Making a Killing
Making a Killing
From The Arab American News
May 25, 2005 [Investigative Journalism]
Portland, Ore. — When most documentary filmmakers offer to shoot their subjects, they usually mean with a camera, cinematically. But Mike Shiley—whose film Inside Iraq: The Untold Stories, opened at McMenamin’s Mission Theater here June 10—thought it would be vastly more interesting to do it with a gun, literally.
In one telling episode, Shiley’s autobiographical film describes how he replaced a tank gunner on a U.S. Army “harass-and-intimidate” mission on Iraq’s northwestern border. During the operation, Shiley fired an M1A1-Abrams tank’s 120-mm gun down what he describes as a “dry riverbed” in the town of Al Qaim to show residents that “Americans own the town.” 
Two Iraqi homes were set afire during the exercise, Shiley states in the film.
Gary Solis, professor of law at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, says Shiley’s involvement in the mission likely violated the Geneva Convention and may expose Shiley to war-crimes prosecution.
Shiley, based in Portland, Ore., says he cashed in frequent-flier miles in December of 2003 and bought an airline ticket to Amman, Jordan, a stopover on his way to Baghdad. He secured press credentials from KATU-TV, an ABC News affiliate in Portland, and used them to “sneak” into Iraq in December of 2003, he says. 
After touring a number of Iraqi cities—compiling footage on living conditions, the opinions of Iraqis regarding the U.S. military occupation, and other social and political issues, Shiley then embedded with the U.S. Army’s 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment, based near Al Qaim, roughly five miles from the Syrian border.
“The word spread through the ABC News Bureau [in Baghdad],” explains Shiley, “that there was a unit out in the middle of nowhere on the Syrian border area, in the desert, that no reporter in their right mind would ever go be embedded with … because they see so much action that it’s probably one of the most dangerous, yet unappreciated, places in the country. When I heard that, I immediately signed up for the service. That’s what I wanted to do—be on the front line, and actually spend some time being a soldier.”
After Shiley contacted the unit and obtained permission for a ride-along on a patrol, the tank commander told him he’d have to ride in the bottom of the vehicle. “I couldn’t even see!” Shiley laments. The gunner’s position, Shiley felt, afforded the best view for filming.
Over footage that depicts Shiley in U.S. Army battle-dress uniform, firing a machine gun over a desert wasteland, he explains how he earned his place on the Al Qaim mission. The tank commander “told me that if I wanted to take the gunner’s position … I would have to become weapons certified … I said, ‘Great! Let’s get started!’ That night, I was told I’d been approved to be a gunner on a $2 million-dollar Abrams tank.”
The 95-minute video then segues to footage of two Bradley Fighting Vehicles and two Abrams tanks converging on Al Qaim in darkness. They line up in tandem on a deserted two-lane city street, beneath the glow of street lamps. The walls of two-story homes rise less than 100 feet from the vehicles. The main guns on the tanks open up. Tracer rounds pour into the night, ricocheting wildly as they strike objects downrange.
“It’s meant to wake up the residents of the town,” Shiley’s voice-over explains, “to let them know these guns are loaded, they work, and the U.S. Army is not to be messed with.”
The film switches to an interior view of Shiley loading a heavy shell into the Abrams’ main gun. He takes his position in the gunner’s seat, timidly squeezes the trigger. The tank shudders. Shiley bats his eyes, sighs deeply, shakes his head, then erupts in laughter. He turns to face the camera and gives viewers the thumbs up. “It’s an amazing testosterone rush,” he later explains.
Shiley says the patrol then fired smoke grenades into the village to conceal its exit. “It was a pretty amazing experience,” Shiley observes as the unit pulls away, “and I noticed that after we dropped the smoke grenades, that a number of those didn’t burn out like the way they were supposed to, and actually, I noticed two houses that caught on fire as we were pulling out of there that night. I guess that’s one of the casualties of war. And I certainly hope that that fire was put out.”
Shiley filed a different version of how he came to be involved in the Al Qaim operation on his KATU-TV “weblog,” implicitly offering to kill insurgents. In an entry dated Jan. 12, 2004, Shiley wrote, “After a brief lesson from Sergeant [Johnny] Shaw, I successfully loaded and fired the M-240. When I squeezed the trigger, the machine gun burst to life sending a shower of bullets and red tracers streaking through the night sky. I assured Shaw that even though I was a reporter, I was ready, willing, and able to defend the mission if he gave the command to engage the enemy.”
