Richard Engel: Covering War For A Decade

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..DATE:

20110905

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Fresh Air

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12:00-13:00 PM

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NPR

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Richard Engel: Covering War For A Decade

TERRY GROSS, host:

This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross.

During the Egyptian revolution, I was transfixed by some of Richard Engel's

reporting. He was often positioned with his cameraman on a hotel balcony

overlooking Tahrir Square, enabling him to show, describe and explain events as

they unfolded. When things began to quiet down in Egypt, Engel was off to the

uprising in Libya, where he traveled with rebels and came under fire while

reporting on camera. He's displayed incredible courage.

Engel is NBC's chief foreign news correspondent. During the Shock and Awe

bombing campaign that began the war in Iraq, he decided to stay in Baghdad and

keep reporting. Engel is fluent in Arabic.

Engel and Rachel Maddow report on the aftermath of 9/11 in a new documentary

called "Day of Destruction, Decade of War" that will be shown on MSNBC tonight,

tomorrow and Sunday. Included in the documentary is a clip from one of Engel's

reports from Afghanistan while embedded with the 82nd Airborne Division. He's

interviewing Sergeant Louis Loftus, the point man on patrols, who would be the

first to spot or step on an IED.

Shortly before this interview, his buddy was killed by an IED. Loftus tries to

stay stoic.

(Soundbite of film, "Day of Destruction, Decade of War")

Sergeant LOUIS LOFTUS (82 Airborne Division): Right now, I'm kind of numb to

it. Like to be honest, I just don't really feel much. I pray for his family. I

pray for his soul that it, you know...

I try not to think about it because when you think about it, then I get like

this, and it's not - you know, I don't - yeah, so yeah, you know, everyone

deals with it their own way. I try to hide it. I try not to think about it

because I've got to stay 100 percent. You know, I've got to keep a good example

in front of the other soldiers.

I'm sorry.

GROSS: Sergeant Louis Loftus, speaking with Richard Engel, NBC chief foreign

correspondent. Richard Engel, welcome to FRESH AIR. You've been doing such

incredible work. It's really a pleasure to have you here.

Mr. RICHARD ENGEL (Chief Foreign Correspondent, NBC): Well, thank you very

much.

GROSS: This report that we just heard got a lot of attention, and I - every

time I saw it, including in the documentary that you did with Rachel Maddow, I

can't help but wonder, whenever I see it, if Sergeant Loftus ever asked you to

not use that clip because he didn't want to be seen breaking down because that

wasn't his idea of setting a good example, he wanted to just maintain, you

know, a more stoic posture?

Mr. ENGEL: It's funny that you asked that because when you're living on a

little base, and impressions are everything, you know, what you - how you're

perceived with the other soldiers, the chain of command within the particular

company that you're with, staying strong, staying loyal, and I asked him. I

said, you know - because, I mean, we were doing this interview on the base.

There were other soldiers around. You know, whenever you set up a camera and

start interviewing people, a small little crowd tends to form.

So other soldiers did see him get very emotional in this interview. And I asked

him afterwards, I said, you know, this could be embarrassing for you if we put

this on television. And he said no, you know, it's OK, I get it. We were

talking about his friend who had just died, and he said: Look, I feel very

emotional about this incident, and even soldiers can cry when they lose a

friend. And so he decided that it was important because he was expressing a

sincere emotion about a friend.

GROSS: After you recorded the interview with Sergeant Louis Loftus that we just

heard an excerpt of, there was a memorial service for his buddy who died in the

IED explosion, and as soon as everybody got back from the memorial to the base,

the Taliban attacked. And you were reporting on camera during that battle.

And you say ammunition was running very low. The Taliban had gotten very close.

How close did the Americans get to losing that particular battle? And what

would have happened to you if they ran out of ammunition and if the Americans

lost?

Mr. ENGEL: Well, I think if they had lost the battle, then the Taliban would

have gotten inside the base and probably tried to kill everyone inside. They

didn't. You have to understand the terrain a little bit.

These bases are very small. This particular base is called Combat Outpost

Nolan, and it's really just a farmhouse. And it's an adobe farmhouse, so mud

walls around a central - two central courtyards.

