Schedule on your Program Guide or watch online anytime at booktv. Org. Margaret coker is a prizewinning investigative journalist who over 19 19 yes covered stories2 from 32 countries on four continents. As Turkey Bureau chief for the wall street journal, she contributed to a 2016 series that was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in international reporting. She lives right here in savannah, lucky us, where she is editor in chief of the current, a nonprofit News Organization that provides original indepth watchdog journalism affecting savannah and coastal georgia. She is passionate about reviving an investigative news culture here in coastal georgia, and mentoring a new generation of journalists in this region. I ask you now to give a warm welcome to margaret coker. [applause] hi everyone. Welcome to savannah for everyone who is visiting and thank you all who are my neighbors for showing up before cocktail hour, which is what savannahs actually quite famous for. I appreciate that. Very lovely. Welcome. I want to give my thanks to the organizers of the book festival who have included me amongst an amazing. Mean cast of authors who have been here all weekend long. You know, i have been privileged to both live in savannah and attend the book festival for and i will say its not a humble brag. I never really thought that i would be up here before you because in fact, im in oldfashioned kind of journalist. Im the kind of journalist. That was taught that you go to places you interview people and you become the conduit for other peoples stories you add context to help people understand what it is that youve just learned from from your sources and and from regular people both here and around the world and im very deeply uncomfortable being up here and this end of the microphone instead of the one asking questions, but but i wrote a book that is is in that spirit the i come from a not from Savannah Savannah is my adopted home. Its the kind of southern town. I wish i was born in. And it is the kind of southern town that welcomes those of us who werent born in it, which makes it a very special place. I actually am a military brat both my mother and father served all of my uncle served. I have a fatherinlaw who served in World War Two my brotherinlaw served in the navy. So we come from a deep tradition of Public Service and we were also a family that grew up. Watching world war 2 movies. We went to battlefields. I was sort of raised on these tales of heroism and great wars of allies and enemies and im a person whos been alive. Not for those great wars. Im a person whos been alive half of my life has been part of the cold war. And almost almost chronologically half of my life has been spent during this very nebulous war on terror. I became a journalist in large part because i thought it was a Public Service and and a public duty for journalists to tell americans what their country was doing overseas. Im from that point of view. Im a very accidental war correspondent. But because i was ambitious because i wanted to be on the front page of my newspapers. I went to where the wars were and unfortunately the wars continued here after year after year, but thats how i got to rock in 2003. I was there on assignment and was actually living in the middle east living in jerusalem at the time, but the war was starting in iraq and those of us who were lucky enough to witness that part of history. We were in iraq for a very long time. For 20 years this war on terror has continued and i dont want to talk about Foreign Policy. I dont want to talk about american mistakes or successes. I wrote the book not to do any of that. I wrote the book really the spy master of baghdad to correct. What i saw was a glaring omission over last 20 years. As someone who grew up knowing a lot about our allies in World War Two, you know, i could talk to you about the warsaw ghetto uprising i could talk to you about French Resistance spiders, and we all probably know one or two of those stories. We knew who was fighting alongside of us. And in the war on terror americans and most journalists really havent spent enough time trying to figure out who those people were. The spymaster of baghdad i hope helps to fill that void and also helps to put iraqis back as main characters in their own modern history because as if youve if you follow Foreign Policy if you know anything about iraq, youll know that there are tomes and tones shelves and shelves of books that have been written by amazing american generals and servicemen and Service Women about their time spent in iraq about foreign, you know, x Us Government officials who also have their own stories to tell about iraq, but iraqis are missing from from our bookshelves and thats a shame. So ive been in and out of baghdad since 2003 living there for some times for a matter of days sometimes week sometimes months. Ive gone through a lot of different periods of baghdad baghdad as a city watching it grow and shrink contract and be just overcome with bloodshed. But as a person the way in which that i would deal with lots of that bloodshed and trauma is that i am a avid reader, but i read pot boilers. Im a great fan of detective stories. Im a great fan of spy novels and i if you anyone had the privilege to listen to William Kent Krueger last night you talk about the power of books and drama and the reason why a lot of his favorite books are his favorite books is because there is this natural arc of both tension, but also resolution and when the war on terror is going on and on and on and there is no natural or any natural resolution. I