Baghdad

Even though the election and economic crisis have pushed the Iraq war off the front—or even the first dozen—pages of newspapers, the December 2008 issue of Vanity Fair features an article by Seth Mnookin in which he reports on life inside The New York Times' Baghdad bureau. The story is not yet online, but it's full of interesting points, including details of "internecine warfare that once wracked the bureau." Update: November 4, 2008: Here it is: The New York Times’s Lonely War.

According to Mr. Mnookin, maintaining a presence in Iraq costs The Times "upwards of $3 million a year.  read more »

Terry McCarthy of ABC News recently told the Observer that as the level of violence in Iraq has dropped off in recent months, correspondents in Baghdad have had more time to work on feature stories about the state of the country—rather than, say, report on the latest suicide bombing.

Last night, Mr. McCarthy reported one such "believe it or not" feature for World News with Charlie Gibson. The story was about booming housing prices in Baghdad.  read more »

"I had a big birthday the other day, a birthday with a zero in it," said Jim Muir, the Baghdad bureau chief for the BBC. "Unbeknownst to me they organized a surprise party. They put out an invitation to our street, which we share with the New York Times, and Reuters, and the AP, and various other news outlets. Only two people came."

The life of a foreign correspondent can be an isolating job; but that is nowhere as true as it is for the reporters covering Baghdad.

It’s rare that you ever leave your bureau at all. When you do, you’re taking one giant risk. So is it really worth it to grab your buddies in the bureau, corral security detail and some translators all so you can share a glass of wine with another reporter?

And if you did … where would you go?

"This is the single worst war I’ve ever had to cover in terms of after hours," said Terry McCarthy, bureau chief for ABC. "There are no bars here. We can’t really go out at night. You really only socialize with the people in your own compound. It’s not fun."

"Once you are in Iraq you have to live it 24 hours a day," said Michael Ware of CNN. "It’s not as if you can stroll down to a restaurant. It’s not as if there is anything of an ilk of a great Saigon bar."

"It’s the most confining story I’ve ever covered," said Bob Reid, the AP’s bureau chief, and 31-year veteran of foreign assignments. "I find actually it’s quite limiting. When you talk to other reporters, it’s good to bounce off ideas and some perspective. It helps you round your opinion of what’s going on and that’s very difficult in an environment like this."  read more »

To reach Babak Dehghanpisheh, Newsweek's Baghdad Bureau Chief, you have to dial an twelve-digit number (that's minus a series of zeros that you sometimes need to dial first) which rings him on his satellite phone in the house the magazine shares with two other media organizations inside Baghdad's fortified Green Zone.

Mr. Dehghanpisheh, who's been in and out of Iraq since 2003 in rotations that usually last two months at a time, sounds pretty upbeat as he talks about the challenges of reporting a war that in five years has gone through so many different phases. "In '03, '04 movement was pretty much unrestricted, I guess self-restricted," Mr. Dehghanpaisheh says through a slight delay. "You'd jump in a car and go to Fallujah and report a story. You could get away with a pretty bare bones security set up in those early days. Maybe just a guard. But in general, relatively low-key."  read more »

“It’s the oft-stated phrase that truth is the first casualty of war,” said Michael Ware, CNN’s Baghdad correspondent, on the telephone from Iraq. “In this war, as in every other conflict, everybody lies to you. Your government is lying to you. The Iraqi government is lying. The insurgents are lying. The militias are lying. The U.S. military is lying. Even the civilians lie. Or in the best case, there’s confusion and exaggeration. The truth is the most elusive thing in war, particularly in an insurgency.”

Sixty-two months into the war, this is the language of the American journalist in Iraq. It’s not the only language; there are others: Cyclical, monotonous, brutal, strategic, hopeful. But slowly, as Iraq slips from the front pages and Web pages, today’s news starts to sound like yesterday’s; violence explodes; a spectacular military success, or failure. Casualty lists grow until they become incomprehensible, and then unreadable, unquantifiable. Against that metronomic numbness, 90 American journalists (according to a November 2007 study by the Project for Excellence in Journalism) continue to work a dangerous war that becomes a harder and harder story to sell to Americans. As the American press corps gets older, wearier—and simultaneously younger and more untested as the veterans leave—there are truths that some of the reporters of Baghdad have learned about the war in Iraq.  read more »

Room 9 bulletin:

Popular City Hall reporter Stephanie Gaskell is quitting her job with the New York Post to go cover the war in Iraq as a freelancer, she told me.