And there's some rooms in the middle of the - within the walled perimeter, and

that's about it. And in this large farmhouse are about 100 soldiers, and they

go out on patrol, and they patrol the farmlands that are in the area, and then

they come back and they live on this base.

And that's it. They eat there. They live there. They sleep there. And the walls

are fairly high. They're high enough that there's a second floor. And in the

corner of these farmhouses are towers, and they've constructed towers like

you'd imagine a fort might look, even an Old West fort with these towers in the

corners.

And there are several of these outposts in the Arghandab Valley. And what

happened is the Taliban attacked, and they got very close. I mean, they got

right up to the edge, right - you know, maybe five meters, 10 meters from the

walls.

GROSS: You ended this report by saying - I'll paraphrase here - the Americans

won, but why? For nearly a decade, similar battles have been fought in Iraq and

Afghanistan. And the impression I got from the end of that report was that you

had seen a lot of battles like this that basically amounted to nothing in the

long run.

Mr. ENGEL: Well, I think you can - I think that's the question I was trying to

raise. I've seen a lot of battles like this. And just to get back to this

image, the soldiers go out, they bury one of their own - actually they didn't

bury him, but they held a memorial for him. Then they come back to this

farmhouse.

They're attacked, and they fire back, and they fight ferociously for about 30

minutes or so. And three soldiers are badly injured in this firefight, you

know, hit by bullets. One guy was shot in the face. I'm actually not sure if he

was shot or hit by an RPG shrapnel, but he was injured in the face.

And I've seen battles like this on little outposts in other parts of

Afghanistan, and when you add them up, these are: Why? What are they amounting

to? And when I was talking to Loftus and other soldiers about this, they say,

well, we're supposedly here to help the Afghan people, but sometimes the

Afghans don't want the Americans' help, and the Afghans don't really want the

Karzai government that the U.S. troops are backing.

So why are they fighting all of these little fights in remote valleys that the

soldiers have never heard of before they went to Afghanistan? And I think some

of the soldiers come back with - the answer to the question is they don't know

why.

GROSS: If you're just joining us, my guest is Richard Engel, NBC's chief

foreign correspondent.

You recently returned to the States from Libya, where you were covering the

revolution there. And I just want to play an example of your reporting from

Libya. This is an amazing clip. You were reporting on and traveling with Libyan

rebels. And you were reporting on how basically unprepared they were for a

civil war, how their arms didn't compare to what Gadhafi's forces had.

One rebel tells you that, you know, the rebels have light weapons, and

Gadhafi's forces had tanks. And in fact one of the rebels has only, like, a toy

gun. It's not even a real gun.

And in the middle of this report, as we'll hear, you come under fire. So let's

hear this report. It starts with you talking about the toy gun.

(Soundbite of news report)

Mr. ENGEL: Another rebel showed me he isn't actually armed at all. It's a toy

gun. This is amazing. He just handed me his gun. I didn't realize until he put

it in my hands, it's actually just made of plastic. It's a toy.

(Soundbite of gunfire)

Unidentified Group: (Speaking foreign language)

Mr. ENGEL: Three explosions 50 yards away. So as we were doing the interviews,

incoming rounds just landed in this area, and the rebels are now starting to

flee.

Unidentified Man: (Speaking foreign language)

Mr. ENGEL: Rebels cheer that they survived this assault by Gadhafi's army.

There have been several artillery rounds that have landed right in this area.

We're using this piece of concrete to take a little cover and to see if the

artillery rounds stop long enough for us to get out of the area.

Shockingly, the rebel we interviewed leaves cover to retrieve his plastic gun

but abandons it as we hear another explosion.

GROSS: OK, so that's Richard Engel reporting from Libya. And it's just kind of

amazing to see you in the middle of that report dive for cover, just, like, hit

the ground, yeah.

Mr. ENGEL: I'd never heard it on radio, but to hear that, the whistle of that

incoming round is - it brought me right back to that day in the desert. And I

think the reason that we're all still alive after that report is because we

were in the middle of the desert. And when the artillery round came in, it

impacted relatively soft sand, and that absorbed most of the shock, absorbed a

lot of the shrapnel. Had it been on concrete, you know, I'm sure we would - you

know, it would have gotten very messy. That was an amazing day.

