Oregon News Family Part 2

 

After Salem-News.com was up and running a little over two years, I decided to go to Afghanistan to cover the war for both Salem-News.com and Oregon FOX-12 in Portland.  I was embedded with the Oregon National Guard's 41st Brigade Combat Team and spent two months during the winter of 2005/2007 covering a lot of different stories, both behind the scenes and on the front lines.  I was able to produce and send back 30 reports in 60 days, that all aired successfully.
 

Tim in Kabul, Afghanistan

It doesn't matter who you are, when you're in Afghanistan during the winter, you are engaged in a second conflict, and that is the one where you battle freezing temperatures that numb the senses.  In this war you fight the cold with everything you've got and journalists aren't exempt from participating in this combat.  Honestly, I know I am a west coast guy and all of that, but it was cold, as bitterly dangerously cold as Kuwait and Iraq are mind numbingly hot, like you're walking through flames, but hey, let's strap on the battle gear and go on patrol shall we?  

I went to war as a journalist mainly because I needed to know about what was taking place so that I could write about it with at least a small amount of experience.  I admire the journalists who stay in the zones for a year or more, one friend of mine did that and then ended up dead from a reported suicide after he came home.  Caleb Schrader was, like another person mentioned in this story, probably not a suicide victim.  

And this opens up another large subject for Salem-News.com, the missing journalists of the Vietnam War, primarily Sean Flynn and Dana Stone.  These two combat photographers, the first the son of the movie actor Errol Flynn, went missing during the Cambodian invasion in 1970.  Over the years we have established close ties with the family of Sean Flynn and written many stories about the search for their remains, conducted in Cambodia recently in a mission led by by Salem-News.com writer Dave Macmillan.  Our correspondent in Australia, Ivan T. Brecelic has also covered this epic story.  The tragedy of Sean Flynn and Dana Stone and all of the others who went missing in the same timeframe, and from the war raging in Vietnam both before and after 1970, is one of the things that inspired my pursuit of becoming a photojournalist from the beginning.  It is also one of the specific reasons I chose to go to the current wars to cover operations in '06, '07 and '08.

After my return from Afghanistan, I was interviewed by FOX-12 and they produced two half-hour television documentaries about my time covering the war.  

This time in the Middle east was an eye-opening experience, I learned about the Muslim faith and culture and that people were incredibly like me; fathers, sons, people who had all of the same needs that the next person has, only in a dangerous hell hole of a place.  Not all of it, but Afghanistan is a ravaged land of war that has to be seen to be believed.  

Many good contacts arose from this experience, I met journalists from all over the world in Afghanistan and this part of the world stayed in our news after I returned, and interest in our reports continued to grow in places like the UK, Canada and many other places outside of the U.S.

Tim with wrecked jets in Balad, Iraq

The next year, in 2008, I embedded with an Oregon military unit from the National Guard again, this time I went to Iraq and embedded with the 641 Aviation group.  I was able to move around Iraq without escort which was interesting and challenging.  The war in Iraq was not raging with American casualties when I was there, however the war's aggression had been firmly directed toward Iraqi Army soldiers and patrols that served alongside the Americans.

Time and time again at Balad, Iraq, an expansive air base about an hour from Baghdad, helicopters flew in carrying badly wounded Iraqi soldiers and civilians.  One friend of mine who was an Air Force medic, worked at the base hospital and kept me informed on who was coming in, how bad it was, etc.  I remember one night he was so pissed off, the Ugandan soldiers who were responsible for making sure injured Iraqis weren't security risks, were taking their time getting these local national soldiers cleared, and one died in my friend's arms.  It was a tough night for him, Iraq is a tough place and a disappointment of a war.  I loved the Iraqi people and my heart goes out to them.  In my stories I was able to show these men and the Americans and others involved performing their daily roles and I was as respectable as possible, earning the trust of many people along the way.