Gaskell, who covered Guantanamo Bay for the AP around 2002, is leaving on Friday night -- missing the Inner Circle show! -- and should be in Baghdad by Monday.

She'll be embedded with the military for two or three months.

We all wish her extremely well.

-- Azi Paybarah

Both Iraqis and Americans alike were stunned by the audacity of Senator John McCain’s heavily  read more »

Every dismal anniversary of the U.S.  read more »

The New York Times didn't have to look far for one new Baghdad correspondent: He's already in Baghdad.

Stephen Farrell, a Middle East correspondent for The Times of London, will be switching to the New York Times compound later this year.

"He's a very seasoned war correspondent," said New York Times deputy foreign editor Ethan Bronner.

Bronner noted that the paper has also hired Alissa Rubin, who was the Los Angeles Times' Baghdad bureau co-chief from 2003 to 2005.

In addition to writing dispatches, Farrell has multimedia credentials: He co-writes the British newspaper's "Inside Iraq" blog. A recent entry included a "Video Diary" of a roadside bombing.

"These are people with experience, generally in war and in difficult circumstances, and specifically in Iraq," Bronner said. "We wanted people who have some institutional memory regarding Iraq so we don't start from zero."

John F. Burns, the current Times Baghdad bureau chief, plans to leave this summer to head the London bureau. And Sabrina Tavernise, who spent 22 months in Iraq from 2003 to 2007, has recently left the country. Next month, Tavernise is due to become the Istanbul bureau chief, a job that has been vacant since the contentious 2005 departure of reporter Susan Sachs.

Besides the hires of Farrell and Rubin, the Times is still seeking to fill more slots by summer, most likely with reporters less seasoned in war reporting. On Feb. 26, two openings for one-year rotating reporting jobs were listed on the paper's internal Web site.

-- Michael Calderone

Here's Congressman Joe Crowley's prepared statement on the House resolution opposing the troop increase in Iraq:

"Whether or not my colleagues want to refer to the president's plan as a surge or escalation, I see it as a target on the backs of our armed forces."

His full remarks are after the jump.  read more »

-- Azi Paybarah

Anthony Minghella’s Breaking and Entering, from his own screenplay, very expressively projects  read more »

WASHINGTON, D.C.—On the day that Hillary Clinton was scheduled to announce her much-anticipate  read more »

“There have been a number of occasions where we said, ‘This story’s bullshit,&rsqu  read more »

So now that the Democrats have won control of Congress, what should they do about the war in Iraq?  read more »

So now that the Democrats have won control of Congress, what should they do about the war in Iraq?  read more »

Before the publication of the Iraq Study Group report, predictions abounded that the committee, chai  read more »

“The United States, in a way, is trapped in Iraq,” Kofi Annan recently said.  read more »

Dexter Filkins, the longtime New York Times Baghdad correspondent, takes the cover of the NYT mag this upcoming weekend with a profile of Ahmad Chalabi, Iraqi politician, CIA source, and all-around slippery fish.

In the profile, Chalabi denies--"This is an urban myth"-- that he mislead the Bush administration about W.M.D.s. Chalabi also says that the Iraqi defectors that he provided to U.S. agents for intel on Iraq's Hussein regime were pretty much random guys that Chalabi wouldn't vouch for at all.

And how does he think the occupation of Iraq is going? "The Americans screwed it up," says Chalabi.

But what of Chalabi's role in the overtures to a war?

Filkins writes: "It was Chalabi, after all--a foreigner, an Arab--who persuaded the most powerful men and women in the United States to make the liberation of Iraq not merely a priority but an obsession. .... Chalabi [persuaded] the Bush administration of the necessity of using force to destroy Saddam Huseein. And when it all went bad, when those nuclear weapons never turned up, the clever child shrugged and smiled."

"When no W.M.D. turned up, more and more Americans came to blame Chalabi for the war," is how Filkins puts it.

Only once does the role of the Times in the lead-up to the war explicitly crop up.

There is one parenthetical expression, which begins: "A New York Times reporter, Judith Miller, was one of Chalabi's primary conduits...."

That done, Filkins writes: "Indeed, the press proved even more gullible than the intelligence experts in the American government."

