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MICHAEL DUNNE: I'm Michael Dunne. To say that Tom Bowman, NPR Pentagon correspondent has seen a lot is an understatement. From being one of the first reporters on scene when a plane crashed into the Pentagon on 911 to literally running for his life during an ambush that claimed the lives of colleagues, Bowman has experienced the horrors of war and the fragility of human life today, Bowman has to navigate a pentagon and defense department that is openly hostile to reporters and has had to find sources outside normal channels, because even the highest ranking military officers in the nation are afraid of retribution from President Trump. On the show today, you'll hear from Bowman and hear about his life as a war correspondent and the challenges he and other reporters face while covering a most unusual administration. Tom Bowman, Pentagon correspondent for NPR, thank you so much for coming in and talking with us.
TOM BOWMAN: Michael, good to be with you.
MICHAEL DUNNE: You know you flew across the country to come visit us and meet with members and have an event last week. And you're a DC guy, but you've got connections here in Oregon.
TOM BOWMAN: I have a lot of connections here. First of all, my wife grew up in Portland. Her sisters still live in Portland, and my son went to University of Oregon, graduated five years ago, so I've been coming here for decades. Spent a lot of time on the Oregon coast around Gearhart, spent going up to Astoria. I love skiing on Mount Hood and bachelor. So when someone says, Tom, you want to go to Oregon, like when, name a time and I'll be there.
MICHAEL DUNNE: This is true. He has been extremely responsive and came out to visit us. So, you know, Tom, so many of our listeners know your voice and know the beat that you cover, the expansive beat that is the Pentagon, the Defense Department. But you know they may not know where you come from. Talk about your career, how you got into this crazy business.
TOM BOWMAN: Well, I'm from the Boston area, at a town called Norwood, which is about 14 miles southwest of Boston. I went to St Michael's College in Vermont, where I studied history and people at that time. So, what are you gonna do with a history degree? Well, first of all, I use it every day in my job, yeah. And secondly, I thought about teaching. I thought about government work, thought about journalism, and I ended up falling into this job at a local newspaper in Dedham, Massachusetts, so it was called the daily transcript. It doesn't exist anymore, like a lot of small newspapers, and I got the bug immediately. I loved it. You're meeting interesting people, sometimes odd and unusual people. You're never in the office. You're running around meeting people. I just loved it from the start, and I stayed there five years, and then tried to get a job at the Boston Globe. That didn't happen. So, then I said, Well, I gotta, I gotta go somewhere. I didn't want to just stay at the small paper. So, I ended up at this small newspaper wire service in DC called states News Service, and wrote for the Miami Herald and the Anniston Alabama star, stayed there a couple of years, and then went to the Baltimore Sun, where I covered everything from the city of Annapolis to the Naval Academy to the State House, State Assembly, General Assembly. Covered Congress for the Baltimore Sun. Stayed there just 19 years, and then our boss got fired because he was complaining about budget cuts. Okay? And NPR picked him up, and a number of us went over to NPR, and I sat down. What was Bill Maramo wass his name, and I went to see him. He said, Tom, you're a finalist for the Pentagon job at NPR. I said, Whoa, Bill. Bill, I don't do radio. I'm a print guy. He said, I don't worry, they'll teach you how to do it. And it was off to the races from there. And never looked back. I loved being in a newspaper, but radio, I just really got into that really well. I think I've been to Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria a lot of times. It's that natural sound you get in a radio story. It's just compelling. It's hopefully great listening. And what I love about it, you're telling a story using different muscles. You're telling a story hopefully with a lot of really good sound. And if you're in Iraq or Afghanistan, there could be gunfire, explosions, people speaking in Pashto or Dari, and just had a great time traveling in the Middle East and elsewhere. And again, I just love it. I love the medium. It is just so much fun.
MICHAEL DUNNE: Did you want the Pentagon beat? Or was that something that kind of just. Sort of happened?
TOM BOWMAN: Oh no, I wanted the Pentagon beat opening that at the Baltimore Sun, yeah, right before I went to, you know, God, how long I did it for nine years. I was at the Pentagon on 911 now out there 10 minutes after the explosions, and reported right from there immediately. And then from that point on, of course, it was a completely different world. And that's when I went off to Iraq, Afghanistan, and later on, Syria.
MICHAEL DUNNE: Talk a little bit about that day, because obviously, especially for us on the West Coast, it almost felt like it almost felt a little bit like a world away. But I'm wondering, you know, in terms of, not only did you go there and see the destruction, but you obviously knew a lot of people in the building. I know it's one of the biggest buildings in the world, but still, you must have been very concerned about colleagues or sources or whatnot.
