In The Dark - Bonus: “Cleared by Fire”

Episode Date: September 27, 2024

For the past year, the Interactives Department at The New Yorker has been working alongside In the Dark on a remarkable visual exploration of what happened that day in Haditha. Sam Wolson, who co-directed the project, joins the podcast to talk about “Cleared by Fire.” Find the interactive documentary at newyorker.com/season3. Got questions for the In the Dark team? E-mail them to us at [e-mail].  Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Thank you. on a visual exploration of what happened that day in Haditha. It's an interactive documentary called Cleared by Fire. You can find it at newyorker.com slash season three. This project is a totally different way to look at this story. It's fascinating. It unfolds almost like a movie. You can watch and immerse yourself in the stories of what happened that day from different perspectives, like the perspective of the squad leader, Frank Wuderich, or the perspective of 11-year-old Safa. And it's all done in a way that's sensitive,

not overly graphic. It's an incredible work of journalism, and I'm excited to bring in one of the key people behind it to tell you a little bit more about it. His name is Sam Wilson, and he's the co-director of the project, along with his colleague, David Kofall, and he joins me now. Hi, Sam. Hi, Madeline. So glad to have you with us. Can you explain for people listening what it is you do at The New Yorker? Sure. So I'm the interactive visual features editor at The New Yorker, which basically means I work on web interactives or virtual reality documentary storytelling or something like this, what we're going to talk about today. So tell me a little bit more about this project.

So if people go to the New Yorker's website, what are they going to see there? Right, so Cleared by Fire is an illustrated, immersive documentary that takes you through the events of November 19, 2005 through the perspectives, statements, and words of the people who were there. So the perpetrators, the alleged shooters, the survivors, and the people who witnessed what happened that day. And at each of these locations, we recreated these sites in 3D. And as we present these statements, we actually change the visuals to the perspective of the person who is telling

us what happened. So for instance, you might have, you know, a Iraqi say that this Marine came to my house and, you know, they were really aggressive and, you know, threatening us. And we have the visuals that sort of correspond to that. And then we might have a Marine say in the exact same scene, in the exact same setting, that actually I came to this house and we had a very calm discussion. And we just asked a couple questions and we left. And the visuals were sort of conformed to each of those different statements. Yeah, it was so striking to see all of this all of a sudden, like you say, in 3D, just illustrated. Because when we were looking at it, we either had statements, which you can kind of imagine in your mind, or of course, we had photos. But in those photos, we don't see the Marines in those photos. Those photos are

taken hours after the killing, after everyone is already dead. And so what you're showing is this moment that really we're seeing when we look at these visuals for the first time, like the moment that these Marines encounter the people that they would kill and then what happens next. And then, and for me as a reporter, it was so helpful to see this. And I have to ask you kind of a reporting question about this, which is, how did you do this? How did you put this together? Like, how did you determine, you know, I'm going to show this living room. What does this living room look like? Right.

So, you know, our starting point was all of the reporting materials that you all had collected over years. So the photographs, the FOIA documents, the NCIS reports, satellite images, drone footage. And we started by sort of making a big board with all of these different assets that could sort of describe each one of these spaces and help us bring these spaces to life. And these things could be a photograph of a corner of a room showing like a bullet in a wall or an NCIS document that shows, you know, the width of a room or it could be, you know, images of violence. But what was really interesting and sort of counterintuitive in some ways is although we had these thousands of sort of data points, it wasn't until you started bringing all of these

pieces together and connecting them that a fuller picture started to emerge. And, you know, when you start constructing these things in 3D, you finally sort of start seeing the intimacy of these spaces and how close the Marines must have had to be to the people that they were shooting. And it brings it together in this really visceral way that I think is really hard to get in a lot of other formats. Yeah, I mean, I think thinking about the back bedroom of Safa's house is where I think about this the most, where, of course, we know the story from Safa of what happened there, that her mother was on a bed surrounded by her siblings, and the Marines came in and opened fire. But to see what you've done, which is so extraordinary, like here is the

