Arthur Ross Award
for Distinguished Reporting and Analysis on Foreign Affairs

FOURTEENTH ANNUAL DIPLOMATIC AWARDS CEREMONY
BEN FRANKLIN DINNING ROOM
US DEPARTMENT OF STATE
WASHINGTON, DC
DECEMBER 10, 2003

Joseph Sisco: The next presentation will be the Arthur Ross Award for Distinguished Reporting and Analysis on Foreign Affairs. I regret that Mr. Ross cannot be with us, another case of laryngitis, and Bill Luers, Ambassador Luers, will be representing him, and thank you, Bill, for being here. Phyllis Oakley, former Assistant Secretary, will make the presentation. Phyllis?

Phyllis Oakley: I have the privilege of presenting two recipients of the Arthur Ross Award for Distinguished Reporting and Analysis of Foreign Affairs. I think all of you are aware, there is always a certain amount of tension between print and electronic journalism, and the Academy has made a State Department Solomon-like decision to have two awards.

The first is to John Burns of the New York Times. In 4 years of journalism, John Burns has followed many roads, usually to hot spots, and I think we all know that this last spring, he stayed in Baghdad during the war in Iraq supplying so much of the information that we gathered not only through his columns in the New York Times, but also on nightly news programs. He was appointed chief foreign correspondent of the New York Times in April of this year and has served bureau chief in Kabul, New Delhi, Toronto, Beijing, Moscow, and Johannesburg and has had many honors, including two Pulitzer Prizes. He is a native of the United Kingdom, but moved to Canada as a boy and was educated at McGill. He regrets very much not being able to be with us today, but I think we all understand the nature of his current assignment in Iraq and the work he is going there.

Here to accept the award for John Burns is Todd Purdham of the New York Times. Bill, would you like to come up, also representing Arthur Ross? If I may read the citation: "For exemplary and often courageous reporting and analysis from Afghanistan and Iraq for the New York Times of a quality that has deepened public understanding of American foreign policy in that region." I give that to you.
[Applause.]

Todd Purdham: It is my great pleasure to be here today on behalf of John and the New York Times and to meet so many distinguished members of the diplomatic community. Meeting Bruce Laingen today reminds me of what may have been my own very first painful lesson in the perils of diplomatic reporting. It was about 24 years ago, just now, and I was a student journalist at Princeton and Hodding Carter came to campus to speak in the middle of the hostage crisis. I devised a long, involved question that, in my estimation, was full of nuance about some twist or other in Tehran, and I can't remember the question, but I will never forget Hodding's terse humiliating answer: "No."
[Laughter.]

It is also an honor to be in the presence of Senator Danforth, my fellow tiger, and Ambassador Zimmermann, with whose children I went to school almost 30 years ago, and, of course, of Anne Garrels, a reporter and journalist, the world over, our privilege to call colleague.

It is a special honor to accept this award on John's behalf, but I am a very poor substitute. For one thing, I haven't John's hair. I haven't his accent, which could easily have made him a broadcast reporter to give Annie a run for her money. Indeed, his informal telephone interviews on CNN and other outlets during the siege of Baghdad stand in the worthy tradition of the greatest word pictures of broadcast reporting.

So, if this were a Broadway matinee, you would be entitled to a refund, but I may be able to do one thing that John Burns couldn't do for himself and that is to speak about him with a detachment, albeit the reverent detachment of a colleague. He is simply the best there is: fearless, honest, intrepid, a great writer, and a remarkable man. I last saw him Islamabad in the winter of 2002, not long after the fall of the Taliban and not long before the abduction of Danny Pearl. Security concerns had led John to establish the Times' bureau in a gated, guarded, private home, which he described as belonging to the John Gotti of Pakistan.
[Laughter.]

When I arrived with Secretary Powell on a whirlwind visit, John dispatched a car and invited me to lunch, a pukka lunch with soup, cold meat, and English farmhouse cheese. John advised me that our bosses in New York need not know too many details of his domicile. As we all know, John has spent much of the past year in far less comfortable circumstances. He is not here today, as much as he wanted to be, because he just returned to Baghdad to keep chronicling a story that has compelled him off and on since the last Gulf War. I wish he were here, but as a reader, I am awfully glad he is there.

Just minutes before I came here today, John called me with the following dictation because his e-mail wasn't working, and so I read from John:

It is a huge disappointment for me not to be with you today and not only because not being in Washington means that I will be in Baghdad, eating a meal ready to eat and drinking a nonalcoholic beer while you are luxuriating in the relative comforts of Foggy Bottom. Not being with you also means that I am denied the opportunity to lay a large plank across Annie Garrels' Express, she having told me in New York last week that she would be delighted if I didn't show up since it would mean you could lavish all your attention on her.

Since the publication of 'Naked in Baghdad,' I think you would have done that, anyway. It remains to be considered whether had I spent my nights in Saddam's Baghdad writing naked, anybody's libido would have been aroused. Such are the advantages of our female colleagues in this brave new world. But the real reason I had hoped to be with you today lies in the simple fact that I have spent a good part of my adult life accumulating a debt to the State Department and its emissaries that I have had no better occasion to acknowledge than today.

In China, in Mozambique, I was pulled from the prisons of police states by American ambassadors, including most memorably for me, the tireless and ultimately successful efforts of Winston Lord to spring me from the Peking Central Prison after I had been sequestered there no a charge of spying in 1986. Since the lesser penalty for that charge was life in prison, whatever discomforts I have inflicted on American ambassadors around the world since then can be squarely blamed on him.