I mean, this rebel that we were talking to wanted to look the part, and I guess

he wanted to join the fight, but he couldn't afford a weapon. So he was out

there, and he was just carrying a toy gun. He had a beret on, and he wanted to

look the part of a rebel, hoping one day that he would be able to find a gun,

pick one up, get given one, buy one, I'm not exactly sure. But he wanted to be

in the fight even though he couldn't afford his own weapon.

GROSS: It's amazing that you have to buy your own weapon in a fight like that.

(Soundbite of laughter)

Mr. ENGEL: Yeah, and they got very expensive at some stage, I mean, we're

talking several thousand dollars for an automatic rifle, yeah.

GROSS: Oh, really? Wow.

Mr. ENGEL: And it - the prices have come down a little bit since so many of

Gadhafi's weapons were seized, but in the early days, there were very...

GROSS: And looted, yeah.

(Soundbite of laughter)

Mr. ENGEL: And - Gadhafi's compound, and I was just inside Gadhafi's compound,

that report was from the early days of the revolt, when people - when the

rebels were fighting on the eastern front. And they were fighting in the open

desert, and they were really inexperienced. And these were engineers and

doctors and, you know, farmers, anybody who was part of Libyan society decided

to join in this revolution. And at first they didn't know what they were doing,

and that was - you know, some of them were running around, as you saw, or as

you heard, with plastic guns.

Later on, they got much better. The learning curve is tremendously high in war

and I guess in everything else, and eventually they were able to unseat Gadhafi

with considerable help from NATO.

But I've never seen Gadhafi's - I mean, I've never seen a compound so full of

guns. When we went inside Gadhafi's compound in Tripoli, it was just packed to

the gills with very expensive, mostly Italian, weapons: Berettas, pistols,

Berretta assault rifles, cases and cases of this, of really nice, brand-new

weapons. And then he stockpiled weapons all over the city.

GROSS: So I want to get back to that report. When you came under fire, and you

had to hit the ground, what we can't see and what we can't hear is what went

through your mind. So can you fill us in on that?

Mr. ENGEL: Well, I was interviewing this rebel, and we were talking, and I was

doing a little piece to the camera describing this plastic gun, and the first

thing I felt was - I heard an explosion that was close. It's not the one that's

very distinct. There was a nearer - quite a close explosion that landed in

front of me, and since it landed in front of me, I didn't hear the whistle.

That whoosh you hear is actually the shell going over my head. So you hear, as

it passes over, you hear the sound more distinctly.

But the first one I heard, I didn't hear the whistle so much as just the bang,

and then the rebel I was interviewing kind of pushed me aside as he was running

for cover. So what was going through my head, the first thing I heard was a

noise. Then I felt this rebel sort of pushing me down as he was trying to run

over me, effectively, to get to cover, and then the other sound, which was the

very distinct whistle that - when you hear that, you know, you know, bad things

are coming. And I just wanted to get down low. So I dropped onto my stomach,

and there's not much you can do at that stage. You just hope that you - it

doesn't fall on you, and...

GROSS: So that rebel wasn't protecting you, he was basically pushing you aside

and running over you?

(Soundbite of laughter)

Mr. ENGEL: Oh, it was almost a footprint on my back. He was just trying to get

past me to - there was a little - I think it was a well cover, which is an odd

thing to see in the middle of the desert, but they do sometimes have

underground aquifers out in the desert. And there was a large, concrete - I'm

not sure if it was still active, but at one stage there had been a well there.

So there was a big concrete box not far from where we were in the desert. So we

were able to just run to that.

And it's not great cover because it's only exposed - it gives you cover from

one side, but it was good enough.

GROSS: OK, well, you actually reported from that, with that little bit of

cover, you added on to your report.

Mr. ENGEL: Yeah, I had a great cameraman. He didn't stop reporting, or he

didn't stop recording. He didn't even lose focus. I mean, that's a serious

cameraman. His name is John Kooistra. He heard the whistle and just turned to

it, and actually catches the smoke as it explodes.

GROSS: Crazy, really, wow. So how do you know when it's safe to start reporting

again or relatively safe, safe enough to pick your head up and speak?