TOM BOWMAN: Absolutely, it was the only time in my life I tell people, because I got there before there was even a radio report. I was listening to NPR, of course. And Bob Edwards, back in the day, was talking with a colleague, Tom Gelten, and said, Tom, we hear this smoke at the Pentagon. Can you look into it? And Tom was on the other side of the building. Now, the Pentagon is like a bunker, so the people on the other side of the building, they didn't even feel anything. Wow. Some said it sounded like someone shut it shut a door, sure. So, I look down, I see flames coming out of the Pentagon, and I just had this sense of inner dread, because I knew about New York, what had happened up there, and the Pentagon's on fire. There were reports that, you know, the plane hit the National Mall. There were all these stories coming out. And I'm just like, What is going on here? It was really just disturbing. And people were running out of the building, civilians with briefcases, military officers, and we're all on the highway, and they kept pushing us down the highway right by the Pentagon. Just keep moving. Keep moving down. Get away from the building. And then everyone's concerned about other planes in the air, yeah, and they stopped all traffic grounded. And then we started seeing F 16 fly over into a circle, and people were screaming and yelling, and it was just it, I tell you, it's still surreal thinking back on that day, which is so odd, so strange.
MICHAEL DUNNE: And then, of course, as you just mentioned, the world changed fundamentally on that day. And there you are as the Pentagon correspondent. I want you to kind of, for our listeners, kind of help us explain what it's like to cover the Pentagon, because, again, it's an enormous apparatus, the largest department in government and there are a lot of very important people who work there and drive national policy. But obviously there's just a lot of folks that you have to know and cultivate those sources to talk about, because it must be expansive.
TOM BOWMAN: It is really expansive. And I was lucky enough to cover the Naval Academy, was at the Baltimore Sun, okay, and then later covered the Pentagon, so I had a lot of good sources within the Navy, and just built on those sources as well. Back at then, you know, people were more willing to talk with you, I think at that time. Now, there's sort of a, I don't know, there's a fear factor with the Trump administration. A lot of military people I've known for years don't want to talk. They're afraid to talk. This is palpable fear now at the Pentagon, because so many people are getting fired, seemingly for no reason at all. So, it's harder to talk with people now because of that fear, because they don't want to get fired. So, I'm reaching out to find other sources around the city and various other departments on Capitol Hill, also the embassies, because they hear what's going on. So it's more challenging now, I think, than it was back then. But you're right after 911 I mean, we were off to the races. Immediately went to Afghanistan and then Iraq, and it absolutely changed everything.
MICHAEL DUNNE: Okay, so talking about being off to the races. Talk about your first overseas trip where you're embedded with the US military. Take us through what that's like.
TOM BOWMAN: Well, it's funny. So, this is 2006 when I started at NPR, okay, and went to the Baghdad Bureau where Annie Garrels, or one of our famous reporters. She was like an old style reporter, cigarette smoking. And I really liked her a lot. And I remember landing at Baghdad airport, and, you know, you’re kind of a fish out of water. I've never been in a place like this. And then our guards picked us up, and I noticed he had a weapon with him, you know, an assault rifle. And just how weird that was, somebody's picking me up with a rifle. I said, That's never happened, yeah. And then we went to our we had, like a safe house there, behind these blast walls, okay? And you had to basically stay in this one block area. See. And was across the street. ABC was around the corner. And if you had to go anywhere, you had to go with your armed guards to the Green Zone back then. And then the Marines. I would spend a lot of time with Marines back at that time, and they would say, be at the green zone at two o'clock. We'll pick you up and take you out to, you know, Anbar province in the western part of Iraq. And again, it was, it was like, You're in your own war movie. It was just kind of weird. You're going into these villages. And with the Marines, of course, they have weapons and they have gear to look out for roadside bombs. And at first, it's just, again, it's just kind of overwhelming. It's just, Oh, my God, I'm in a war zone here, you know.
MICHAEL DUNNE: And what I'm wondering too, you know, obviously, like, for example, the Marines that you're with, they have a job to do. Did they embrace you? Did they look at you as an irritant? What was the relationship like between a journalist such as yourself and those soldiers?