found a lot of comfort personal comfort in reading stories where good guys win. Its also the kind of stories i read when i was a kid. So im going to fast forward to time and place which is what any good storyteller should do really and again, this isnt about me. Its about the people that i wrote about in the sky master of baghdad. So if any of you read spy novels or have read anything about World War Two youll know that there are you know, there are world capitals that have been known as centers of espionage, right . Berlin vienna paris these places casablanca we both seen that movie right . We know that espionage is part and parcel of the way that governments conduct policy and sometimes when wars baghdad is one of the capitals that definitely deserves to be within that pantheon. Unfortunately, its very far away. Its hard to get to and it was pretty dangerous for a very long time. So i have been in and out of baghdad when the time and place when it was really the murder capital of the world. Where terrorist bombings were going on multiple times a day and in very very violent and indiscriminate ways. I have a very good iraqi friend whose mother left for work in the morning and she never came home and the family never found her body because she was caught up in in a bomb blast. That takes a toll on people, right . It takes a toll on families and we dont hear enough of those stories as americans in 2014. After we thought we had won the war on terror in iraq and al qaeda was eradicated and americans had had left iraq. There was a new iteration of a very terrible Extremist Group known as the Islamic State. And in this blitzkrieg. The Islamic State took over a third of the iraqi nation territorily it in a matter of weeks. It had split this amazingly large country in to into two and millions of iraqis were caught behind enemy lines. The rest of iraq well that blitzkrieg came to about 70 miles north of baghdad this capital city. Used to be the cradle of civilization has a university thats over a thousand years old has an incredibly educated professional class of people. Theres an arab proverb about the iraqis about how much they read it was devastating to them to see their country torn apart in this way in large part because this invading army the Islamic State it werent it wasnt the americans. It was in large part their own. It was like an iraqi civil war the head of Islamic State was in iraqi, man, most of the leadership of the iraqis were also were also people that that the iraqis had known and now they were killing killing their own people. In baghdad in that summer embassies were ready to evacuate iraqis. Thought it was the end of the world and then the war went on in the north. And the entire nation mobilized in a great war to try and save their nation. And i went back full time to cover iraq for the New York Times the summer of 2017. And like you im a media consumer. I watched tv. I see a lot of bombing. I see a lot of bloodshed and i thats what i thought i was going back to in baghdad. In fact when i arrived i saw the city that is undergoing a renaissance. There was there were kids in the street playing soccer. There were nightclubs you could buy booze there were students who were forming like grunge rock bands. And Small Businesses were reinvesting in their Small Businesses because people actually felt safe the for the first in a generation. And i was one of the few western journalists on the ground there. And having been through all of these different iterations of this city. I was thinking to myself a very basic question what the heck has happened who has cracked this very important puzzle of how do you make baghdad safe from this this horrendous terrorist threat, theres a ground war like like we havent seen since World War Two happening about 200 miles north of the capitol and here our kids going to nightclubs. What is going on . So an Old Fashioned journalistic technique ask a dumb question and hope for a smart answer. I went around baghdad to lots of different Security Officials both iraqi and american and british and french. Jordanian i just kept asking everybody what the heck is going on. How come baghdad is so safe. How is it that kids are out at midnight playing soccer in the streets. This is not the baghdad. I knew its not the baghdad any of my friends knew and i thought it was a pretty straightforward question turns out it was a really complicated answer because only five other people in the world knew what that answer was the answer it turns out is this plucky. A band of brothers in elite Iraqi Counterterrorism unit had managed to put one of their officers undercover inside the Islamic State in one of the most daring feeds of wartime espionage of modern times, and they were getting realtime intelligence from their officer. That was helping them. Keep the capital safe and keep the morale of the nation up while they were fighting this ground war to the north of the of baghdad. And i wasnt really expecting that huge answer but i started asking that question, but it turns out that i was unlocking an incredibly important secret weapon about how the iraqis ended up defeating the Islamic State. I thought i was gonna have maybe you know sort of a a story, you know in the middle of the New York Times the story that i got out of this question was on the front page of the New York Times and it went viral and it became became the basis for my book. Im not sure how many of you have read it. I dont want to give the ending away. So im going to be a bit circumspect about about the plot in the book. Let me just say that as a journalist. You