However in retrospect I fear that my camera and Internet reports about locals in occupied countries cooperating with Americans put people at risk.  I always was careful with interpreters; keeping their faces off camera, in fact I became friends with several in both Afghanistan and Iraq.  I think if I had it to do over I would have been even more discretionary.  

There are many stories about this assignment, one night I was inadvertently allowed to board an Army helicopter that had about a dozen high level terrorist suspects, 'detainees' aboard.  They were terribly abused in front of me and I recorded it, only to be taken eventually to Army intelligence afterward and told I "had" to record over the footage.  The colonel watched the tape after I was done to make sure I really did it.  They couldn't stop me from writing about it though, and the report is available and always will be.

This experience once again opened my eyes and my mind over the problems with the Middle east, and the vast unfairness that has been leveled against the countries that stand up for themselves against western powers.  This is an article about our news evolution, not politics, but I want to establish how it is that this section of the world came to be such a focus of our efforts.  

The one thing that I came to increasingly understand during my time in Afghanistan, Kyrgyzstan Kuwait and Iraq, is the complex political monster known as Israel/Palestine.  As I began writing about this embattled region of apartheid laws, I kept studying another country that stays at the center of the news, Iran.  I was shocked to learn the ugly story of U.S. and British manipulation and involvement, of 'taking out' democratically elected leaders in Iran because they didn't fit the bill and bow to western interests.

Over time Salem-News.com has become very involved in the coverage of the effort to free Palestine from Israeli Zionist control and we work with people all over the world in this pursuit.  Some of our very best and most treasured sources are Israeli.  This conflict is about power and land control.  Religion and the bible are tools of justification, but they don't adequately circumvent international law.  Crime is crime, and the problems in Palestine are severe and depraved.  The people of the Gaza Strip live behind three-story separation walls, the citizens of Israel have 'Jewish-Only' roads and separate laws for Jews and non-Jews.  Christians are disappearing from the region and Muslims are under increasing scrutiny and pressure.

Perhaps it is this coverage and our work with the famous activist Ken O'Keefe that first caught the attention of author/singer/songwriter Agron Belica of Boston.  Agron understands what Salem-News.com writers are trying to do, and he celebrates our stories and efforts in songs that are doing very well on the online music charts.   The list is long and his songs are incredible, Agron delivers the goods musically just as he does when writing about religion, which this Muslim author does with vigor, challenging the stereotypes and existing status quo while striking a new path with irresistible word crafting and sound, the kind that motivates us to take the next step when we grow tired, make the next move when we are at the breaking point.  He sings about our friends who were Murdered, he sings about the Genocide of Sri Lanka, he even wrote a song about my crazy dream of someday getting our hands on a navy aircraft carrier and turning it into a peace and war monitoring ship and refugee rescue platform.
 

Return to the Marines

Tim interviews Doc Leveque about Marine base contamination.

In the summer of 2008, just before I headed to Iraq to cover the war, I learned about the massive contamination of the base where I spent more than two years in the Marine Corps, Marine Corps Air Station El Toro.  Today the base is closed and in the city of Irvine.  We have written over 120 stories about the wreck of a base and Irvine's plan to turn it into a park for kid and families and a super-expensive housing community. We believe that serious illnesses two of our sons suffered, both El Toro babies, are directly connected to the base toxicity.  However it took twenty years before we even began to piece it together.  And by the way, when I got to Iraq, and made it to al Asad Marine base, I hooked up with my old squadron, it was really an amazing thing to catch up with MWSG-37 in Iraq of all places.  

As I was introduced to a group of Marine officers at this base in the Anbar province, one said, "Are you the guy doing the stories about El Toro being contaminated?"  Word gets around fast.

Over the years I have bonded with other former El Toro Marines like Salem-News.com writer Bob O'Dowd, who served in my squadron 20 years prior to my time.  He has worked extensively in recent months putting together our new book, A Few Good Men- Too Many Chemicals which is 379 pages and due out electronically on Kindle this week.  It is partly a compilation of our dozens of researched reports, and partly consists of brand-new unreleased information and photos.  The story of El Toro and also Camp Lejeune, the Marine base on the east coast that is also contaminated, and still an active-duty base, have been a strong focus of our efforts since the summer of 2008.