ThinkProgress has exclusive video of Rep. Peter King speaking to a crowd at the Merrick Jewish Center, where he said that life in Baghdad isn't that different than it is in New York City.

"As we go through the city of Baghdad, it was like being in Manhattan. I mean, I'm talking about bumper to bumper traffic, talking about shopping centers...Again, that's not something you'd see on television, and at any given time a suicide bomber can walk into an amusement center, but the point I'm making is that the situation is more stable than you think."

So other than civilians getting blown up on a regular basis, it's fine.

-- Azi Paybarah

Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq, by Thomas E. Ricks.  read more »

The abduction of Jill Carroll in Baghdad in January, along with the murder of her interpreter, Alan Enwiya, was an important event. Her ordeal demonstrated that the Islamic world has friends in the West—people like Jill Carroll, people who went out to try and understand who they are, in the wake of 9/11. Appeals from around the Arab world surely played a role in her being freed by jihadists. And during her captivity, 82 days, a lot of us who thought about her felt we knew her: a serious and generous person who knew how to enjoy herself.

Alas, it appears that Carroll has now gone along with the Christian Science Monitor's addlepated plan to turn her abduction into a circulation bonanza. It is running her story over several days. The result is so far a disaster. The first entry is all action, and lots of it. Nothing but action. Not a serious thought to be had. And the story is co-bylined. A guy named Peter Grier gets equal credit. I thought Jill Carroll was a writer. Dammit, she is a writer.

This is shocking. The one thing an intelligent reader always wanted after Carroll's joyful release was Jill Carroll's thoughts, Jill Carroll's experience, Jill Carroll's honest reflections. Unfiltered. Undramatized. Find a rock and crawl under it, Monitor, and let Jill Carroll speak for herself.

One reason the Iraqis don’t believe that the U.S.  read more »

One reason the Iraqis don’t believe that the U.S.  read more »

Natan Scharansky, the rightwing Israeli, made a poetic statement once about the Soviet Union. He hated his guards so much that when they told him to walk straight somewhere, he walked in a zigzag, just to demonstrate his own free will.

The other day Scharansky was on a panel in Philadelphia at which it was agreed that democracy isn't

On today's Washington Journal, Neil King said that being able to vote doesn't mean anything in Baghdad when your refrigerator doesn't work. Pamela Hess of UPI said that the American military is well aware of Maslow's hierarchy of needs—who needs the right to vote if you can't even shelter yourself. Syria Comment has a great item on the end of the democratic visions for the Middle East.

Two years ago Wall Street Journal reporter Farnaz Fassihi blew our minds with a samizdat email from Baghdad, quickly circulated everywhere, showing it was impossible to live in a normal way in that city. Old news now.

Today a Journal reporter does it again. Neil King, diplomatic correspondent, on CSpan's Washington Journal this morning, relates the latest saying on the Baghdad street: "I'd rather have a fever than death."

What's that mean? They'd rather have Saddam back than what they're experiencing now. A chance of dying every time they step out the door, the loss of the most basic amenities. "These people have electricity four hours a day," King said. "They can't keep meat in the refrigerator."

In the acrid debate over Iraq, the President’s supporters will say anything.  read more »

In the acrid debate over Iraq, the President’s supporters will say anything.  read more »

More on the real Iraq: "Riverbend," the electifying and poetical blogger in Baghdad, offers the desolating tale of a sportloving shopowner who displayed the Brazilian flag in his window till the party of Muqtada al-Sadr, which is part of the government coalition, ordered him to take it down. Riverbend says that Sadr has issued a fatwa against soccer. She downloaded and translated his words:

"[Islamic law] prohibits activities that keep the followers too occupied for worshiping, that keep people from remembering [to worship]. The West created things that keep us from completing ourselves (perfection). What did they make us do? Run after a ball... What does that mean? A man, this large tall Muslim—running after a ball? This 'goal' as it is called... If you want to run run for a noble goal, follow the noble goals which complete you and not the ones that demean you...That is one thing. The second thing, which is more important, we find that the West and especially Israel, did you see them playing soccer? Did you see them playing games like Arabs play? They let us keep busy with soccer and other things. Have you heard that the Israeli team, curse them, got the World Cup? Or even America? Only other games... They've kept us occupied with them—singing and soccer and smoking, and satellites used for things which are blasphemous. While they occuppy themselves with science etc. Why habeebi? Are they better than us- no we're better than them."