Shiley also offered a sanitized version of the “harass and intimidate” mission in the same weblog. “We rolled back to Tiger base dirty and tired,” Shiley wrote, “but filled with the satisfaction of a job done right. The team worked together to accomplish a dangerous mission knowing that an attack was imminent. Each soldier performed his or her task with professional calmness and focus on the objective. Tonight the innocent people of Al Qaim will sleep well knowing that their new freedom will be protected. As for the bad guys … their ears are still ringing from the sound of a gun called American Justice.” No mention was made of the burning homes.
Shiley, whose website offers an autobiographical “Profile of an Adventurer,” says he sold footage of his Al Qaim experience to ABC World News Tonight and Good Morning America, as well as other ABC affiliates.
Solis, who founded the “law of war” course at West Point, believes that if Shiley’s account of the Al Qaim operation is accurate, “This exposes the tank commander to trial by court-martial” and exposes Shiley to federal prosecution for war crimes.
“Civilians are not permitted to crew combat vehicles—period,” says Solis, a retired Marine Corps lieutenant colonel.
“There are no exceptions and there is no such thing as a civilian being ‘certified’ as a tank crewman. It is contrary to military regulations and, more significantly, it is a violation of the law of armed conflict.”
Solis, who says he served 18 years as an attorney in the U.S. Marine Corps and commanded an armored-vehicle company in combat during two tours of duty in Vietnam, explains, “There are clear Geneva Convention prohibitions against civilians taking up arms. These long-standing prohibitions are in place for the most significant of reasons that involve the core principle of the law of war—distinction. The law of war requires that combatants be distinguished from noncombatants, civilians from fighters, shooters from non-shooters.”
Solis argues that Shiley cannot be absolved of wrongdoing by virtue of the fact that U.S. troops were not under enemy fire at Al Qaim. “It is not necessary that there be a ‘fight’ in the sense of return fire,” Solis argues, “or even a visible enemy. When he fired a weapon he put himself beyond the law of war and probably federal law as well.”
Shiley, in a Feb. 15 interview, said he was “not 100 percent sure” that no Iraqis were killed or injured, but is “completely confident” no one was injured. The tank commander, Shiley says, used an infrared imaging scope to ensure no Iraqis were present in the field of fire before the armored vehicles discharged their weapons. “I let the tank commander do the aiming. All I did was push the button.”
“If I’m going to sign up and play soldier for a day,” Shiley continues, “that’s unfortunately one of the liabilities that I have to accept—that my actions may injure or kill somebody. But I made every reasonable attempt to make sure that that didn’t happen.”
Shiley adds that he cannot be held accountable for any possible harm, due to the fact that his tank was the last to fire down the riverbed. “The Bradley’s and two other tanks had already fired their weapons, so anything that might have been alive was surely dead by the time it was my turn to fire.”
Also disturbing is potentially faked footage that depicts a Kurdish man removing a landmine alongside a highway near Kirkuk. The Kurd, a landmine-removal worker for the Mines Advisory Group, based in Manchester, U.K., brushes away a few weeds from the surface of an anti-tank mine. Although the implication is that the device is live—has just been unearthed—the mine is spotless. A trench in the hardpan soil, several inches deep and wide, already runs the perimeter.
The Kurd carefully loops a rope around the mine and moves off a respectable distance before tightening the line.
“As this guy’s pulling the landmine out of the hole,” Shiley relates in a sardonic voice-over, “I’m there like a dummy, getting a close-up shot of this landmine being pulled out. While he’s 30 feet away, I’m five feet away. It was not one of the smarter decisions I’ve made in my life.”
Why did Shiley brave the excavation, while the landmine worker seemed to ‘cower’ in the distance? Because, according to the mines group, the device was a dud, planted for Shiley’s benefit. “The scene was a re-enactment with a training mine,” says David Horrocks, director of field operations for the Mines Advisory Group in Iraq.
Shiley now claims that none of the Kurdish landmine experts spoke English, that he had to communicate in “hand gestures,” and therefore he believed the mine was live. He says he has no recorded audio from the event to verify the claim that the weather was “very windy” and therefore distorted the sound from his boom microphone, and that the batteries then failed in his backup mike.
The Kurdish mine expert “spoke excellent English,” according to Joe DiCarlo, who was present for the staged excavation. “The MAG guy said, ‘Let us show you our practice area,’” explains DiCarlo, director of emergency relief for Northwest Medical Teams, a humanitarian-aid organization based in Portland, Ore.