size of the bed. Here is the size of the dresser. Here is the size of this other large piece of furniture. And what does that mean then when we put people in there, like when we put the Iraqi civilians in there, but also put the Marines and where would the Marines have been, had to have been standing in this room? And just, you get this kind of sense of, like you said, how close everything is. And then as a reporter, of course, what's a huge finding out of that is how close the Marines were, the shooters were to the people that they were shooting at, which you kind of know, but it's not until, at least for me, it wasn't until you see it all together. There's something so powerful about that seeing. Yeah, absolutely. What was your hope with this project? What were you hoping what you would be able to show by

telling the story this way? Yeah. I think one of our intentions with diving into this material was that it, you know, ultimately in a lot of ways, it was sort of, it's a big mess when you end up looking at it. And I think you probably know that better than anyone. You know, you're basically presented with a bunch of statements that often contradict each other. You have Marines that are contradicting each other. You have Marines that are contradicting each other. You have Marines that are contradicting themselves. You have survivors who are saying something, you know, completely different than what the Marines had. And in a sort of contradictory way, you know, by juxtaposing these conflicting statements, you can start to find a clearer picture through the comparison

of what people said. And I think another thing that was, you know, really important for us in telling the story was that, you know, and again, through your reporting, it's made this so clear how the Iraqi survivors and voices throughout this process were completely pushed to the side, which is just a huge, I don't even know how you can begin to understand this story without including those voices. So finding a way to center the Iraqi perspectives in the story, it felt like the only way to sort of start to evaluate and have a more honest conversation about what took place. Yeah. And you spent a lot of time in particular on the story of one

of those survivors, the 14-year-old boy, Khaled Jamal. Can you talk a little bit about that? Yeah, absolutely. So Khaled stuck out to me as someone who could really help bring this story up to the present moment. You know, Khaled is still seeking justice. He's still trying to figure out what happened to his three uncles and his father who were killed that day. And he wants to know these sort of minute details. And it felt like, you know, urgent in this really important way. urgent in this really important way. And I think as well, I was just so captivated by listening to Khaled describe, in addition to his aunt and his mom, what happened when Khaled's father and three uncles got killed. And beyond sort of the description being really, really similar between his mom,

his aunt, and Khaled over time, over years, there was also these incredible details that felt so human and identifiable through that process. So there's this description of Khaled talking about how the Marines came to their house and they divided up the men from the women. And Khalid decided to go into the line with the men because he felt like a man. He wanted to be with his uncles and with his dad. And his aunt pulling him out of that line saying, what are you doing there?

You're not a man. They're going to arrest them. And Khalid talking about this feeling that has just stuck with him his entire life since that moment where he felt angry. He wanted to be in that line, and he wanted to feel like a man, and he was upset with his aunt for pulling him out of the line. And there's just something so, you know, I think I identified with that moment so much in sort of the gauntlet of this horrible, you know, violence that's about to unfold right after

that, he still remembers that such this adolescent feeling. And it was moments like that that just really made Khalid Jamal so valuable to this story. Yeah, I mean, just all of the conversations that we've had with the survivors have been so illuminating. And I think our mutual challenge here with this way that we're trying to tell this story is that this is something that happened nearly 20 years ago. It happened in another country. It happened during a war that is no longer going on. It happened to people who don't necessarily speak the same language that we speak. And so I think that it's what I hope people can find in this are two different ways to engage with the same story

that offer different like complementary things to each other. I mean, I think that if you've listened to the podcast and you want to sort of see, I think I would highly encourage people to go look at this because you've seen, you've maybe seen in your mind as you've listened what has gone on, but I can guarantee you, because I went through the same experience myself, when you look at this, you're going to learn something new. It is going to be an incredibly moving and interesting experience. And then I think if you haven't engaged with the material at all yet, this is a great way to first encounter the truth, really, and the competing truth about what happened that day. Yeah, absolutely. Sam, this is just such a remarkable project, and I am really excited for people to be able to see it today for the first time. You can find the interactive documentary, Cleared by Fire, at newyorker.com slash season three.

That's also, of course, where you can find the photos we published that Marines took in the hours after the killings. And where you can see the database that we compiled of alleged war crimes committed by American service members. All of that is at newyorker.com slash season three. And one more thing. We're thinking about doing a bonus episode where we answer your questions about the season. You can email us your questions by writing to us at inthedark at newyorker.com.

And thanks, as always, for listening.