Riverbend adds a lament:

Islamic Sharia does not prohibit soccer/football or sports—it's only prohibited by the version of Sharia in Muqtada's dark little head. I wonder what he thinks of tennis, swimming and yoga... So when Bush raves about the new 'fledgling Iraqi government' 'freely elected' into power, you can take a look at Muqtada and see one of the fledglings. He is currently one of the most powerful men in the country for his followers. So this is democracy... Muqtada Al-Sadr is a measure of how much we've regressed these last three years... From a country that once celebrated sports—soccer especially— to a country that worries if the male football players are wearing long enough shorts or whether all sports fans will face eternal damnation... That's what we've become.

The Washington Post today has an amazing cable from the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad to the State Department reporting on conditions in the capital. Based on the accounts of Iraqi staff, the cable shows that Iraq is dissolving into civil war. Different forms of sectarian dress are now required in different sections of the city, the upscale districts are ghost towns, and Embassy staff don't even let family members know that they work for the Americans, resentment against the occupiers is so strong.

Are these the accomplishments George Bush trumpeted last week? He would do far more for the Iraqis by conceding the American effort has failed, and seeking international cooperation to preserve a broken state.

I said I'd follow up on the report that Coalition forces in Iraq can't watch the World Cup on TV. My friend Maria sent me this exchange with her brother in Baghdad:

I asked about his coalition friends, if they'd be watching the games--

"Some pigs have to be watching the games. They have to have satellite dishes from their home countries but I haven't found them. I'll just read about it. It's so stupid that the military channel doesn't carry it. They only have baseball and junk like that. How stupid.">

Hear, hear. Everyone talks about body armor and weapons. What about the soldiers' hearts and minds?

This New Orleans dog, abandoned by her owner even after the waters receded, was rescued by Maria, at left, when she worked at a shelter in Baton Rouge. As a doglover, I welcome her onto my blog, but chiefly to raise a fresh injustice:

Maria, who dined at my house last night (my social behavior was largely O.K., though I have not yet gotten the grade from my wife), has a brother serving in Baghdad. A Marine colonel. And she reports that the troops there cannot watch the World Cup on the television service provided to them by the Coalition Authority. If true, that's wrong. I'm looking into it...  read more »

Over Memorial Day weekend, New York Times metro reporter Paul von Zielbauer called his mother to tel  read more »

Over Memorial Day weekend, New York Times metro reporter Paul von Zielbauer called his mother to tel  read more »

A friend who attended the Times Magazine panel on Iraq coverage last Sunday (which was reported in the Observer) tells me she was stunned to hear Times Baghdad correspondent Dexter Filkins describe how few reporters from countries beside the U.K. and the U.S. are now there. My friend summarized the point: "Other countries don't see it as their war, and the risks are too high."

I emailed Filkins to clarify the point, and asked him Was he already back in Baghdad. He responded:

Someone asked me about other foreign news organizations in Baghdad. I said there were few reporters left in Baghdad of any nationality. I would guess there are probably fewer than 50 here now; there were hundreds, maybe more than a thousand, in 2003 and 2004. There are still some reporters here for European newspapers, wire services and television, but very few. And yes, I left [the panel] to go the airport and Baghdad. I'm in Baghdad now.

Ten days ago I praised Richard Engel's beautiful and amazing story on NBC Nightly News about a Baghdad orphanage for girls whose parents had died because of the war we started. I was hardly alone. Last night Brian Williams said that the network had been overwhelmed by emails and calls about the story. The network then did something great: it reaired the story.

You will see that it has top billing on the NBC website. Here the headline is "How to Help Iraq's Orphans." NBC then suggests that viewers give money to Unicef, No More Victims, and two other nonprofit groups.

I don't think that's enough. By twice doing this story, for the edification and diversion of Americans in their kitchens, NBC has established a special connection that it should honor—a connection not to a generic group of Iraq orphans, but to these 56 girls. On last night's report, Engel said that masked men had lately come to the door of the orphanage. He showed the girls cowering in a back room. Will these girls now be a special focus of terrorism? The thought is almost too horrible to consider, but it should be on NBC's mind. What threat has this tearjerker exposed these girls to? What threat does life in Baghdad—a life far outside NBC's bunkered bureau and flakjackets—expose them to?