know you years youre always sort of struggling for for a front page story. Of course, you know, nobody goes into journalism thinking theyre going to become a millionaire or a celebrity, but you are hoping to have your your ego stroked by getting your name in lights or getting your name on the front page of the New York Times. Its a really tough road to plow trying to find out something that nobody else in the world knows theyre a great journalists who do it. I think that i probably had some decent scoops in my career, but nothing like i had found out from the spymaster of baghdad baghdad this amazing man named abolsary. I didnt really understand how important my first meeting with him was going to be i didnt really know that it was going to end up to be this blockbuster story. All i knew was that i had spent five months trying to get someone to answer what i thought was an incredibly straightforwards question. How has gotten so safe and so at some point along this journalistic journey, you know, youre trying lots of different tricks to get people to tell you their secrets or just to answer their phone for gosh sakes. You know i had as i said gone to an enormous amount of people. I cant even tell you how many people i ask this question to without getting an answer. And at some point a grizzled iraqi veteran general told me you need to go see abu alvasse. Hes the only one that can answer your questions. And i was like, how do i get a double webelbasri . And he said heres his phone number try to call him. So i called and i called and i called and he wouldnt answer and he didnt answer my Text Messages anyone answer my voicemail messages. And so i finally got someone who knew him well to get me an introduction. And that is really what journalism is about just plugging away determinedly hitting your head against the wall and hoping someone answers their phone or you run into them on the street or you get inside their door and then you sweet talk your way into staying for a full interview. So abhalia basri finally decided to meet with me and again, this is after five months of trying. And i didnt really know what to ask him because i i was just told hes the guy with the answers and besides asking my one question. Ive been asking i didnt have anything else up my sleeve. But when i walked into this really dilapidated nondescript Office Building that had fluorescent lights and Us Government issued desks and a lot of dingy wallpaper because everyone in their chain smokes i thought okay, this feels like a spy novel because it truly did. There was atmosphere there were there were men with shifty eyes, and i dont mean that in a bad way. I just mean that spies or like that. So im walking down this hallway. Im being sort of gone go through the aunt to chamber and then to the personal assistant and then the personal assistance personal assistant, and im waiting to see abuelasri and im waiting to see abolasri and this is another trick of journalism is that nothing comes easily and you need to have patience and everybody treats you like an aunt because youre not important they are important and humility is a very valued talent to be a good journalist. Finally abu ali albasri stopped saving iraq and took some time to me. And i walk into his office. And he is a man that whos approximately five foot eight dressed in a gray suit and a kind of dingy white buttondown shirt. Hes incredibly clean shaven his desk is immaculate. There are like a filing system that any a type personality would would crave and and envy and he was incredibly softspoken. In fact, i had to sit closer to him just to hear what what he had to say. And i immediately thought to myself for any of you who have read john le carey. This is a smiley. This is George Smiley made flesh. He doesnt speak with a british accented english. In fact, he doesnt speak english at all. He just speaks arabic and i think thats part of the reason why nobody took the time to get to know him. Its become more fashionable thankfully for americans to read stories that come from different perspectives and different viewpoints and different cultures and from that point of view the spy master of baghdad has been published at a time and a place to have much more appreciation. I will only obasri decided he was going to talk to me and i think if i was a different personality, i might take full credit for this. You know, there are journalists who parachute in and out of war zones or parachute to natural disasters and they become the story and they think that they have either solved the worlds problems or explain the worlds problems. And i just wanted an answer to a very simple question and it turns out that abolasri had been waiting for someone to answer that question for him to be able to answer that question. So the third thing about journalism, is that as youre looking for sources. Theres this strange seductive relationship that you have to have youre looking for answers. Youre looking for someone who wants to talk and you have to find out the reason why they want to talk and sometimes its you know with with corporate ceos. Sometimes its just that that theyre lonely. Sometimes it is that theyre frustrated. Sometimes they want to bring down a rival and sometimes theyre actually heroes. Sometimes theyre like abolasri. Decided that well, im going to spoiler alert. Sorry, i cant really talk about it without you. What what the what his story is about . Abuela bossri lost a man behind enemy lines and these his band of brothers were people that he trained himself that he was he was building this unit to actually try to build a new