Mr. ENGEL: Well, they - the artillery tends to come in bursts, and they'll -

you know, in a barrage. Mortars are about the same because the way you work

these weapons is they'll fire five or six rounds, and then they'll have a

spotter with binoculars, and they'll see where the rounds landed, they'll see

if they killed anyone, what the impact is, and then they'll adjust it. They

call them walking them in.

So they'll drop one maybe that's too far, then they'll drop the second one.

It's - perhaps it's a little short, and then they adjust it and fire it in the

middle. So it's not computerized. It's - you're turning a crank to adjust the

angle of the weapon.

So they'll usually fire five, six, seven, wait a few minutes, see how it

worked, then fire another group of five, six, seven. So we waited for a few of

these to go. There was a second later in the report there was - you hear

there's a second round. And so we were standing by this well cover, and the

rebel decides oh, I'm going to go get my gun.

I thought, well, it's probably a better idea to wait where we are because more

are coming. Let's wait for the second barrage. The second barrage came, and

then after that we decided let's not wait for the third. Let's go now while

there might be - maybe a minute lull. And then we decided to get out.

GROSS: If you're just joining us, my guest is Richard Engel, NBC's chief

foreign correspondent. Let's take a short break here, and then we'll talk some

more. This is FRESH AIR.

(Soundbite of music)

GROSS: My guest is Richard Engel, NBC News chief foreign correspondent.

Let's get back to your reporting from Libya. You were describing all the arms

that you found in Gadhafi's compound. What are some of the other most

surprising things that you saw in Gadhafi's compound?

Mr. ENGEL: In Gadhafi's compound? He has a little - or he had, it's now become

a bit of a tourist attraction for Libyans to go and take their pictures - he

had a small museum built around the airstrike, the American airstrike on his

compound in 1986. And in that compound he has kept bits of shrapnel and pieces

of - what looked like piece of the aircraft itself.

This was a museum right behind - if you remember that very famous statue of a

fist holding a crushed American - I think it was an F-16 fighter, and right

behind it was this museum, if it would be, to Gadhafi and his resilience in

this attack.

And then upstairs was one of Gadhafi's private bedrooms. And so I went into his

bedroom, and his bathroom is an en-suite bathroom with a big Jacuzzi tub. And

the bed was a large bed, maybe double-king-size, you know, a huge mattress, and

then over it was a very bad painting of a seascape with a stormy night.

It looked like a bad motel room from the '70s with a few chandeliers added. So

- and it reminded me of Saddam's palaces: not particularly attractive, bad

kitsch, sort of a casino built on the cheap is how I would think of it. Gadhafi

lived surprisingly the same way.

GROSS: You know, it's amazing, like, the level of, like, narcissism and sadism

that dictators seem to have.

Mr. ENGEL: I think - when we went through Saddam's - and particularly his

children's - things and their belongings, there was even more sadism. I mean,

that regime was more brutal. It was more sadistic. I mean, we found torture

devices that Uday had been using on his people, Uday being Saddam's son who was

also killed by the Americans.

And the - I remember there was a - it looked like something you'd see in a

medieval torture museum or a medieval - it was a cage made of metal, and it was

in the form of a human body. And it opened up, and he would put - Uday would

put people inside of it and then lower them in water or lower them in water

with battery acid added to the water. I think he spent time, apparently on the

Internet and other places, looking up torture devices. So Saddam's regime was

truly sadistic. I didn't find anything like that in Libya. But it might be

there.

GROSS: Wow, that's just really, like, horrible.

Mr. ENGEL: Yeah, he was - this was a - Saddam's son Uday was a psychopath. I

mean, he was truly sadistic. I met a guy who he tortured, and - because he

owned the soccer team, and if the soccer team didn't perform well, he would

beat and abuse the players hopefully to inspire them, he thought. He would have

them kick barefoot a cement ball, and the players themselves told me this.

And I can't imagine this is going to make them perform any better. He would -

he took one person who had - he was affiliated with the team, it was like an

assistant coach, and he locked him in a room in the - in sort of like a

basement room in the administrative building, and he gave him an ant.

And he said OK, I want you - you have to keep track of this ant until tomorrow

morning, and I'm going to come back, and I want this ant. And I don't know if

you could imagine what it would be like to keep track of an ant for 24 hours.

It's difficult. If you take your eye off it for a second, they go missing. So

he spent the entire night trying to keep track of this ant.

