'Chicago Trib' Reporter Stayed the Course to Get Deserter Story By Mark Fitzgerald
CHICAGO As Chicago Tribune national correspondent Michael Martinez pursued his exclusive story about the Florida National Guard staff sergeant accused of desertion who emerged from five months of hiding to publicly challenge U.S. conduct of the Iraq war, he found he was not simply portraying one discontented soldier -- but opening a window on the conflicted feelings of many troops on the one-year anniversary of the conflict.
At the end of two months of reporting that culminated with the March 15 front-page story about Staff Sgt. Camilo Mejia, Martinez interviewed officers and GIs on the day the soldier's unit -- C Company of the Florida National Guard's 1st Battalion of the 124th Regiment -- returned home to Ft. Stewart, Ga.
"These year-long deployments, my gosh, they have taken a real toll on these guys, a real emotional and physical toll," Martinez said by phone from Spain, where he has been covering the Madrid train bombing and the national election.
The Tribune (Click for QuikCap) story broke the news about Mejia, who served as a squad leader during fighting in Ramadi, Iraq. A native of Nicaragua, Mejia went into hiding after being granted leave last October to return temporarily to the United States to renew his permanent resident card. The day the Tribune story ran, he emerged publicly at the gate of Hanscom Air Force Base in Massachusetts, where he told a press conference organized by anti-war activists that he would seek conscientious objector status.
"I am saying no to war; I have chosen peace," Mejia said, according to an Associated Press account by Martin Finucane. "I went to Iraq and was an instrument of violence and now I have decided to become an instrument of peace."
He had far more sensational and specific things to say in Martinez's story, however. Mejia accused the military of using troops as "bait" to provoke Iraqi fire with the only goal a chance to win combat decorations. Guardsmen were poorly equipped, he said, and their commanders "incompetent." The story also quoted commanders and soldiers dismissing those charges. "(T)here were indications he wasn't in the fight," unit commander Capt. Tad Warfel said. "He just basically pressed out. He just lost his nerve."
Martinez first learned of Mejia months before his appearance at Hanscom. A so-called unilateral journalist during the Iraq war, Martinez has written extensively about GIs since his return home. Among those stories was one about soldiers committing suicide in Iraq. Citizen Soldier, an anti-war group of GI advocates, approached him with the story of one of the approximately 600 troops classified as Iraq war deserters. Eventually an interview was arranged with Mejia, who was hiding in New York City, traveling only by bus, avoiding credit cards and cell phone conversations.
"I interviewed him for a few hours," Martinez recalled. "I found him credible, and his story fascinating."
Back in Chicago, though, Tribune Managing Editor James O'Shea and Deputy Managing Editor/News George DeLama wanted more substantiation of Mejia's story. "They told me to vet everything about this guy," Martinez said. "We are, after all, living in the age of Jayson Blair. They wanted to know, is this guy legit?"
Martinez quickly began to make arrangements to go to Baghdad himself, or get one of the Tribune reporters still in Iraq to contact Mejia's unit. Then Martinez discovered that the unit was coming back to Ft. Stewart. He arrived just in time for a homecoming celebration attended by families of the 98 returning soldiers.
In the midst of this moving ceremony, Martinez said, the commanders and soldiers were unusually welcoming to a reporter, too. The battalion commander asked if it would be OK for his wife and three kids to sit in on the interview.
Martinez found confirmation of Mejia's story going from motel to motel trying to find Guardsmen who had just arrived home. Among the soldiers he interviewed was Sgt. Richard Ritz, a veteran of the 1991 Gulf War as well as a team leader in Iraq.
"I would begin a story that Staff Sgt. Mejia told me, just say one sentence, and here his comrade (Ritz) would pick up the whole story, basically confirming the entire story ... with rich detail," Martinez said.
In risking trial for desertion, Mejia is the first soldier to publicly challenge military conduct in Iraq. It's unclear, Martinez said, how many others like him may be out there. It may become clearer as more troops reach the end of their year-long deployments. "Is there a resistance movement in the making? That's what we'll have to see," he said.