iraq. And you know again i come from a this military background so this notion of not leaving any man behind is something that i think we can all understand weve all watched movies like that if we dont know people ourselves that are in the military. And what i can say is that its also not an american trade. This is something that holds true for any military around the world or anyone who gives is ready to lay down their life and sacrifice themselves for their country. So abu alia basri wanted to talk to me because he lost one of his officers and i was asking the question that was going to give him the platform to be able to tell me and tell the world how it was exactly that lost his man. You know the thing about being a spy if youre a professional Intelligence Officer is that you go to work in the shadows. You cant really talk about what you do. Because that gives away all your trade secrets and the only time anyone actually pays attention to you is when you get something wrong so you can be right 99 of the time and that one time youre wrong costs peoples lives and thats what you become known for. Abuelielbasri couldnt disclose his the mission this amazing feat of wartime espionage because of classification reasons, right . He couldnt endanger other people in the field and he couldnt get in trouble with his own government. But the problem was that he cared about his officer. He cared about this officers family and the family for those of you whove read the book. Im talking about the al sudanese right captain hara the sudani his brother munaf sudani. They come from the wrong side of the tracks. They come from a family that lives near the poverty line. They came from a family that had a real Glass Ceiling about who they could be and who could they could become when Saddam Hussein was in power, but after the americans deposed him all doors were open. And they really became another i mean theyre theyre gifted human beings and incredibly heroic and this sort of goes to another part of who i am as a person and the kind of stories that i like in the books. I like to read. Underdogs who doesnt like to read a story about underdogs the people who who come from nothing and make something of people who are normal. Every day folks who do extraordinary things and extraordinary times. These are the kind of stories that i hope that you take away from the spymaster of baghdad. Another reason why i wanted to write this book was that i come from regular folks too. You know, there are no great men and women of history in my family line, but we all enjoy reading a good story and those are the people really that help make history. They just dont usually get the chance to write it. So of all this time that ive been overseas 32 countries 20 years covering wars and and other things for the wall street journal the New York Times. You know, id come home here to savannah three times a year what my husband and i consider the high holy days. We come home for fourth of july and we come home for thanksgiving and sometime in the spring depending on when we could get time off either the Music Festival or sometimes the book festival. And when youd come home, you know, youd ask family and ask friends, theyd ask you how how you were theyd ask you what youve been up to and we would try to talk about our work and realize very quickly after about three or four minutes eyes would glaze over and was really tough for americans to understand exactly what we were talking about because lets face it middle eastern politics are really really complicated and if you are talking about people whose names are very hard to pronounce in countries that ever visit and peoples that youll probably never taste and in a time and place in america where politics are really complicated. Eyes glaze over i get it. Im not an academic. I didnt go to school to learn about middle the middle east. I didnt go to school to learn about complex international affairs. I wanted to tell stories that people could relate to and so that was another reason why i wrote this by master baghdad if you dont know anything about iraq, and you dont care about iraq if you dont care about the middle east, i hope that ive written something thats accessible for you to jump into because also at the heart of this its not just about heroes and its not just about the band of brothers and its not just about counterterism and and great spy tales. Its also about families. And getting to know these families the sudanes abu ali albasri and the other family who is part of my book who are the alchobaces the people who are very tragic figures whose daughter went down a extremist rabbit hole online and became a terrorist. She became a member voluntarily became a member of the Islamic State. All these people are real all their stories are true. All of them are very authentic and all of them. I hope will give you a window into what its been like to be in iraqi over the last 20 years as this forever war continues and its faded away from our our own consciousness. So im not sure what else i want to say again. Im very uncomfortable telling people about me. Its been a long time, you know, add the book the book festival. Im listening to amazing authors who have created imaginary worlds and beautiful characters and other authors who have been so brave to reveal themselves on the page. Im i am fascinated with the people who i interviewed and i hope ive been able to bring them to life. I will tell you just again from a authors perspective as a firsttime authors perspective. You know, there was an enormous amount of responsibility i put on myself to be able