Washington to Sydney Australia via….. Al-Asad, Iraq on Air Force One

It was supposed to be a quiet weekend in Washington before next week’s scheduled trip to the APEC (Asia-Pacific Economic Co-Operation) meeting in Australia with U.S. President Bush.  I had just put on my mountain biking shoes, ready to clip into the pedals for a ride around the forest near Andrews Air Force base outside Washington, when I got THE CALL. It was a White House staffer, asking that we meet in three hours at a secret location known only to Reuters correspondent Matt Spetalnick and I, where we were to be told details of a special secret visit by U.S. President Bush to Iraq. All
14 of the travelling press pool (writers, TV crew and photographers) had taken part in their own secret rendevous and were now sworn to absolute secrecy, packing sunscreen for the 100+ degree heat of a destination “somewhere in Iraq”. An important report on the status of U.S. troops in Iraq was about to be released to Congress so the trip could not be more timely for President Bush.

Upon arriving at Andrews Air Force Base, just south of Washington on Sunday afternoon, the pool were relieved of all communication devices by the secret service. Notebook computers, cameras, and other recording devices were taken away to deny us the tempation to blow the lid on this secret, unannounced trip. As we rode in an unmarked van into the cavernous hanger where Air Force One is meticulously maintained, I couldn’t help feeling as if we were in an espionage movie.

Up the backsatirs of Airforce One we went as Air Force technicians and crew prepared for the 12 hour flight behind closed hangar doors. None of us had felt quite so ’naked’ before, equipped with nothing more than the clothes on our backs. All the window shades were drawn adding to the eerie mood – this was not just another daytrip to Ohio!

We were renunited with our equipment some way into the flight, 35,000 feet up and out of mobile phone range! Normally, the three travelling “pool” photographers representing Reuters, The Associated Press and Agence France Press and a magazine photographer from either Newsweek or Time each carry 2-3 cameras with various lens ranging from 16mm to 300mm as well as laptop computers with aircards that allow us to transmit a picture from almost any location are essential and on foreign trips, a small wheely case with clothes and toiletries.

Corralled into the press cabin with no view of the outside world, we could not even confirm that President Bush was on the plane until we were in the air, with “wheels up” at 8.05pm Washington time. It was rumoured that the President had left the White House in just one solitary vehicle, normally it’s the Marine One helicopter but I suppose that would have drawn too much attention.

Flying through the night, most of the writers began crafting the opening lines of their stories that were to alert the world that President Bush had arrived in Iraq for just the third time during his presidency. As we hit the ground at Al Asad Airbase in Anbar Province at 3.45pm local time, there were no wireless communications in the Iraqi desert so our mobile phones were useless to call in the urgent newsbreak. It was to be a phone in the press cabin, hard wired into Air Force One and connected via satellite, that news first got out from Reuters that the President had touched down in Iraq. We could only wonder what the folks aboard the press charter, a planeload of White House correspondents bound for the APEC meeting in Sydney, were thinking when they touched down to refuel in Hawaii and had their blackberries ringing with the news that Bush had just landed in Iraq, clear over the other side of the world!

As we left the plane the blazing heat of the Anbar province’s desert air blasted at us like that of an opened kitchen oven door. At the bottom of the stairs where Bush was about to step onto Iraqi soil were almost the entire U.S. military leadership in Iraq lined up at the bottom of the aircraft steps as though they were at a red carpet film premiere.
Once President Bush was off the plane, it was handshakes all round for the benefit of the cameras, setting off a six hour marathon of photo opportunities between Bush and U.S. marines, Bush and top members of Iraq’s cabinet, local tribal leaders and finally a rally for the troops which drew visual parallels to a U.S.-style election campaign event.

 If running around the in Iraqi desert chasing the “leader of the free world” was not enough to get your blood flowing, feeding the insatiable appetite of our newspaper, magazine and online clients really piles on the pressure and is always in the back of your mind. Competing directly with other photographers trying to put themselves on the world’s front pages, it now becomes a race against the clock, where seconds count.

I learned a long time ago that any photographer can have great pictures from a news event but if you can’t get ‘em out to the world, you might as well have stayed at home. So after the first pictures are in the bag, it becomes a logistical game. You calculate that you have a five minute drive from one event site to the next, so you reckon that should give you enough time to load what you have already shot onto your computer, sort the top images (the transmits) from the rest of your pictures, crop and tone the transmits in photoshop, add a caption to each image (free of spelling errors, of course!) and queue them up on FTP software – all for the moment when you arrive in a dingy, dusty room in the middle of the Iraqi desert to find the holy grail for a photographer on a deadline – a high speed ethernet line! On the road with the White House, if you are not shooting pictures, you are editing and transmitting. If you are not shooting, editing or transmitting, you agonise whether to eat something or hit the bathroom – often you don’t have time to do both. Today, for the six hours we were on the ground in Iraq, there was no time for either.

So next stop Sydney, bring on APEC, but first would someone please feed me and show me to the nearest bathroom!

 Jason Reed is Senior Photographer based in Washington