In that context, while researching El Toro, Robert O'Dowd, Salem-News.com writers John Uldrich and Roger Butow and myself, all became aware of the death of a Marine Colonel named James Sabow in 1991 that had been deemed a suicide.  We learned that Col. Sabow had reported planeloads of drugs from Central America being offloaded in the middle of the night on his base, and that blowing the whistle is what cost him his life.

John Uldrich, Tim King and Bob O'Dowd at MCAS El Toro

This man, the least likely suicide candidate in the world, was murdered in his back yard.  His brother David is a medical doctor who has never given up his pursuit of justice in this case and we work closely with him in an effort to reopen this case in the name of everything in the world that is decent and right and examine it for what it is, a pre-meditated government orchestrated Murder.  This death is connected to a continuance of the drugs for weapons program synonymous with both Ronald Reagan and Ollie North.   

Along with El Toro, we carry a constant stream of stories about Agent Orange and other veteran-based issues.  We have 14 former and current U.S. Marines on our writing staff and many U.S. Army combat vets like Dr. Phil Leveque, Jeff Gates, Ralph Stone, Mark Hathaway and others.  Edsel Chromie and John Bury served in the U.S. Navy during war.  Other Salem-News.com writers served in military units like the Israeli Defence Forces and the English Army.  Still others, like Alan Hart, Dexter Phoenix and Belen Fernandez, are experienced war correspondents and photographers, and I add myself to that list now.  

As we increasingly covered world events in recent years, Africa and Asia were not forgotten.  The Genocide of the Tamil people in Sri Lanka is also a subject I spend a good amount of time with and sadly I believe we are the only western news agency that covers this horrific event.  It was government terrorism carried out in the most depraved ways; up 1o 160k people went missing in northern Sri Lanka after the dust settled.  Few things in history are more wrong and like Israel, the acts were not anything that upset the American government.  Because of our extensive coverage of Sri Lanka, where local media is banned for discussing the Tamil Genocide and Diaspora, we have more visitors per capita in Sri Lanka than any other country on earth. Near Sri Lanka, in India, we have Correspondent Arun Shrivastava, who travels this section of Asia for Salem-News.com keeping us up on important, developing events there that once again, are not being covered by western media and press 

The importance of this can not be overemphasized.  Countries are increasingly banning media groups online for being critical of their governments, those writers and news agencies send their stories to me so that our agency can publish them and their residents can see them, as those local governments have no control over our content.  Sri Lanka is not the only one, however it is the most prominent, glaring example at this point.

Rwanda is another continual subject at Salem-News.com and our writer Jennifer Fierberg has broken amazing stories, along with members of the Rwanda National Congress who we work closely with.  These stories about the true nature and history of Rwanda President Paul Kagame bring a wrath of negative comments but we are not affected by that, and the stories will always continue.  It isn't just Rwanda either, not at all. The Democratic Republic of Congo where sex abuse is rampant, Uganda; so much takes place without western eyes and ears reporting from the scene.  Our writer Kiflu Hussein is an attorney in Uganda who lives a challenging life, however his work as a reporter takes him all over Africa and I have to say that as our writers go, few educate me more regularly than Kiflu, Africa is such a diverse place, you have to hear about it from one who knows, again, first-hand information.  

The same takes place of course in Libya, where Dr. Franklin Lamb reports events from a first-hand perspective.  He gets so close to the action that he was shot in Tripli in 2011.  thank God he was OK, whereas our writer Vittorio Arrigoni, who was Murdered in Gaza last April, was not so lucky.  Franklin, a Salem, Oregon native, is an international lawyer and observer who witnessed the horrific massacre at the Sabra-Shatila refugee camp in 1983.  

