Story behind a story

Danny sent me an e-mail with the following story. It begins with this:

A US freelance reporter, Steven Vincent, has been shot dead by unknown gunmen in Basra, southern Iraq, police have said.

Mr Vincent was abducted with his female Iraqi translator at gun point by men in a police car on Tuesday.

His bullet-riddled body was found on the side of a highway south of the city a few hours later.

He had been writing a book about the city, where insurgents have recently stepped up their attacks.

The pair were kidnapped by five gunmen in a police car as they left a currency exchange shop, Lt Col Karim al-Zaidi said.

"Both were later shot, but Vincent was killed, while the girl [translator] is alive," said Mr Zaidi.

Mr Vincent was shot several times in the head and body, said Mr Zaidi. The translator, Nour Weidi, was seriously wounded.

Mr Vincent's relatives have been informed and US officials are working with the UK military and Iraqi authorities to identify the killers.

...

Mr Vincent had been in Basra in recent months working for the Christian Science Monitor and the New York Times.

In a recent New York Times article, Mr Vincent wrote that Basra's police force had been infiltrated by Shia militants.

He quoted a senior Iraqi police lieutenant saying some officers were behind many of the killings of former Baath party members in Basra.

Mr Vincent also criticised the UK forces, who are responsible for security in Basra, for ignoring abuses of power by Shia extremists.

And ends, if this Quarter to Three poster is reliable, with gross disrespect:

My sister had a friend named Steven Vincent. I say "had", because he was assassinated the other day in Iraq by the same Iraqi police deathsquad that he exposed in a piece he wrote for the New York Times that was printed July 31st.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/31/opinion/31vincent.html?

He wasn't really a real journalist, either. He was an art critic. He wore a cool hat. If you were to see him walking down the street, you would see him with a briefcase and three books, because he always read three books at once. When he sat down at a coffee house, he'd have the books out on the table with their titles visible, because he would want you to ask him about it.

He was a guy from NY who lost a lot of friends in the 9/11 attack, and who wanted to go to Iraq to see for himself what was going on. He snuck into Iraq via bus because he wasn't a credentialed journalist with a visa. While he was there, he fell in love with the city of Basra and started writing a book about it, interviewing people over what they felt the "soul" of Basra was.

During the course of his interviews, he discovered that many of the police and government officials were in fact working for religious extremists, and that the police even had a death car that carried around off-duty cops to their next Shiite-assignment. All his life, Steven had wanted to get something written up in the New York Times instead of the shitty art magazine that he wrote for, and this was his chance to break a story that he thought was important.

A smart man would have come back to the USA before exposing a Shiite police assassination squad. But Steven had fallen in love with his interpreter, and knew that the police would kill her if he fled to the USA. He felt that if he stayed, he might be able to protect her. So he was in Basra when the NYT published his piece. The next day, he and his interpreter girlfriend were picked up by a police car, riddled with bullets (3 for him, 4 for her), and ditched by the side of the highway.

Oh, and what was the USA and UK official reaction to Steven's piece? "We have absolute faith in the integrity of the Iraqi police and its government."

So, his expose had no real effect at all, and he gave up his life for nothing. The end.