to tell stories about iraqis in you know, sort of a oneshot kind of deal. Its like that hamilton song, you know, you dont youve got one shot dont blow it. Because theres not a whole lot of appetite i thought for stories about normal iraqis regular iraqis or perhaps there are a bigger appetite for iraqis doing extraordinary things. So i spent an enormous amount of time researching. I spent months and months, of course in baghdad talking to all these people talking to all these families having the absolute privilege to be let into their homes. And again, its a story. About a band of brothers, but its also about families and as a female correspondent in the middle east i had the absolute privilege of going all over into peoples homes. I talked to wives and mothers and sisters. I talked to people in jail. I talked to people in unhappy marriages. You know it i felt an enormous amount of honor to be able to bring their stories to light and theres also another rule about journalism about being in the right place at the right time. I went to write this book in terms of my iraqi friends and sources. I wondered the right place the right time because for many of them they were they were in mourning one family lost a son one family lost a daughter and abu albasi this bypasser lost a very trusted officer. And iraq and the middle east at large the arab world at large, you know, its a culture that has a very rich history of poetry and a lyrical language. But there is no sensibility about talking about your feelings in real time. Theres really i know a lot of families across the arab world people dont air their dirty laundry people. Dont talk about their feelings. This is they have no oprah winfrey. There is no culture of that and back to being at the right place at the right time, of course Everyone Needs to talk about their emotions and i became a conduit for them to be able to grieve and explain and dissect and and be be introspective about their lives about their own mistakes as parents about their mistakes as siblings about unhappy marriages and where they all had gone wrong or maybe had gone, right . That in and of itself like as a journalist, i like that is one of my bigger successes in terms of the the way in which i got people to open up. Theres a lot of journalists who can talk about National Security secrets and i happen to be in baghdad and i happened to know one that nobody else in the world knew in terms of journalism that is but i also feel like ive gotten to know these families in a way that that Many Americans and many westerners do not so i hope that i hope ive done them justice and i hope that you enjoy reading if you havent. Thank you very much for coming today. Have any questions you can line up here, please and margaret be happy to answer them any questions. Hey meg. So my question is thats an amazing life and youre here in savannah. So two parts, i guess do you miss that life . And if so, do you compensate for it and how well one part about me. My husband and ive had our house in savannah since a 2009 and it has been our Vacation Home for a very long time it became our fulltime home when i got my book contract and that was my pivot out of this very glamorous and and very rewarding life as a foreign correspondent. I wanted to come home. I wanted to be home in america. I wanted to be home in savannah and my newspapers seen what they thought i was good at kept putting me farther and farther away from america. Who knew that Nonfiction Book contracts can pay better than a newspaper job. So having having a story like the spymaster of baghdad and like captain har the sudanese story of bravery meant that i could actually follow my dream and and come home for for good. So do i miss that old life . I i, you know, its its its probably like a retired olympian. You kind of miss what you used to do. Well. But its not its nostalgia in a good way and not nostalgia in a bad way. Like im im not at all itching to pack my bags and go off to the russian Ukrainian Border and cover another war. No, i didnt become a work correspondent because im addicted to conflict or addicted to drama or addicted to adrenaline. I became a work correspondent accidentally because america started a war and america then continued this war on terror. So compensating i mean i miss my iraqi friends a great deal. I was just texting earlier today. It is the birthday of my my very beloved translator who helped get me that original interview with abu ali albasri and so hes a 63 year old iraqi, man. Whos one of the best journalists ive ever met and i missed him terribly i compensate by making middle eastern food. Those of you had my hummus. I will im not gonna open up a stand at forsyth park, but ill tell you what if you come over i can make you some pretty good hummus. Marvin of the gentleman who book is about i mean what has happened to them you mean well, i you know in most spy stories you dont reveal who the person is unless you have to and you know, you very freely use his name so that part i didnt understand. So i wonder what what has become of him. Sure. So my spy master abu ali albasri. This is his nam duguere. This isnt his actual name. And and so i he if i know his real name people who need to know know his real name, but he is a man who continues to put officers, you know undercover and they continue this very long arduous journey to find out who the islamic are in their midst. Hes he is a man of impeccable Operational Security if you you know, if i told you his real name, you wouldnt be able to find him at all online because he scrubs these scrubs at all. Theres not a