“He said, ‘Let us show you how it’s done, what the process is.’”
Irena Kuszta, communications director for the Mines Advisory Group, says, “Either Shiley did not understand English on the day he was filming, or he knowingly misrepresented what he was filming.”
Viewers may get the impression that the landmine experts who ‘allowed’ Shiley to stand “five feet away” during the excavation of a mine were extremely irresponsible, and knowingly put Shiley at extreme risk. Kuszta says the humanitarian organization asked Shiley in March to correct the landmine footage, but Shiley declined.
“We have asked for him to readdress the balance and state the truth of the situation,” Kuszta notes, “but he insists this was not a balanced version of events, but a story of an ordinary person in the field. We don’t think our staff were made aware of this and they have effectively been used as actors in Shiley’s film.”
What matters most, Shiley insists, is motivation. “I made this film because I care,” he remarks in the film’s opening sequence. “I truly care about what happens in the world, and I hope you care too.”
The film’s executive producer, Rick Ray, shrugs off the possibility that Shiley’s actions might invite criticism. “History is full of examples of films that took a hit from critics, and it only boosted their sales,” says Ray, an instructor at the Brooks Institute of Photography in Santa Barbara, Calif.
“If this turns out to be this big controversy,” Shiley adds, “I’m going to write an editorial, and I’m coming right back to Portland and put this film back in the theaters and we’re going to make a killing.”
The Mission Theater is located at 1624 N.W. Glisan Street. Shiley is scheduled to introduce the film June 14 and field audience questions at 5:15 p.m. The showing is slated for 5:30 p.m. The End
Epilogue & Commentary
Buried landmines should not look like they just came off the shelf at Office Depot. They should look dirty. They are dirty (Sadaam Husseins’ troops began burying mines along the Iran-Iraq border in the late 70’s, and during the Iran-Iraq War, from 1980-1988; but a landmine buried for even a day should look filthy).
That’s the mistake Shiley made in faking the self-aggrandizing footage of the landmine-training exercise; he presented as live a landmine that looked like it just came out of the box. Which it had—the Kurdish team placed a clean, disabled mine in the ground for Shiley, in order for him to film it (but not for him to present himself as a death-defying filmmaker, or the Kurds as irresponsible and cowardly).
When I suspected that Shiley had jury-rigged the scene, I wrote to Irena Kuszta, communications director for the Mines Advisory Group, asking her if Kurdish workers in Iraq had allowed Shiley to film a live mine removal. She said she doubted it, but would check with David Horrocks, Iraq director for MAG. Horrocks assembled the team Shiley filmed; he interviewed them, and discovered that Shiley had requested to film a training exercise.
Training exercises, of course, are not conducted with live mines. (MAG is a 1997 co-laureate of the Nobel Peace Prize; they really don’t haphazardly expose people to danger; their work is focused on removing those dangers.)
Horrocks wrote to me, “In all, it was a mock-up of a deminer removing an anti-tank mine within the safe lane. All personnel wore Personal Protection Equipment and visors. A safety briefing was given. All movements were controlled by Wahid [the Kurdish defusal expert in charge of the training exercise, who stood behind Shiley as he was filming, to ensure Shiley did not leave a zone the Kurds had previously cleared of mines; Shiley makes no mention of this in the film]. They were in no danger.”
Kuszta called Shiley and asked for a complimentary copy of the video. Shiley, according to Kuszta, said MAG would have to pay the standard $20. They paid.
After Kuszta watched the footage, she wrote to Shiley, asking him to either remove the scene in the film, which was clearly a staged event, or address in honest terms what he had filmed. (On a personal note, I would add that in addition to the brazen misrepresentation of the event itself, Shiley’s voiceover was demeaning to the Kurdish mine-defusal experts; they are not cowards, and they are not so irresponsible as to allow civilians to straddle live mines as they’re being removed.)
Kuszta stated that Shiley declined to remove the footage. She wrote, “We have also told Shiley if he cannot redress the balance we will have no choice but to distance ourselves from this film and tell the truth about the footage shot of MAG’s work ... Had we known we were pawns pampering to someone’s personal drama on film we would have asked for a cut of the proceeds and put it towards clearing the mines and bombs from Iraq.”
Shiley eventually re-released Inside Iraq, although when he did so isn’t clear. DVDs now for sale offer a sanitized version of the original—he edited out the landmine ‘heroics.’