GROSS: How do you even dream something like that up?

Mr. ENGEL: This is a sick person. He's totally insane.

GROSS: Richard Engel will be back in the second half of the show. He's NBC News

chief foreign correspondent. I'm Terry Gross, and this is FRESH AIR.

(Soundbite of music)

GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross back with Richard Engel, NBC News

chief foreign correspondent. He's been reporting for hotspots since the U.S.

Shock and Awe bombing campaign that started the Iraq war. More recently, we've

seen him escape attacks in Libya and Egypt as he covered the Arab uprisings.

Engel and Rachel Maddow co-anchor a new documentary called "Day of Destruction,

Decade of War," that will be shown tonight, tomorrow and Sunday on MSNBC.

Let's talk a little bit about Egypt. You did incredible reporting from Egypt.

Mr. ENGEL: Oh, thank you for saying that.

GROSS: Oh, yeah. I saw a lot of you in Egypt.

Mr. ENGEL: It's been a busy year.

GROSS: Yeah. During the period of demonstrations in Tahrir Square you had this

incredible perch on a rooftop overlooking Tahrir Square.

Mr. ENGEL: Yeah.

GROSS: So my first question about this is how did you get that spot?

Mr. ENGEL: Oh this sounds a little bit...

GROSS: It was probably really valuable real estate.

Mr. ENGEL: And it was tricky because the hotel was trying to throw us out. And

the hotel, there was a period in the revolt when the country became very anti-

press, and it was by design. The Mubarak government in its weakened position

decided that it was getting bad press and used state media to turn the people

against us. And it happened overnight. There were all these broadcasts on state

television and radio saying that all the journalists were spies, and I mean, I

think Mubarak was trying to have us killed. He wanted us off the streets and he

decided to insight the mobs and incite the masses against us with the

instruments of power that he had, which was the state media.

And a lot of people, particularly his supporters, bought it and overnight all

journalists became targets. So the hotel where we were staying in became a

target, because most of the journalists were staying in a couple of hotels

around Tahrir Square. So the hotel wanted us either out because it was getting

attacked and the hotel was boarding up the windows and, you know, they thought

they were going to be overrun in the second, and they certainly didn't want us

broadcasting anymore.

So we had to play a little bit cat and mouse and separate our equipment and we

rented extra hotel rooms so that we were changing around so if the management

came the managers will, oh no, don't broadcast. Oh no, we're not broadcasting.

We'd go to another room to broadcast and then they'd come there, so we had to

play a little bit of cat and mouse with the hotel as well in order to get that

shot. And spreading around the equipment, you know, breaking it up into its

component parts so it doesn't really look like we're doing much. You know, you

keep half the gear in one room and then half the gear in the other and then

marry them together when you need to, that way in case the hotel did seize some

of our things we would have it. So it was, you know, you have to get creative

when you don't have a lot of options.

GROSS: In one of the reports that you did from Egypt you were in a spot that

was tear-gassed. And the teargas affects your eyes and you can't, it looks like

you're in pain and your eyes are tearing and you're having trouble breathing

and you just kind of run off camera. Tell us what was happening.

Mr. ENGEL: Before the protesters got to Tahrir Square the protests were in many

different locations and they were just in different squares. The people left

mosques and they went to, I can't remember, it was seven or eight, maybe 10

different locations around Cairo. And Tahrir Square became the focal point only

after the first few days of the demonstration. And the government didn't want

people to arrive in Tahrir Square.

And an enormous security force was firing thick teargas. It looked like clouds

had just been - we're sitting on the pavement and people were trying to brush

through this, and there were running battles of stones and teargas, and the

police were firing teargas canisters, which were made in the USA by the way,

and the people were picking them up and throwing them back at the police. And

some people were collapsing because of asphyxiation and it was a very chaotic

day.

GROSS: So once you jumped off camera after you were tear-gassed, what happened

next?

Mr. ENGEL: People started handing me onions. Onions were - they say onions will

help against teargas. And this is - I've seen this all over the world that

people will go to protests and to bring onions with them. I frankly don't think

it really works. You know, you hold the onion under your nose. Maybe it helps a

little bit but not enough. Also they were, had bottles of Coca-Cola and they

were putting Coke on their hands and then splashing it on my face, on their

faces and that actually helped a little bit. It took away some of the stinging.