Last night, Williams said that adoption by Americans was impossible. But there is an obvious answer. These girls should be evacuated. NBC should take steps to achieve that, even if that means getting them into the NBC bunker. My best guess is that evacuation means Syria, where in January I saw some of the hundreds of thousands of former neighbors who were now living peaceful lives. And my wife's cousin, who teaches in Damascus, told of teaching Iraqi refugees, some the victims of kidnaping.

“There’s nobody who has had more tangible, visible effect on the newspaper you see when  read more »

“There’s nobody who has had more tangible, visible effect on the newspaper you see when you pick  read more »

As our new friends at the Empire Zone noted, Hillary's folded some comments about Iraq into her Energy Speech yesterday, though we're not too convinced that she is clearing much air on her stance. We've been wondering for some time now about Clinton's plan for Iraq. And to us, her remarks that, "We have to wait until an Iraqi government is in place'' and wait until it can "take responsibility for the security of the Iraqi people'' still seems like a political placeholder.

When we took a long hard look at Hillary's plan for Iraq, we found that she wants 2006 to be a year of transition, with more troops coming home and others remaining for quick-strike capabilities and intelligence work. Clinton and her advisors have steadfastly refused to go beyond that, presumably hesitant to take that risk in light of her unique political situation.

So until all the government posts are filled in Baghdad, expect Hilary to keep it vague. After that, we'll either get some facts or, just as likely, another bechmark that needs to be met before her plan can be fully divulged.

—Jason Horowitz

Why is everyone in New York trying to get everyone else to go to yoga all the goddam time?

A dozen gossip folk have turned him down. So why can't Richard Johnson hire a new Page Six writer?

What does '08 contender John McCain say behind closed doors? Here's what!

Mets-man Carlos Delgado is suffering in silence—all the way to the bank. But at least he's not wearing Perry Ellis.

The Bloomberg building—and its antipathy to ornament, hyper-modern transparency, and free food everywhere—is the tower of our times.

How many Times staffers might be interested in working in Baghdad? Five.

Couples therapy pros George 'n' Hilly have a three-way, of sorts. Ummm!

I just got a copy of Ken Pollack's latest book on Iran, The Persian Puzzle, and was shocked on flipping to page 429, the Author's Note at the end of the book, to read that Pollack has never been to Iran and doesn't speak Persian, has only dribs and drabs of Arabic. You'd think a book that purports to explain the "Persian Puzzle" might have offered that disclaimer at the front.

Pollack is an influential intellectual. As a scholar at the liberal Brookings Institution, whatever liberal means these days, he advocated invasion of Iraq in the book The Threatening Storm, back in 2002, thereby giving crucial centrist support to the neocons. Pollack argued that the way to peace in the Middle East lay through Baghdad. I.e., convert the Arabs to democracy there and everything else will fall into place. That book begins with Pollack's bona fides: he was in the CIA "on the Iran-Iraq account." Now we know he's never been to Iran. Has he ever been to Iraq?

This is one of the problems with our arrogant war policy. People who are experts on a place they've never been to. The intellectual equivalent of the smart bomb—you judge without ever having to hit the ground. Maybe we ought to do more to actually look around the countries we're thinking of invading. Because, surprise, we might end up living there for a long time.

The Times is confused about the scandal at the Post. On the one hand, it regards it as titillating gossip. Thus the montage of gossipy photos and the nut-graf dismissing the story as the gossip that everyone is buzzing about. On the other hand, the giant front page display, dominating the page. A picture of Anthony Haden-Guest (on the front page at last!) where I am expecting to find a sheet-draped corpse outside the Baghdad mosque. Because, after all, this is a federal investigation.

The Times confusion is understandable. We've always known that Page 6 plays favorites, it's hard to take the thing seriously. Years ago I heard an editor say they couldn't print a certain item, it would piss off their friend, and the Post needed friends—they were the sources for their nasty items about their targets. So from a reader's standpoint the page was always compromised and what did it matter whether there was money involved.

Of course the money makes it truly sinister. Makes the Post characters far more intriguing. Throws a window open on the entertainment culture. An important story. God knows, maybe it will bring the conservatives down?

I'm reminded of my (latest) literary idol: Muriel Spark. Dame Muriel believes that almost all human relations can be boiled down to one principle: blackmail. In her greatest tales, you will always find someone who purports to believe in one ideal or another blackmailing another. Even Sandy in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. It is Spark's bottom line on human nature. And now the Post has revealed itself, as a fine Muriel Spark plot. Oh right—allegedly.