He was in Libya when the NATO attacks laid havoc on the civilian population, claiming for the west the one of Africa's 57 nations that had resisted western control after finally getting out from under the cruel colonization of the Italians under Mussolini.  Salem-News.com was among the first to criticize this recent attack and removal of a national leader.

We have writers in Iran. Kourosh Ziabari was never carried by any western news agencies before Salem-News.com.  After we carried many of his reports, others started carrying his work and soon Kourosh was awarded the highest national honors for journalism, congratulated on stage by Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.  We also have Gul Jammas Hussain and our most recent addition, Dr. Ismail Salami, all from Iran.  It is our great hope that their words will continually reach people and that their first-hand perspectives can be appreciated.

In Egypt we have Dr. Ashraf Ezzat, an incredible medical doctor who continually writes about the latest political developments in his country.  In Palestine we have Dr. Mazin Qumisyeh, who alternates between teaching at the university, and taking part in Palestine's non-violent resistance movement.  I am only naming a handful of our 103 writers to give you an idea of who we are, there is so much more I could say.

In London, Gilad Atzmon, Ken O'Keefe, Nadia Izzat, Stu Littlewood, Alan Hart and so many others keep the information moving in our direction.  Prof. William Hathaway is in Germany, Anna O'Leary is in Ireland.

Our Senior Editor Daniel Johnson is the only person beyond this team that actually publishes his own material here, it is a slightly complicated matter and there are many small details.  His articles from Canada about U.S. politics draw strong reactions from people who are unable to grasp concepts that Daniel has a firm grip on. Also in Canada, Diane Walsh is a fantastic team member, as is Jerry West. 

Closer to home, a writer I have worked very closely with, Robert 'Tosh' Plumlee, is a former CIA contract pilot who actually flew those shipments of weapons from Nicaragua in the early days.  When he and others in the federal government came to understand the drug part, he pulled out and was among the first to offer testimony in what would become known as the Iran-Contra Hearings.  Tosh came to be our friend as we conducted research into the Murder of Col. Sabow at El Toro.  In the last year, Tosh and I have generated sizzling, even indicting reports about developments with the Mexican drug cartels.  

This former CIA operative switched hats if you will, and only works today to expose the corruption that is taking place.  For example, long before two U.S. federal agents were killed with weapons smuggled into the hands of Mexican cartels by the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) Mr. Plumlee exposed this gunrunning operation through the proper government channels, only to have it fall on deaf ears.  

I wrote the article that exposed Eric Holder as a liar for his statements about the gunrunning operation known as 'Fast and Furious' to California Congressman Darryl Issa.  He recently told Issa that he knew about the gun walking operation for "two or three weeks".  One of my contacts tracked down a Spanish-language State Dept. press release from two years earlier, where Holder laid claim to full knowledge of the operation.  That night Salem-News.com was on everyone's radar, it was our most viewed story ever at the time, or very close, and it was mentioned that night on FOX News, and the ultra left Mike Malloy show on Air America.  If that isn't crossing the spectrum I don't know what is.

Even closer to home, has been our coverage of suspected and in some cases, already demonstrated levels of corruption that plague and choke the efficiency of the state of Oregon.  It all ties back to the 1989 Murder of Michael Francke, Oregon's then-Corrections Chief, who was brought to Oregon for his record of cleaning up corrupt prison systems.  Three days before he would have provided testimony from a year-long investigation of official corruption in the Oregon Department of Corrections, Mr. Francke was stabbed to death and his body was discovered on the steps outside of the main prison headquarters for Oregon, known as the 'Dome Building'.

An African-American Corrections Officer named William Coleman encountered severe levels of white racism in the prison after being hired at the Oregon State Penitentiary in Salem.  When he observed and reported these problems, he discovered that prison management actually represented the lion's share of it.  Eventually Coleman filed a federal Whistleblower complaint, and then clearly in retaliation, was charged by the Marion County DA with 15 counts of having "smuggled contraband" (cigarettes) as a guard, a position he had left at this point.  He never smuggled anything, and would go on to face the 15 counts, facing an incredible 40-years in prison if convicted, and the jury found him innocent by a unanimous verdict.  What an illustration of Oregon's retaliation policy Coleman's case is.  

