Miracles and Massacres (40 page)

The July 3, 1946, scene is imagined. There were threatening phone calls made, but it's unclear whether Bill White received one.

Much of the July 4, 1946, scene is imagined. There was a rally that day, but we don't know whether or not Bill White spoke at it. White's speech does, however, use some of the epithets that were used by others throughout the campaign to criticize Cantrell's machine, like “Gestapo thugs.”

In the July 25, 1946, scene, the wording of the letter is imagined. The record merely says there was a letter requesting FBI observers be present on election day.

The conversation in the August 1, 8:20
A.M
. scene between Bill White and the delivery man is imagined, though the record is clear that the delivery man had been making a lot of deliveries in recent days as people in the county stocked up on ammo. White's actions in this scene are also imagined.

In the August 1, 3:00
P.M.
,
scene, several reports say that Wise actually used the n-word (we have him saying “Boy.”)

The dialogue in the August 1, 7:00
P.M.
,
scene is imagined. Some of it was said by White earlier in the day, and the scene imagines him saying it again to the crowd here. It is not clear that White was at this specific gathering.

Many of the details in the August 1, 9:00
P.M.
,
scene are imagined or composited based on several differing accounts.

The August 2, 1:15
A.M.
,
scene, in which Wise and Cantrell debate whether help from the governor is coming, is imagined.

Many of the details and the dialogue in the 2:45
A.M.
scene are imagined. There are contradictory versions of exactly what happened with the dynamite.

The August 2, 5:45
A.M.
,
scene is imagined, though the major facts relayed in it are true.

As a general matter, the record of these events in Athens is fairly sparse. The few accounts that do exist often contradict other accounts. The result is that we took some license when telling this story—so long as that license did not contradict a fact we knew to be true.

Chapter 11: The My Lai Massacre: A Light in the Darkness

Most of the facts used to create this story came from the following sources:

“Biography: Selected Men Involved with My Lai.”
PBS.org
.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/biography/mylai-biographies/
.

Bock, Paula. “The Choices Made: Lessons from My Lai on Drawing the Line.”
Pacific Northwest
, 2002.
http://seattletimes.com/pacificnw/2002/0310/cover.html
.

Mackey, Robert. “An Apology for My Lai, Four Decades Later.”
New York Times
, August 24, 2009.
http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/08/24/an-apology-for-my-lai-four-decades-later/?_r=0
.

“Nov 12, 1969: Seymour Hersh Breaks My Lai Story.”
History.com
.
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/seymour-hersh-breaks-my-lai-story
.

“Timeline: Charlie Company and the Massacre at My Lai.”
PBS.org
.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/timeline/mylai-massacre/
.

“Transcript: Complete Program Transcript:
My Lai
.”
Pbs.org
.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/transcript/mylai-transcript/
.

Vietnam Magazine
. “Interview—Larry Colburn: Why My Lai, Hugh Thompson Matter.”
Historynet.com
. February 7, 2011.
http://www.historynet.com/interview-larry-colburn-why-my-lai-hugh-thompson-matter.htm
.

Note: Several key elements of this chapter were imagined in order to tell the My Lai story properly. Tuttle-Woods convalescent home, Morgan Campbell (the old man recounting the events at My Lai), Everly Davison (the security guard), and Julia Geller (the reporter who interviews Campbell about the massacre), are all fictional or composited based on real places or people.

Chapter 12: The Missing 9/11 Terrorist: The Power of Everyday Heroes

Most of the facts used to create this story came from the following sources:

Glick, Lyz, and Dan Zegart.
Your Father's Voice
: Reprint ed. St. Martin's Griffin, 2005.

Interrogation Log, Detainee 063,
Time
, March 3, 2006.

Longman, Jere.
Among the Heroes: United Flight 93 and the Passengers and Crew Who Fought Back
: HarperCollins E-Books, January 2010.

Melendez-Perez, Jose. Testimony before National Commission of Terrorist Attacks Upon the People of the United States, January 26, 2004.
http://govinfo.library.unt.edu/911/hearings/hearing7/witness_melendez.htm
.

“Mohammed al Qahtani.”
Wikipedia
.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohammed_al-Qahtani
.

Pauley, Jane. “Lyz Glick's Courage.” NBC News, August 20, 2002.

Rumsfeld, Donald.
Known and Unknown: A Memoir
. Sentinel, 2011.

Smerconish, Michael.
Instinct: The Man Who Stopped the 20th Hijacker
: Lyons Press, 2009.

“Ziad Jarrah.”
Wikipedia
.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ziad_Jarrah
.

Notes on specific scenes and characters:

The conversation that Melendez-Perez has with Qahtani is taken from Melendez-Perez's testimony:
http://govinfo.library.unt.edu/911/hearings/hearing7/witness_melendez.htm
.

The May 11, 2001, scene is imagined. While we know that Qahtani visited the Taliban front lines north of Kabul, we do not know if he was ever in the Panjshir Valley or if Northern Alliance soldiers chased him.

Ziad Jarrah is not known to have been at Orlando International Airport but Mohammed Atta and “another accomplice” were there. Jarrah was living in Fort Lauderdale at the time and was a known associate of Atta and was the leader of the cell Qahtani was assigned to.

The conversations between Khalid Sheik Mohammed and Qahtani are known to have occurred, but we obviously don't know precisely what was said.

