who had been working in Iraq with a group called the Christian Peacemaker Teams, had been kidnapped in Baghdad the day before, along with three other CPT workers there.
The Iraq war was already close to me: I was director of Quaker House in Fayetteville, a Friends peace project near Fort Bragg. I had dealt with many soldiers who had been scarred but he Iraq war. I knew those who were or had been in jail because of their resistance to it. I had visited with troops who had fled to Canada to refuse deployment, and was following their fight to stave off being deported by a hostile Canadian regime.
But this was different. Tom Fox was a friend, and my friend. We had gone to meeting together at Langley Hill in McLean, Virginia, near CIA headquarters. His two kids were the same ages as my younger two, and were buds. He had been very kind to me when my marriage broke up in 1994.
And kidnappings of civilian journalists and humanitarian workers in Iraq was becoming increasingly common, and the fates of many hostages were gruesome. Some had been killed, shot before video cameras, even a couple beheaded.
Good God, I said to John Stephens. What are we going to do?

Norman Morrison: November 2, 1965

50 years ago, November 2, 1965, Norman Morrison, a Quaker from Baltimore, drove to the Pentagon, and walked across its broad lawns to a spot very near the office of Defense Secretary Robert McNamara. McNamara was busy making decisions about the burgeoning U.S. war in Vietnam, a war that Morrison despised.

In one arm Morrison carried his daughter, Emily, age 11 months; in the other, a wine jug.
He opened the jug, poured the contents over himself, and lit a match.

The jug was full of kerosene. The flames shot into the air. Norman Morrison quickly burned to death. Emily was unharmed.

Why did he do it?

The next day a letter arrived addressed to his wife.

CIA Whistleblower John Kiriakou: Interview – Part 1

AFL: You were very intensely involved in the anti-Al Queda work after 9-11. The book tells of much derring-do & “operations” in Pakistan. Which of those was scariest? How does that all look from this point 13 years later?

John Kiriakou: It’s funny to me in retrospect that I never felt in any personal danger in Pakistan, at least not until I was supposed to go to Karachi near the end of my tour there. I just had a “feeling” about Karachi. I never liked the place, and I found something to do in Islamabad, rather than to head south. On the day I was supposed to arrive there, the Consulate was bombed and 11 people were killed. I should have been there that morning. I’m glad I wasn’t.
Pakistan-and-terrorThat was the only time that I actually felt fear. I remember thinking, “Wow. If these guys really want to kill us, they’ll kill us. They just needed a slightly bigger bomb.” Thirteen years later, I still have fond memories of the country, which my wife thinks is crazy. I enjoyed Pakistan, I like the Pakistani people. I love their food. The country is beautiful. But the place is a basket case. The economy is in collapse. And, frankly, (and this may be controversial), I believe that religion holds Pakistanis back economically.

AFL: Also in the book, you describe being invited (recruited?) to take the interrogation training for what turned out to be the torture program. And you then turned to an older Agency wise person/mentor (one of many colleagues you don’t name) for advice about what to do. That mentor evidently advised you to steer clear of it. . . .

Exclusive Interview With John Kiriakou – CIA Whistleblower: Prelude

A few weeks later, having returned to Athens from an assignment elsewhere in the region, I was driving down Kifissias Avenue, a straight, ten-mile shot down the hillside from my house to my office. Traffic was always heavy, but on this day, it seemed as bad as anything I’d seen. The radio station was reporting a traffic incident of some sort and urging drivers to take alternative routes. But any alternative would have required a huge detour, so I kept moving forward as best I could. The next radio report described the scene ahead as a “criminal incident” that had closed two of the three lanes on my side of the road. . . .

As I drew closer, I could see the plate was YBH. For a moment, though, I forgot that the letters designated a British car; instead, I assumed a terrorist saw the transposed letters, mistakenly thought it was an American, and popped some innocent Greek instead of his imagined target. A second later, it dawned on me that it was a British car, a white Rover, and that it belonged to Stephen Saunders.

Saunders had been driving to work alone on Kifissias Avenue at eight in the morning when two masked gunmen on a motorcycle opened fire after Stephen stopped in heavy traffic. One of the weapons of choice was a .45 pistol, the Welch .45, and the gunmen got away by snaking their motorcycle through traffic. Saunders died at a nearby hospital later that morning. . . .