Jim: The James Foley Story Page #2

Who are you?"

Just that jaw man, like, just

f***ing cut cheese with that thing.

There wasn't anything mundane

about the man whatsoever.

He never really like, projected himself onto

a situation and he dealt well with people.

[Jim] Who are the Libyan rebels determined

to overthrow 42 years of dictatorship?

[Jim]

Welder? Off-shore welding?

- Platform, yeah.

- Okay, dangerous job.

They're brave as individuals, but many

show a dangerous lack of weapons training.

[Clare] There were so many

freelancers who came in

at that point in time who were so new,

Jim and I among them, and I found out

only later that there were a number

of much more experienced

photo-journalists

who'd made one or two

trips to the front line

and said "F*** it, this is

way too dangerous."

Jim had a high tolerance for danger.

- [Jim] Sh*t!

- I mean, sure, he was drawn to that. All of us are in a way.

He was cool as a cucumber as well.

Hey, like wearing this little like,

tiny vest that he used to wear.

[Clare] The fact that he stayed so calm

made it easy to feel calm in that situation,

but, of course, sometimes, I was just like, "Well,

that's crazy, I'm not going there with you."

[Jim] I would come back to Benghazi

and there was stuff going on there.

There was families and they

were out there in the protest,

and they were out there

maybe handling medical supplies,

which is probably more important to

what this revolutionary movement was...

but then being called out to that front

line again like some kind of siren song.

It was one of those mornings where we

decided we were gonna get out there early.

We wanted to get a fresh

look at the front lines.

It was myself, Clare Gillis,

Manu Brabo and Anton Hammerl,

a South African

photo-journalist.

- Meet my new friend. Anton.

- Anton.

And what it was really was just a highway,

a coastal highway going all across Libya,

and this is where

the battle was going on.

So it was kind of like

a Mad Max type war.

Now this was something common

that some reporters did.

Freelancers like myself didn't have big

budgets, we'd jump in with the rebels.

And it was at your own risk if

you wanted to go further or not.

We got to the points where

we saw another group of rebels

saying Gadhafi forces

are 300 meters away.

And myself looking at Clare,

like, that's impossible.

And I remember, you know, Anton turning

to me and saying "Hey, this isn't safe."

But we didn't turn around, and we said,

"Well, let's get off the road anyways."

Well, that was the exact

wrong thing to do.

Two heavily armed Gadhafi pickup

trucks came over that rise firing.

I remember so clearly the sound of it,

the volume of it, the sound

of something eating metal...

and I remember hoping against hope that there

would be some kind of out, out of this,

there was some kind of

trap door in time.

I crawled back to the sand dune, Anton was

at the other sand dune in front of me,

I heard him call for help.

It appeared he was cut across

the midsection with AK fire

and it was a serious amount of blood.

He had already lost consciousness

and probably already died.

A group of young soldiers approached me and

we were thrown in the back of a truck.

I remember getting photographed

with a cell phone,

and thinking, you know, this is where

they find all these photographs

that are evidence of war crimes some

day, and realizing this is me now.

[Diane]

I was with my mother.

We were out to lunch

and I received a phone call,

and, um, that's how

we first heard, you know?

I think I was in denial about how

dangerous this really was, Brian.

I was furious, just furious.

Scared for him, furious.

I hate to revisit it, but it's

just like... I told you, Jim.

I think we all went through the stages of

total shock, you know, and then just...

What are we gonna do, and then anger.

After all we're family, you know?

[Jim] You're so humble.

You lost everything,

your freedom, your control, your ability to

talk to anybody and tell anybody you're okay,

thinking one minute, "Oh, yeah,

I'm a foreign correspondent,

and the next minute somebody who you

respect killed, and you have nothing."

[Clare] Jim was concerned

that his own competitiveness

with Manu, with Anton, with himself,

his own, sort of macho aggressiveness

had driven him to make decisions

that were not the best decisions.

We were all questioning our judgment.

One of the main things that affected

all of us is that Anton had kids

and none of us do.

[Jim] Every day I have to deal

with the fact that Anton is not

going to ever see his

three kids anymore,

and I was part of that decision-making

process... that took him away,

that took him away from

his kids, and his wife.

[Jim] And I had a lot of time

to play over those moments,

especially that one day

when we were captured.

I tried to question myself, "What are your

reporting on, what is this all about?"

It was quickly apparent that

this was about being what

you think is an authentic

conflict correspondent,

seeing the front line and it not

being enough to just see it

from a distance, but to

push it to the next level.

You were basically waiting to get

shelled and the question is, why?

You know, why are you doing this?

[Michael] A lot of us were just scratching

our head, right? There's no money.

Maybe you get a story here

or there that you sell.

You know I used to

"loan him money."

You know, my credit report has one ding on it and

it's the one loan that I co-signed with Jim.

I think Jimmy was just a little

outside the lines, you know.

Well, he was wicked disorganized.

[Mark]

We had to tell him to come to dinner.

Like if dinner was at 5:00,

we'd tell him it was at 3:00,

so he'd show up at 5:00.

He always lives in the moment.

I don't know if Mike ever told you

that Jim was late to his wedding.

"John, can I sleep at your house?" "John,

can my friend stay at your house?"

"Yes, Jim, yes."

Even though you just were like, "Jim, just

wake up! Wake up! What are you doing?

Get a real job, start

saving up for retirement."

I remember I said like, you know, why don't

you come to Chicago, my dad runs this

boot camp, it's teaching young felons.

He goes there for the interview and

I call him afterwards and I'm like,

"How'd the interview go?" He's like "Oh,

it was great, I think it went great."

I call up my dad, and he goes,

"He said it went great, did he?

'Cause I just talked to the lady at the

hiring board and when she went out there,

she found Jim sleeping with his head back

on a wall and he's wearing jeans with like

paints or something all over them."

And I called Jim back, I'm like,

"Jim, what the hell happened

at the interview?"

He's like, "It was hot in there, Tom. It was

hot. I just put my head back and I nodded off."

And I'm like, "Did you have

jeans on with paint?" He's like,

"Yeah, they had like these like, symbols

on it, what was I supposed to wear?"

Rate this script:2.0 / 1 vote