And there are the inmates inside who were willing to testify for Coleman and in turn, expose the management's practices of bribery and other crimes taking place inside not one, but probably all of Oregon's prisons.  However, even Coleman's public defender was involved in the apparent attempt to see him convicted, and she did not allow two of Coleman's three subpoenaed witnesses to testify.  He still won a unanimous not guilty verdict, that isn't easy for a Black man in Oregon.  Later Coleman would lose a major civil case when the defendant, the state of Oregon, portrayed him falsely while Coleman was represented by Salem lawyer Kevin Lafkey, who it seemed was absolutely not doing everything to help his client, and was disbarred by Oregon shortly after this case.  

The injustice in Oregon is off the charts, our writer Coral Theill was horribly abused by her husband and then persecuted for trying to seek protection from him.  She went on to become an author and her book is widely read by military veterans suffering from PTSD, because that is what she survived.  

When we publish stories, they are picked up by Google News and a long list of other similar agencies.  Blogs link to our stories and they are sometimes republished hundreds of times.  We are often contacted by groups that want to carry our stories in print publications all over the world, and sometimes journalists in other countries contact us for permission to translate our stories into their languages.
 

Investigative Reporter Marianne Skolek

Certainly our diverse position is hard for some people to appreciate, by there is no question that it has been well received by and large.  Our Investigative Reporter Marianne Skolek in South Carolina, is a critic of the practices of Purdue Pharma because they initially marketed OxyContin drug to doctors as both 'non-lethal' and 'non-addictive'.  Her daughter died of an OxyContin-related respiratory failure.  Marianne helped convict the top officials of Purdue in federal court for the illegal marketing mentioned above.  Guess who kept them from going to prison and made sure OxyContin wasn't stopped on the spot...?  Then-Washington D.C. attorney Eric Holder.
 

Bonnie interviews Dr. Phil Leveque

While we carry Marianne's reports about the dangers of addictive drugs, we also carry the most colorful and experienced individual in the world when it comes to articles about medical marijuana, that is our esteemed Dr. Phillip Leveque, WWII U.S. Army Combat Infantryman, Professor of Pharmacology, Forensic Toxicologist, and retired physician.  

We raise awareness of the deadly drugs like OxyContin approved by the government, yet offer a rare source of information for legal users of medical marijuana who have few places and doctors to turn to for information. 

Dr. Leveque has written hundreds of articles and we have recorded dozens of video interviews with Bonnie King and 'Doc' Leveque addressing cannabis and another extremely important subject close to our hearts at Salem-News.com, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) which affects hundreds of thousands of Americans, particularly those who served in wars like Iraq, Afghanistan, Vietnam, Korea and WWII. 

For many the suffering continues, Dr. Leveque and I in particular, have worked with many victims and helped those we could with advocacy here on these pages.  One such story is Iraq Marine Corps Vet Phil Northcutt, who today is a Salem-News.com writer.  That in itself shows how full circle things can come.  

Many of our writers address PTSD, we also have a documentary in the works in this regard, and when I was in Iraq, I recorded what are apparently, the only in-country interviews with Army soldiers and Marines specifically about PTSD.  This is one of my primary reasons for having gone to Iraq, and I have similar content from Afghanistan and Kuwait.  We also have several other interviews in place for the program that we hope to complete this year if possible, it is badly needed.

Tim and Sean - the day Tim left for Iraq.    Bonnie and Austin on a brighter Oregon day.

I do want to say that we have incredible sons who help with projects related to Salem-News.com; Austin and Sean King are listed on our staff page and their modern age skills have been invaluable to us time and time again, and it is important to recognize, even our 12-year old son Christian has written his first article for publication and keeps asking when it is going to show up.