It's heartening to know that, when we bring Democracy to Iraq, we're bringing the whole package.

As part of a plea agreement, "Robert J. Stein Jr., 50, a Dept. of Defense contract employee," is dishing the dirt. From McGraw Hill Construction's piece by the tantalizingly bylined Tom Sawyer:

According the plea documents, Stein and his co-conspirators accepted high bids known to be from fictitious companies submitted by the contractor to ensure that he won the work. They structured deals into awards of less than $500,000 to avoid exceeding Stein’s contracting authority. And they hid payments as large as $498,000 by using small payment forms with a limit of $15,000 not normally audited by central authorities in Baghdad.

The projects involved the public library in Karbala and the police academy, regional democracy center and demolition of the Baath Party headquarters in Al Hillah. Stein faces up to 30 years in jail and a $250,000 fine.

We love libraries!  read more »

- Tom McGeveran

It would have been a familiar-looking segment, if ABC had been able to air it: brand-new World News  read more »

It would have been a familiar-looking segment, if ABC had been able to air it: brand-new World News  read more »

On the day that American bombs began dropping on Iraq in March 2003, The New York Times’ Dexte  read more »

On the day that American bombs began dropping on Iraq in March 2003, The New York Times’ Dexter Fi  read more »

In some strange alternate universe, one without bombings and beheadings and troops with machine guns  read more »

On the morning of Aug.  read more »

The New York Times is in settlement talks with the Newspaper Guild over the case of Susan Sachs, the Times correspondent fired by the the paper this past April, according to a source familiar with the proceedings.

Sachs, a former Baghdad bureau chief, and the Guild had been scheduled to challenge her termination at arbitration proceedings beginning today. Those proceedings have been put off in favor of settlement discussions.

Sachs' dismissal was accompanied by accusations she had sent anonymous e-mails and/or letters to the wives of Times reporters Dexter Filkins and John Burns, alerting them to alleged marital infidelity in the war zone.

Denouncing co-workers for philandering may be an uncollegial move, but it's not necessarily a firable offense. In August, the Guild described Sachs' case as "strictly one of credibility. The Times has accused her of doing something she insists she didn't do."

The Guild also said that the Times did not pay Sachs any severance, and that company officials said "she was being dishonest with them when they questioned her about the incident in question, an accusation she denies."

Under the Times' contract with the Guild, a source familiar with the terms explained, any type of dishonesty--lying, stealing, etc.--can be cause for termination.

But when she was dismissed, Sachs publicly disputed the charges and said she had taken a polygraph test and passed. Last month, Sachs traveled to New York from Paris, where she now lives, and took a second polygraph test, which she also passed, according to a source familiar with her case.

The Times is also facing an arbitration session on Nov. 15, that of former Times photographer Nancy Siesel, who was fired in March 2005 for performance reasons. Both Siesel and Sachs are being represented, along with the Guild, by Barry Peek, an labor lawyer with Meyer, Suozzi, English and Klein. Mr. Peek declined to comment on Sachs' case.

In an e-mail from Paris, Sachs wrote that charges brought against her by "some people at the New York Times" were "totally false."

Sachs joined the Times in 1998 from Newsday, where she had been both a Moscow and Middle East correspondent. She became the Times' Baghdad bureau chief in September 2003. After a troubled five-month tenure there--during which press reports had her in a turf war with both Burns and Filkins--she returned to New York, then became the Istanbul bureau chief in March 2004. She remained in that post till her firing.

More recently, she has lived in Paris, freelancing for the Globe and Mail. Her husband, Claude Lorieux, who covered the Middle East for Le Figaro, died in April, and she has been working to complete a book on the Arab world he had been writing. In the spring, she plans to start teaching at the journalism school at Sciences Po in Paris.

It remains unclear what, exactly, happened in the centrifuge that was the Times' Baghdad bureau during Sachs' tumultuous time there.

An acquaintance of Sachs said that some people who know her felt that the missives that led to her downfall may have been a setup by someone who wished her ill. Asked whether that reflected her own feelings on the matter, Sachs said, via e-mail from Paris, "No, it's not."

In another e-mail, Sachs wrote. "I hope you understand that I certainly enjoyed my job at the Times. The Istanbul bureau, where I was last, was my dream job, one I wanted for many years."  read more »

--Sheelah Kolhatkar