I had never seen that before.

So after that, you know, I ran off camera because I was really in the middle of

a thick cloud. I got a little nauseous and people came over as they see me sort

of not quite throwing up but almost throwing up, and came over and put onions

in my face and then start splashing, pouring Coke over my head, which actually,

it was a surprise. It wasn't what I really felt like having done to me after

I'd just run out of some teargas but it helped a little bit.

GROSS: If you're just joining us, my guest is Richard Engel, NBC's chief

foreign correspondent. Let's take a short break here and then we'll talk some

more. This is FRESH AIR.

(Soundbite of music)

GROSS: If you're just joining us, my guest is Richard Engel. He's NBC News

chief foreign correspondent, and he's recently been reporting from Libya, from

Egypt. He's reported a long time from Afghanistan and from Iraq. He and Rachel

Maddow have a new documentary called "Day of Destruction, Decade of War," and

this complete three-hour documentary will be shown tonight, tomorrow and Sunday

on MSNBC.

You covered the war in Iraq, which the Bush administration said would bring

democracy to Iraq and then help spread it through the Middle East. So now

democracy is trying to spread through the Middle East, you know...

Mr. ENGEL: But it wasn't because of Iraq.

GROSS: Yes. So I wanted to know whether you think Iraq had anything to do with

that.

Mr. ENGEL: No. If anything I think it slowed it down. I was in Egypt. I was in

Libya. I was in Tunisia even and I didn't hear a single person saying in those

crowds: we're going to do this. Look what they've done in Baghdad. If they can

do it in Baghdad we can do it here too. Zero. Zilch. Instead what you saw was

the governments of Gadhafi and of Mubarak saying: look at what happened in

Baghdad. You people want democracy? Well, look at what happened in Iraq. They

had a civil war. They had chaos. The Iraq was used to scare the people into not

pursuing their democratic aspirations. So this cause-effect relationship that

some people are talking about just wasn't there.

People were determined to go out onto the streets to demonstrate and to demand

more rights because their governments were treating them badly because of

corruption, because of inequality, not because they were inspired by what they

saw in Baghdad. What people saw in Baghdad was the country descend into civil

war.

So you've been covering, you've been in war zones for about a decade. And I

don't want to be a scold here, I don't want to sound obnoxious, but you've been

under such stress for 10 years or a little less than 10 years. And the last

time you were on the show after your memoir was published, this was about 2004

maybe? You talked about...

Mr. ENGEL: You've got to have me on more often.

GROSS: Yeah.

Mr. ENGEL: It's been a long time.

GROSS: You've talked about - we've tried.

(Soundbite of laughter)

GROSS: You've been busy in war zones. You talked about how adrenaline really,

you know, kicks in and enables you to do a lot of work. But, you know, the

long-term activation of the stress response system has some really negative

side effects.

I'm actually on the Mayo Clinic website and it's talking about the long-term

activation of the stress response system and it says this puts you at in

increased risk of numerous health problems, including heart disease, sleep

problems, digestive problems, depression, obesity - not your problem - memory

impairment, worsening of skin condition such as eczema.

So like, do you...

Mr. ENGEL: Thanks a lot. So my prospects are bad.

(Soundbite of laughter)

GROSS: I know. Exactly. It sounds like such an annoying thing to say to

somebody. But truly, do you think about the long-term effects of what you are

exposing yourself to? Not, this isn't even mentioning all the risks of being

under gunfire and explosions and IED's and all that.

Mr. ENGEL: Yes. But oddly enough, I'm not a thrill, you know, junkie. It's not

like I do this for the adrenaline. I don't drive fast cars.

GROSS: But it's there any way.

(Soundbite of laughter)

Mr. ENGEL: I don't jump out of planes. I don't, you know, it's not my thing.

GROSS: It's there anyway. Yeah.

Mr. ENGEL: But yeah, there is a concern. You know, there is a health concern, a

mental concern. The bigger concern I guess would be something, you know, more

imminent - death rather than eczema and bad skin.

(Soundbite of laughter)

GROSS: Right.