Despite the obvious fakery in the original version of Inside Iraq, Shiley largely got away with it—if getting away with it means slipping it past the ‘critical’ eye of film reviewers and undiscerning audiences. Shawn Levy, Oregonian film critic, wrote that Inside Iraq was “beautifully photographed” and “shows sides of the Iraq war that you might see only if you had been on the scene or are addicted to television news.”
Joseph Gallivan, film critic for the Portland Tribune, wrote, “Mike Shiley shoots footage that digs deeper than media coverage ...”
Shiley’s own review of the film (as of May 2011) states that it “uncovers incredible new stories from the fresh and honest perspective of an average American.”
Inside Iraq (the revised version) is available at IndieFlix and is taglined, “Crashing the war: how I made a fake press pass, snuck into Iraq and became a gunner on a tank.” It’s listed under the category of “Educational,” and “Intended for Teens.”
Rick Ray, the film’s co-producer and editor, is best know now for his 2006 video ”10 Questions for the Dalai Lama.” He is no longer listed as faculty for the Brooks Institute.
Shiley is still making ‘documentaries.’ He recently completed Solving Immigration: The Truth is Out There. Shiley’s website (specifically the About page) for Solving Immigration open with the statement, “Multi-award winning filmmaker and Smithsonian inductee, Mike Shiley, is one of America’s top experts on uncovering and solving the biggest political problems that face our world today.” [Emphasis added.]
Linda St. Thomas, spokesperson for the Smithsonian Institution, says, “We have no such thing as an ‘inductee.’ Maybe he means he has a membership.” She notes that she checked to see if Shiley at least had an affiliation with the Smithsonian Channel, since he’s a videographer. “They have no record of ever having worked with this person,” she says.
Gary D. Solis retired from West Point as a professor of law in 2006, and became a Library of Congress scholar in residence in 2007. He is on now on the teaching faculty of the International Institute of Humanitarian Law, in San Remo, Italy. His books are Marines and Military Law in Vietnam; and Son Thang: An American War Crime; and The Law of Armed Conflict: International Humanitarian Law in War. 
Regarding Gary D. Solis’ statement that Shiley should be prosecuted for war crimes under the Geneva Convention: Article 47 of Protocol I of the Geneva Convention defines a mercenary as a person who meets one or more of the following conditions (the sections that seem to pertain to Shiley’s status are italicized):
1. A mercenary shall not have the right to be a combatant or a prisoner of war.
2. A mercenary is any person who:
(a) is specially recruited locally or abroad in order to fight in an armed conflict;
(b) does, in fact, take a direct part in the hostilities;
(c) is motivated to take part in the hostilities essentially by the desire for private gain and, in fact, is promised, by or on behalf of a Party to the conflict, material compensation substantially in excess of that promised or paid to combatants of similar ranks and functions in the armed forces of that Party;
(d) is neither a national of a Party to the conflict nor a resident of territory controlled by a Party to the conflict;
(e) is not a member of the armed forces of a Party to the conflict; and
(f) has not been sent by a State which is not a Party to the conflict on official duty as a member of its armed forces.
Other articles of the Geneva Convention seemingly applicable to the Al Qaim mission and Shiley’s involvement:
- Article 13 of Protocol II, Part 2: “The civilian population as such, as well as individual civilians, shall not be the object of attack. Acts or threats of violence the primary purpose of which is to spread terror among the civilian population are prohibited.” (Pertaining to Shiley’s statement that the mission was intended to show Iraqis “the U.S. Army is not to be messed with.” Whether violence was done to Iraqis during this mission is not in question; Shiley notes that two civilian homes were set afire during the mission; he presents footage of the fires, and then notes that neither he nor the soldiers involved made any effort to extinguish the fires or otherwise intervene to minimize the damage or threat to life.)
Per the International Committee of the Red Cross: “The prohibition on directing attacks against civilians is also laid down in Protocol II, Amended Protocol II and Protocol III to the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons and in the Ottawa Convention banning anti-personnel landmines.[7] In addition, under the Statute of the International Criminal Court, “intentionally directing attacks against the civilian population as such or against individual civilians not taking direct part in hostilities” constitutes a war crime in international armed conflicts.”
Northwest Medical Teams has since reconstituted itself under the name Medical Teams International. DiCarlo stated that while his agency did contract with Shiley in northern Iraq in 2008, the aid organization was unable to use Shiley’s footage “due to concerns about quality.”
05/16/11 | 0 Comments | Making a Killing