picture of him that has ever been published and he and i sat down some very specific ground rules about how i could tell these stories. He wanted to tell the original story about captain harlow sudani because he wanted to help the sudanese family overcome a lot of bureaucratic hurdles and get the Veterans Benefits that the family deserved for having a man die in the service of his country. Because the classification was top secret. He couldnt go and help clear those bureaucratic hurdles. My story allowed that to happen and the government has now taken care of the sudanese family. So that is a major win in terms of journalism. Right . Ive actually helped change and improve someones life and get them what they were due because the the acclaim and and the celebrity that the sudanian family now has for this amazing amazing sacrifice that their son had made when i was writing the book and going through more operations and more details about how they work. I was very very clear with with the falcons the spy unit. I said that i want to be able to tell your stories. I also dont want to endanger anyone else whos going undercover. And so i know a lot of things about them that i didnt publish and some of those things are are very cool and some of those things are how do you actually set a iraqi to go undercover and the complexities of Iraqi Society are such that there are two different versions of islam that are practiced by iraqis. And the sudan is our shia muslims, the Islamic State is full of radical sunni terrorists so you have ythis shia young man who has to basically fake it. He had to fake that he belonged not only to a different sort of religious tradition but also been fake and accent, be part of the country that he wasnt from and adapt an entire persona. A great cover story that john mcrae would probably kill for. So i know a lot about that process and im not publishing it because i want to make sure the falcons are allowed to do that again and again andagain. Nobody had anyoversight over what i was wdoing. We jumped when we started to build a relationship with a source and you earn their trust you dont break that trust so theres lots of more breaking news sexy things that i know i wont publish them because im going to honor that actthat we have. Having said that i also have a lot of challenges about double checking and confirming what they were telling me. I like these guys, their heroes in my book and that takes a lot for me to say because ive met a lot of schmucks in my time and a lot of people who have a lot of different reasonsfor talking to journalists. But these guys have made mistakes, theyre not 100 percent foolproof but when you start getting into their lives and their stories and their operations, who of us doesnt tell a few white lies . Two of us doesnt throw some hyperbole into storytelling but i then had to do was check these guys that i liked and rthat took many months and having to fact check them and make sure whatever ive written in the book is not only true but also accurate. What are you working on now and do you have another book in the works. Two questions. As a firsttime book author i would not recommend it for the fainthearted. It is an exquisite form of torture. So i was lucky enough to finish oomy book right before covid19 started and i was left with this big hole professionally. Unfortunately as a journalist theres always another news story to cover but as those of us who live in coastal georgia know on february 23, 2020 eight young black man named ammann artery was murdered. What im working on next, im working on covering the trial of his killers. So ive had a really long week covering the trials of his killers but this is all another like really really inspiring life moment. Because i was professionally at loose ends feeling and urgency about covering stories that are in the Public Interest here at home in my backyard among my neighbors and with a group of incredibly committed Community Leaders are in savanna and friends, we launched a nonprofitNews Organization called the current. And so, thats what im working onnow. Working on keeping my emotions under control. Because in fact theres a are things that happen in your life for reasons. Things that happen in your life serendipitously. Things you dont expect to happen in your life at all and i really believe in the profession of journalism. I believe in the craft of journalism and its been working for a very long time in big media organizations where the soul gets sucked out of you because youre working for a big media organization. And so the idea that ive been able to come home and be able to put all my skills towards telling impactful stories about the people that i care that the most and the part of america i care about the most is also quite a blessing so for those of you who read thank you very much. For those of you who donate to the current again thank you very much. And yeah, if you want to read more stories about coastal georgia you can pick us up at the current ga all one word. [applause] homework can be hard but squatting in a diner for internetwork is even harder. Thats why were providing lower income students access to affordable internet so more and just be homework. Cox connected. Cox along with these Television Companies supports cspan2 as a Public Service. Im amanda, director of Adult Education here in washington dc at this international spymuseum. Really glad thatyou are here with us today. The spy museum has a new curator Andrew Hammond and will be talking with anna about her new book sleeper
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