Mr. ENGEL: I'll take those. If those are the bad sides OK, throw them in. But I

don't know. I hope I don't really have too many of those signals. I mean I

sleep, I don't sleep great but I sleep. I eat. I don't have major stomach

problems.

I think I've developed ways of coping with it that you get better at it over

time. You know, if you do it for 10 years you figure out ways in order to cope.

You have to take breaks. That's very important. You have to be able to tune out

from the world.

Oddly enough, I think the best thing in the world is scuba diving. And I've

told this to a lot of my colleagues and I think I've converted many of them.

Because in Iraq it was funny, you know, we all started scuba diving. I said, I

found out, I discovered this hidden hobby and suddenly I convinced all the

press corps that, you know, I became like a scuba diving, you know, practically

instructor, I guess.

And what's great about it is you go underwater, you don't hear anything. You

look at the fish, some of them look back, most of them don't look back. You

hear the bubbles and nobody is calling you and your down there for an hour and

you're totally, you're weightless and aside from the bubbles that you're making

it's silent. And it's very important to do that kind of thing.

GROSS: The scuba diving really makes sense to me.

Mr. ENGEL: So, yeah. It's also fun and it's usually in a pleasant place.

GROSS: Mm-hmm.

Mr. ENGEL: And it's, you know, a Caribbean island or somewhere in the Red Sea

and there's lots of - when you look into it there's always a scuba diving place

pretty near to a war zone, so that helps too.

GROSS: Well, wherever you go I wish you good luck and good health.

Mr. ENGEL: Well, thank you. It's been a pleasure to talk to you.

GROSS: And I will look forward to your reports. I really appreciate the work

that you've done and the risk that you've taken to do it. Thank you so much.

Mr. ENGEL: Well, thank you. Thank you for having me.

GROSS: Richard Engel is NBC's chief foreign news correspondent. The documentary

he anchors with Rachel Maddow is called "Day of Destruction, Decade of War." It

will be shown on MSNBC today, tomorrow and Sunday, September 11th. You'll find

a link to the documentary on our website, freshair.npr.org.

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A Military Clarinet Quartet Commemorates September 11

TERRY GROSS, host: Last month while I was on vacation, I spent a few days in

Boston. Looking through the concert listings, I noticed a noontime performance

at King's Chapel by an Air Force clarinet quartet called the Bay State Winds.

According to the listings, they were going to perform works by Sousa, Ives,

Gershwin, Rossini and Glazunov. That sounded great to me, so I went.

They changed the program but I didn't care. The concert was wonderful and

moving. I thought wouldn't it be great if the quartet performed a few pieces on

our show just before September 11th in tribute to our country and the men and

women in the military who have served it. I'm glad to say they agreed and we're

about to hear them.

The Bay State Winds is the clarinet quartet of the Air Force Band of Liberty.

They've been playing for military and civilian functions since 2001. The

members are Master Sergeant Jennifer E. Dashnaw, Master Sergeant Kevin Connors,

Technical Sergeant Christy Bailes and Staff Sergeant Matthew Ayala, who is

featured on bass clarinet.

Welcome all of you to FRESH AIR. It's is truly a pleasure to have you. I'd love

for you to start with a march. There's a march that you played when I saw you

at King's Chapel in Boston. And would you play that march for us now? It's a

Sousa march and whoever is willing can introduce it for us.

Master Sgt. JENNIFER DASHNAW: OK. Great. My name is Master Sergeant Jen

Dashnaw, and the march you heard at King's Chapel was one of John Philip

Sousa's most famous marches called "Hands Across the Sea," so that's what we're

going to play for you now.

(Soundbite of song, "Hands Across the Sea")

GROSS: Well, that was wonderful. Thank you so much for playing that, and that

was the Bay State Winds. They're the clarinet quartet of the U.S. Air Force

Band of Liberty.

When you enlist with the hopes of being in a military band, do you also go

through basic training and get trained in weaponry or flying planes?

Master Sgt. KEVIN CONNORS: Yes we do. My name is Kevin Connors, and we all go

through basic training and it's been in San Antonio, Texas at Lackland Air

Force Base. All Air Force members go through the same type of basic training

before joining their individual units.