Sergeant Romeo and Lisa Smith are fictional characters. While Qahtani was interrogated at Guantanamo Bay, we do not know who his interrogators were. During these interrogations, Qahtani did provide Kuwaiti's name (the courier).

The scene with CIA agent Ron intercepting Kuwaiti's phone call is real, but the record on it is classified so everything has been sterilized, including names.

I am growing increasingly fearful that our history is being lost to time.

It's actually kind of ironic that in this age of Google and the Internet and hard drives capable of holding a century's worth of information we are still losing sight of our past—but it's happening.

And it's getting worse.

As time goes by and new generations come through our public schools, history will continue to fade. It just doesn't seem to be a priority anymore. Most schools teach kids only to memorize dates and places and names.
In 1492 Columbus sailed the ocean blue.
We no longer take the time to understand the
why or how
of anything because of the exaggerated importance placed on the
where and when.

That is one reason why I chose to write this book in a narrative style. I want people to read these stories and feel as if they were there beside the characters. I don't want people to just read about Tokyo Rose in a textbook, I want them to understand who she really was and why she made the decisions she did. Only once you have that context can you judge whether history has treated her properly.

The same goes for most of the other people found in the stories in this book. Even if you've heard of the Battle of Wounded Knee, for example, you may not have really understood the roles that people like General Miles and Colonel Whitside played. And what about Thomas Edison? Are all sides of his complex life talked about or do most people only know him as a gentle genius inventor?

Americans weren't always so ill educated. We used to know our past. We used to understand the Constitution and unapologetically teach our children that it was the greatest and most enlightened system of government ever created.

In 1828, Arthur J. Stansbury, a Presbyterian minister from New York, wrote the “Elementary Catechism on the Constitution of the United States.” This work consists of 322 questions and answers on the Constitution and the
functioning of our federal government. It was written with the explicit intention of being a concise and simple guide for use in public schools.

I found this catechism so fascinating and eye-opening that I wanted to include a small excerpt of it here. I think it's a sad statement on our priorities as a nation that the answers found in it demonstrate a far greater understanding of the Constitution and history than the vast majority of adult Americans have—let alone our children.

Preface

That a people living under a free government which they have themselves originated should be well acquainted with the instrument which contains it, needs not to be proved. Were the system, indeed, very cumbrous and extensive, running into minute detail, and hard to be retained in the memory, even this would be no good reason why pains should not be taken to understand and to imprint it upon the mind but when its principles are simple, its features plain and obvious, and its brevity surpassing all example, it is certainly a most reprehensible negligence to remain in ignorance of it.—Yet how small a portion of the citizens of this Republic have even a tolerable acquaintance with their own Constitution? It has appeared to the author of the following sheets that this culpable want of acquaintance with what is of such deep interest to us all, is to be traced to the omission of an important part of what ought to be an American education, viz. the study of the civil institutions of our country.—We prize them, it is true, and are quite enough in the habit of boasting about them: would it not be well to teach their elements to those whose best inheritance they are?

The following work has been prepared with a view to such an experiment. It is written expressly for the use of boys, and it has been the aim and effort of the writer to bring down the subject completely to a level with their capacity to understand it. Whether he has succeeded the trial must show. He has purposely avoided all abstruse questions, and has confined himself to a simple, commonsense explanation of each article.

[…]

Q31.
What was the change produced by the Revolution?

A.
The different Colonies became each a free
state
, having power to govern itself in any way it should think proper.

Q32.
Had not one state any power over the other?

A.
None at all—and the several states might have remained entirely distinct countries, as much as France and Spain.

Q33.
Did they?

A.
No. Having been led to unite together to help each other in the war, they soon began to find that it would be much better for each of them that they should all continue united in its farther prosecution, and accordingly
they entered into an agreement (which was called a
Confederation
) in which they made some laws which they all agreed to obey; but after their independence was obtained, finding the defects of this plan, they called a Convention in which they laid a complete plan for uniting all the states under one
general government
—this plan is called
the federal constitution
. On this great plan, or Constitution the safety and happiness of the United States does, under Almighty God, mainly depend: all our laws are made by its direction or authority; whoever goes contrary to it injures and betrays his country, injures you, injures me, betrays us all, and is deserving of the heaviest punishment. Whoever, on the contrary, loves and keeps it sacred, is his country's friend, secures his own safety, and farthers the happiness of all around him. Let every American learn, from his earliest years, to love, cherish and obey the Constitution. Without this he can neither be a great or a good citizen; without this his name will never be engraved with honor in the pages of our history, nor transmitted, like that of Washington, with praises and blessings to a late posterity.

[…]

Q99.
Is not this a better way of making the laws of a Country, than either of those we first considered?

A.
It is hard to conceive how greater care could be taken that no wicked, unjust, oppressive, hasty, or unwise Law should pass. There is full time to consider whatever is proposed; such fair opportunity to oppose it, if wrong, and improve it, if imperfect; so many persons, and from so wide a space of country must agree in approving it, that it is scarcely possible any thing very injurious can be enacted; or, at least, if it is, that a different form of Government would have prevented it.

Q100.
Are there not some evils which attend this mode?

A.
Nothing of human contrivance is wholly free from some defect or other; and, in time of war, when the public danger is great, and it is needful that Government should act, not only wisely, but rapidly; some disadvantage may be found to arise from so deliberate a method of passing every Law. But it is far better to put up with this, than to lose the precious blessing of so free and safe a mode of Legislation.

Q101.
You have said that no Laws can be made for the United States, but by Congress; may Congress make any Laws they please?