Sean and Austin were both instrumental in creating music videos for newly released songs by Agron Belica. Sean's background includes having attended a media arts academy in nearby McMinnville, Oregon, for his final three years of high school. The experience was both rare and valuable and allowed Sean an opportunity to both advance his skills and gain a host of friends to network with as they enter the media arts industry. Sean also produces original electronic music which is a unique, experimental and emerging sound experience. Austin's forte is music, he is very serious about advancing his already amazing guitar skills and his vocals. He is at a point where both his original songs and popular covers are very fun to listen to. He also is into unique drums that have cultural value and great sound. These two have gotten us out of different types of computer jams, of course Dexter Phoenix is always top notch, but both Sean and Austin have excellent computer abilities, they are raised on electronics and computers.

As we endeavor to run Salem-News.com every day, we hope that we will connect with funding so that we are not simply scraping by, which is the reality of our existence.  I run a news organization that has a real chance to move mountains, and it has strong legs, but it needs to be fed regularly and with our skeleton crew, there is not time for that.  
 

Bonnie King interviewed by KBCH Radio

It is hard to explain, but we have not placed financial gain anywhere near the top of our priority list, it hasn't been about that, and perhaps if we had been well funded in the early years it would not have evolved as a product of people hungry only for the truth, angered and frustrated by our government, and in recent years, months, things have become far worse!
 

Our recent article on the National Defense bill that allows the government to incarcerate Americans indefinitely without charges is beyond Orwellian, and I am saying we are one of the few ways to intelligently resist this madness.  We have a stronger oncoming flow of news than any similar group, and the ability to generate content that is bursting at the seams.

I have said before that when we started this, we had a huge house, we had a Corvette, my station-issued Ford Explorer news truck, other cars, and income.  Today we don't have any of that, even our current automobile is broken down.  It is a strange position to be in, and then people write to me and blast us because they believe Salem-News.com is a big organization in Salem, Oregon where we go to work in some skyscraper driving a Prius and wearing Birkenstocks.  

It simply isn't the case, but every time someone helps by donating, it helps us pay rent, keep our phones and Internet service on, and that is good.  If people send $5 on PayPal it helps.  Sometimes people have the ability to send more, I'll just say again that we can use everything we can possibly receive, because times are tough and if we ever lost this, it would be a tragedy.  It's a large effort for two news people, one of whom is the General Manager, that is Bonnie.  I guess it is sort of a mom and pop operation, one with a global effect.

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Tim King, summer 2008, covering the Iraq War

Tim King: Salem-News.com Editor and Writer Tim King has more than twenty years of experience on the west coast as a television news producer, photojournalist, reporter and assignment editor. In addition to his role as a war correspondent, this Los Angeles native serves as Salem-News.com's Executive News Editor. Tim spent the winter of 2006/07 covering the war in Afghanistan, and he was in Iraq over the summer of 2008, reporting from the war while embedded with both the U.S. Army and the Marines. Tim is a former U.S. Marine. Tim holds awards for reporting, photography, writing and editing, including the Silver Spoke Award by the National Coalition of Motorcyclists (2011), Excellence in Journalism Award by the Oregon Confederation of Motorcycle Clubs (2010), Oregon AP Award for Spot News Photographer of the Year (2004), First-place Electronic Media Award in Spot News, Las Vegas, (1998), Oregon AP Cooperation Award (1991); and several others including the 2005 Red Cross Good Neighborhood Award for reporting. Tim has several years of experience in network affiliate news TV stations, having worked as a reporter and photographer at NBC, ABC and FOX stations in Arizona, Nevada and Oregon. Tim was a member of the National Press Photographer's Association for several years and is a current member of the Orange County Press Club. Serving the community in very real terms, Salem-News.com is the nation's only truly independent high traffic news Website. As News Editor, Tim among other things, is responsible for publishing the original content of 102 Salem-News.com writers. He reminds viewers that emails are easily missed and urges those trying to reach him, to please send a second email if the first goes unanswered. You can write to Tim at this address: newsroom@salem-news.com

End Israeli apartheid