GROSS: You have a great repertoire. You perform things from, you know, Sousa

marches to Charles Ives compositions, you know, Gershwin, Rossini. It's a very

eclectic mix. But I'm wondering like when you perform for the troops, do they

know the repertoire and does the Air Force had like a hip-hop band or a metal

band, you know?

(Soundbite of laughter)

Technical Sgt. CHRISTY BAILES: Yes. We cater towards the troops. The rock band

right now is working on some new songs that the kids are listening to. What

they do is they go through and they talk to young soldiers and they ask them

what do you want to listen to? And then they find those tunes and we actually

arrange our own tunes in the squadron. It gets kind of complicated because of

all the transitions but they work really hard and yes, we do cater towards what

the young soldiers want to hear.

GROSS: We'll hear more music from the Bay State Winds, the clarinet quartet of

the Air Force Band of Liberty after a break.

This is fresh air.

GROSS: My guests are members of the Bay State Winds, the clarinet quartet of

the Air Force Band of Liberty. We invited them to play a few songs in tribute

to our country and the men and women who have served.

Now when I saw you at the noontime concert at King's Chapel in Boston last

month, you closed with a medley of the four Armed Forces themes, and you

suggested that each person in the audience who had served in the military stand

when their theme was played. And for each theme at least one person stood and

saluted.

And I have to say it was very moving, in part because it made me realize that

for instance the guy in front of me had probably been doing some pretty rough

stuff. And I wouldn't have known that, I wouldn't have thought of that and it

made me think of all the people I run into in the course of a day or in the

course of a week who have been in war zones, and of all the families with loved

ones who are or have been in war zones. And when you meet them you don't

necessarily know that and you don't know what they or their loved one has been

through.

Can you talk about the significance of playing this medley for you now?

Staff Sgt. MATTHEW AYALA: This Staff Sergeant Matthew. I will say any time that

we perform this piece, either with a clarinet quartet or the concert band,

which we do pretty much the same arrangement, I'm always looking at the

audience and just to see if I can find someone who is maybe crying, or let's

say some people have like difficulty standing up or something, but when they

hear their service song, they definitely do whatever they can just to stand up.

GROSS: How did you start asking people to stand?

Technical Sgt. BAILES: I think it's been a tradition. I've been in for 17 years

and I think that we've always asked people to stand. But just recently I think

that - well, maybe it's just because, you know, I've been in longer, but it's

just so wonderful to see these people stand up.

Master Sgt. CONNORS: And that tradition is taught to them in basic training. In

basic training, whenever a military member hears their service song they're

supposed to stand up and be proud.

GROSS: So I'm going to ask you if you could close with your medley of the Armed

Forces themes. And it's actually really fun to hear this arranged for four

clarinets. You know, you don't really usually hear these songs played by four

clarinets.

(Soundbite of laughter)

GROSS: So did you do the arrangements? Where do the arrangements come from?

Master Sgt. DASHNAW: Again, it came from a clarinetist by the name of Mark

Craig. And he's actually stationed at the Band of the Golden West at Travis Air

Force Base. And he has done a lot of arrangements for - not only for woodwind

quartet, but for also woodwind quintet as well, and we love his arrangements.

GROSS: OK. Well, great. So this is the Bay State Winds, which is the clarinet

quartet of the U.S. Air Force Band of Liberty performing for us a medley of the

Armed Forces themes.

(Soundbite of music)

GROSS: I think you guys are great.

(Soundbite of laughter)

GROSS: That just sounded so good. You're so talented. I wish you all well and

thank you so much for speaking with us and for playing for us. Thank you.

Master Sgt. DASHNAW: Thank you.

Technical Sgt. BAILES: Thank you.

Staff Sgt. AYALA: Thank you.

Master Sgt. CONNORS: You're welcome.

GROSS: The Bay State Winds is the clarinet quartet of the Air Force Band of

Liberty performing for us a medley of the Armed Forces themes. We heard Master

Sergeant Jennifer E. Dashnaw, Master Sergeant Kevin Connors, Technical Sergeant

Christy Bailes and Staff Sergeant Matthew Ayala.

You can hear four recordings by the Bay State Winds on our website,

freshair.npr.org, where you can also download podcasts of our show. They have

one more song to perform for us, "America the Beautiful."

(Soundbite of song, "America the Beautiful")

GROSS: I'm Terry Gross.

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