TOM BOWMAN: Actually, well, look, the Marines I was with. I mean, they were, yeah, they were welcoming. And the Marines, the great thing about the Marines is they love to tell their own story. Okay? So, if a reporter says, if a reporter says, I want to go with you, though, yeah, come on with us. You talk to junior Marines. They'll tell you exactly what they think, Huh? The other thing that helped me was my college classmate at that time, was a Marine, General Joe Dunford. Okay, so I would send him a message and say, Hey, Joe, I'm going to go with the Marines in Iraq. Who should I hang out with? And he would give me the names of a couple of people. I would forward that to the Public Affairs people with the Marines, and they would look and said, Oh, man, this guy knows General Dunford, so they were more welcoming when they knew I had a contact that was high up in the Marine Corps.
MICHAEL DUNNE: Tom, I want you to kind of take us through when you've been in a theater of war, you enraptured our news team talking about what you've done, including the dangerous parts of it. Talk about some of those stories, stuff, some of those experiences you had chasing down the story and also running from bullets.
TOM BOWMAN: The first time we were running from bullets, it was in Afghanistan, in this area called the Argand Valley. And this would have been around 2010 or 11, and at that time it was a very dangerous area and these striker armored vehicles from Fort Lewis Washington were patrolling up in there and kept getting blown up. And we were with what's called a quick reaction force in case anybody got into trouble. And we were with this force. They were looking for a new headquarters at this school. And we hear this explosion, we look not in the near distance in those big plumes of black smoke. We rushed there, and we get there, and another striker armored vehicle in the back door flips down, and the sergeant runs out, and my producer, Graham Smith, says, Hey, can we go out too? And the sergeant basically said, I don't care where you guys go. So Graham runs out first, and I hear gunfire, and all I say, oh my god, we're going to get hit. This is crazy. And I had to run from maybe 40 yards from the armored vehicle to basically this drainage ditch where the soldiers, at this time, were firing back at the Taliban. It was only about 40 yards, maybe even maybe 20 yards, and it felt like it was a mile, because I said, Oh my god, I had body armor on and a helmet. I'm like, oh my god, I'm going to get shot. And I jumped into the ditch and realized that, you know, they were pretty far away. They weren't really good with their shots. Some of them were like, going over our heads or going into the dirt. And then we spent, you know, a couple of hours there, and then two soldiers were killed, and they recovered their bodies, and we stayed with this unit into the night, and they had a candle light service for the two guys who died. And that was, you know, when I think back in the stories I've done, that was one of the most powerful, just because we were there when it happened, and we saw, you know, the love these guys had for their comrades in the candlelight service. So, we did a story on that. And then after that, we were at one other location, also Afghanistan, in the eastern part of Afghanistan, at this combat outpost called wilderness. And we were there, and mortars came in, and 12 mortars came in, and some were really close. And I was coming back from the bathroom, I just brushed my teeth. Remember holding onto my toothbrush, and you hear this crazy explosion. I tell people, it's like walking down the sidewalk and there's a head on collision, like 20 feet away from you just You're shocked, and you're just standing there with my tooth brush, and I see people running to the bomb shelter. So, I followed them into the bomb shelters, and then they just kept coming in.
MICHAEL DUNNE: What's it like? Most of us don't have ever-present fear in our jobs. Yes, we all have pressures and stresses. What's it like to be in that kind of environment, knowing I'm there to do a job and I need to do that job, but at the same time, this is a very tenuous situation.
TOM BOWMAN: Yeah, you really have to. Well, we sat down with one Green Beret Colonel before we went on one trip to Afghanistan, and he said, I'm not going to tell you to be safe where you're going, just be careful. And I think that was pretty good advice, and you're with the American military, very competent, but you're right. Anything can happen, and you just have to try to be careful. You know, you listen to what they're saying, where they're going. You're in armored vehicles, which helps. And the real worry, of course, are those roadside bombs, because if you're on patrol with them, you know they have detectors, but there are times when they make a mistake or go the wrong way, and bad things can happen. So but again, you're there to tell a story. And I told my fellow reporters back at the time that you can't cover the Afghan War, the Iraq War, from the Pentagon. You have to be there to see what's going on. And you're going to get a different perspective when you are troops in the field than you are from the Pentagon. A lot of times they're going to try to sugarcoat it. Things are getting better in Afghanistan. Things are getting better in Iraq, the only way you're going to get to ground.
MICHAEL DUNNE: You’re with the troops over there, but you've also told us a story about a very personal loss you experience with, with, with folks you knew, if you would tell us a little bit about that, right?