There are other names too numerous to mention, and in any case, any list I might assemble would be certain to omit others who have been crucially helpful to me in the world's distant places these 30 years, but if I am allowed the indulgence, I will cite just two other ambassadors, Frank Wisner India and Robert Oakley in Pakistan, who helped to guide me through the political maze of the subcontinent in Afghanistan at moments that were critical to America and to the New York Times. From far away in Baghdad, I salute you all. If I were to have been charged only one dollar for every invaluable hour in every political section, every commercial counselor's office, and every ambassador's suite where I have been educated over the decades, I would be a man far poorer than I already am.

Finally, my salute to Annie Garrels. I wish now that I had made more of the chance to descend the fire stairwell at the Palestine Hotel and bid her low in the deeper hours of the night, since there were possibilities there that may never repeat themselves.

But even dressed, Annie, you are a wonderful colleague, an unfailing source of good humor and goodwill in a hard and unrelenting world. God bless you all.

Oakley: Well.
[Laughter.]

Needless to say, the next award is to Annie Garrels at National Public Radio. I think I first met Annie when I became the deputy spokesman for George Shultz in the fall of 1986, and she was working for NBC News. I can remember being extremely impressed by her confidence, her knowledge, and her journalistic energy. I don't believe any of that has ever slackened. She started her career with ABC News and served 3 years in Moscow. Warren, is that where you rescued her?

Warren Zimmermann: Well, that isn't the word I would have used.
[Laughter.]

Oakley: Oh, all right. She, too, is attracted to hot spots having covered Eastern Europe, Central America, Tiananmen Square, and the battlefields of Chechnya, Bosnia, and Kosovo. In 1990, Annie Garrels reported on the first Gulf War from Saudi Arabia. Designated as a roving foreign correspondent for NPR's Foreign Desk, Annie Garrels was one of, I believe, 16 journalists to remain in Baghdad during the invasion of Iraq with John Burns.

Her descriptive around-the-clock reports from the city under siege gave us all insight into the impact of the war on Baghdad and throughout Iraq. Also, a recipient of many awards, she has won the Dupont Columbia Award twice, and in 1999, the Overseas Press Club honored Annie for a series she did on water issues around the globe.

Now, the slight British accent, one occasionally hears in Annie's distinctive voice, comes from childhood years in England, but she was born in America and educated at Harvard. Fondly known today as the Brenda Starr of the Berkshires, she has just finished a book about her experiences covering Iraq over the last year. It is entitled, as you have heard, "Naked in Baghdad." It is a very good read, and it is a very great privilege for me to present this award to Annie Garrels.
[Applause.]

I would like to read the citation for her long and distinguished record of reporting on National Public Radio, especially from Russia and most recently, evident and often dramatic and always independently minded views, from the frontlines in Afghanistan and Iraq. Annie, congratulations.
[Applause.]

Anne Garrels: I think John Burns has shown that 2 weeks in Baghdad is more than enough.
[Laughter.]

In fact, really more than enough.

Everybody here, many here obviously, took their oath as ambassador, and it was my first assignment in Washington, I think, coming up to this room at one point, and for me, it is a very special place. This is actually a pretty special group for me, too. You are, believe it or not, my generation of the State Department. There are many people here, both Foreign Service officers and some correspondents who have turned up, who were my tutors, in many ways, in foreign policy.

When I arrived back here from Moscow in 1982 to cover the Department, I didn't know anything, and I learned a lot in this building, none more so than from Warren Zimmermann who, as Phyllis mentioned, not only was my tutor in many ways, but also extricated me from Moscow, so I could come back and cover the State Department. It was the good old days. You didn't have to have a pass to come into the building. There were no security barricades. You could wander the halls, pass a door, knock, walk in. It was great. But I learned, most of all, probably from being in the building, it was much more fun being outside the building, being overseas in the field. That was really much more fun, and I learned from all of you how to ask questions.

I was never handed a classified document over a desk. I was never given a great secret, but I was taught by people in this building the kind of questions to ask. Sadly, none of us asked those questions hard enough and loud enough in the past year. None of us. And we all know, standing here in the State Department, that whatever the State Department came up with was sadly shelved.

I had but a small window on everything. I was sitting in Baghdad for the last year, just one small piece of the mosaic, but from what I heard from Iraqis, they predicted, sadly, exactly what we are seeing now. They predicted the looting in the immediate aftermath, which the American troops were ill prepared for. They predicted the fractions in the society. Many Iraqis told me, they were going to go underground and fight the Americans. Somebody didn't believe them. Well, I guess they do now.

No matter how hard the administration tries to manage the message, unfortunately, the message comes through loud and clear, and this isn't the world it used to be. As we all know, 20 years ago when we first met, it is very different now. The administration tries to manage the message. Paul Bremer is surrounded by spin-meisters, taking up very, very, very valuable real estate in a country where desks are valuable, living space, safe living space is hard to find. The administration blames the messengers and has tried to blame us, the press, but as we now know, the reality explodes, literally, in front of us every day.

The challenge of covering Iraq, frankly, now isn't the danger. I am not in the military. I am not one of the civilian administrators. I am not sitting in the Republican Palace being hit by RPGs. I have a lot more freedom of maneuver. I can go out. I can keep a low profile. I can run around in a clapped-out Toyota instead of a Toyota Land Cruiser or a Hum-vee. I can go around. The thing is, I can't really, with much ease, get in to see the American administrators. They don't want to meet us, those of us who don't tell the message they want, and they can't get out because they are too scared, and with good reason.

All I can say is thank you, though, for this award because everybody needs a pat on the back, and I want to go back. I started this, and I am going to keep going back. As I say, it makes it a lot easier when somebody said, "So far, you have done an okay job." Thank you.
[Applause.]

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