TOM BOWMAN: We were with the Afghan military. This is 2016 and we were in Helmand Province, heading toward this area city called Maraj, which is a very large sort of Taliban enclave. They had started clearing it out, and the Afghan military said you can come with us, because we've cleared this area. So, we wanted to see again, get the ground truth how things are going so we went along with the Afghan military in this convoy of armored Humvees, and we passed this group of Afghan soldiers on the side of the road. And just as we got past them, the gunfire erupted from our left side. We were in an ambush. And what the military will tell you is, if you're in an ambush, you keep moving. You don't stop. These guys stopped and started shooting back. And we took some small arms fire against our Humvee, and then we turned around and went back to their base a mile down the road. And what we learned was our colleagues, photographer David Gilkey, who's from Portland, and our fellow journalists and interpreter, zombie to mana, they were both killed, you know, by the Taliban, and they brought their bodies back to the base and identified the bodies. And, yeah, it was a horrible day.
MICHAEL DUNNE: Yeah, I'm gonna link a story that you did recently with Kat Lonsdorf about what's going on in Gaza. And I'm linking this together because something like 350 journalists have been killed in that theater, if not more so. And the story is a great piece about sort of where we are with Gaza. Talk a little bit about that for folks who maybe haven't heard it yet.
TOM BOWMAN: My colleague, Kat lonsdorf, spent a lot of time in Tel Aviv and also the West Bank reporting on this. Now she's back in DC, and I kind of covered it from the American military perspective, or, you know, talking to members of Congress and so forth. And we were talking, it's like, you know, now we're at a famine. You know, how do we get to the point we're now at a famine? So, we decided to go back and talk to officials in the Biden administration. So, I reached out to a source on Capitol Hill. I said, Hey, you know, we're trying to do this story. Who should I talk with? And this guy gave me the name of this woman who was involved in humanitarian aid, who worked for David Satterfield, who was the special envoy for humanitarian assistance for Gaza, and it just kind of snowballed. And we put together this story. There was tension within the Biden administration. The humanitarian people say, you're not doing enough. You have to pressure the Israelis more. You should withhold arms. And those others within the administration said, listen, we'll keep pressing the Israelis to open more routes for humanitarian effort, get more humanitarian trucks in. But we're not going to withhold arms because Israel is getting attacked from all sides, from Hamas, from Hezbollah, from Iran, from the Houthis. We're not going to do that. So our story was about the tensions within the administration and also from Democrats, some Democrats on Capitol Hill, we should withhold all arms. So that was kind of our story, what was going on within the administration, why didn't you withhold arms? And again, the back and forth about what's the best way ahead, and that we put that out, and it was a worthwhile report, because. No one else had done that, and I'm glad we did well.
MICHAEL DUNNE: And that kind of leads me to one of my last questions for you. There's so much distrust right now amongst the American public for all institutions, including the media. I want you to kind of contextualize for folks who obviously listen to this station and listen to NPR, and they believe in in the power of it, but I want you to talk about how important it is that you're out there doing your job, that there are journalists who are getting to that truth.
TOM BOWMAN: And in particular, we have a colleague, Anas Baba, who's in Gaza. He's been there for two years. He's going to be one of the bravest reporters I've ever heard about when he's in Gaza. His dad was there as well. Was a photographer for agents France press. The dad eventually got out, but Anas is still there doing reporting, day in and day out. One of the frustrations is reporters generally can't get in there. Yeah, the Israeli military would take people in for sort of a dog and pony show, but the frustration for us is we can't be there. So, he is our eyes and ears in Gaza. He's doing one hell of a job, risking his life every day.
MICHAEL DUNNE: I have to ask. You're a journalist who has literally, not just figuratively dodged bullets. You have a son who's interested in going into a career in journalism? If he comes to you dad, and says, Hey, I want to go overseas and cover a war as it's happening. What are you gonna say?
TOM BOWMAN: Oh, man, I hope that doesn't happen. I understand. Good news is we; the US is not involved in any wars right now. I mean, what's going on in the Caribbean is, you know, gunboat diplomacy, if you want to call it that, yeah, or blowing up supposed drug boats. I don't see us getting involved in any land wars in the foreseeable future. But if my son came to me and said, This is what I want to do: I would support him, and I would be scared to death every single day.
MICHAEL DUNNE: I imagine you put your folks through the same worry. Tom Bowman, it's just a treasure to talk to you, and thank you so much for coming in and talking to us. Tom Bowman, the Pentagon correspondent for NPR again. Thank you so much.
TOM BOWMAN: Michael. It's been a pleasure.
MICHAEL DUNNE: That's the show for today. All episodes of Oregon On The Record are available as a podcast at KLCC.org. Tomorrow, on the show, we talk with Dr Patrick Luedtke of Lane County about the increasing role heat is playing on massive public health challenges. I'm Michael Dunne, and this has been Oregon On The Record from KLCC. Thanks for listening
