Iraq

Rebuilding media, dodging death

The Florida company in charge of Hussein's old networks must face not only Iraqis' distrust, but also a paralyzing wave of violence.

[Times photos: Jamie Francis ]

Iraqis working for Iraq's media network unloadd more than 500 AK-47s in Baghdad. The guns will be used by guards at media sites across Iraq. Harris Corp., a Florida company, is managing a $96-million contract to help the Iraqi media gt on its feet.

A street vendor offers more than 25 choices in newsppaers in Baghdad, including Almada, in the foreground.

Harris Corp.'s David Sedgley talks to a colleague from Baghdad's Green Zone, where hundreds of U.S. contractors have headquarters.

"No one discussed anything with us - how democratic is that?" asks Ismael Zayer, editor of Al-Sabah. Susan Taylor Martin: Iraq Diary April's death toll near invasion's

BAGHDAD - "Safety off!"

On command, the stone-faced South African unlocks the safety catch on his AK-47 and turns to the bulletproof window.

"Okay, mate," the driver barks, "let's play!"

The Ford Expedition shoots through the gate and hits the streets of Baghdad like a scene from an action movie. The driver whips the wheel to the right, then left, careering in and out of traffic. The guard fixates on the road, alert for any sign of a sniper, a carjacker, a bomb.

"With these armored vehicles, the only defense is speed," David Sedgley says as the Expedition screeches around a corner. "The windows don't go down, so you can't shoot back."

Sedgley is a project director for Harris Corp., a Florida company that has the $96-million contract to turn Saddam Hussein's old media network - TV and radio stations, and a national newspaper - into a vibrant, independent voice for the Iraqi people.

Even if Iraq were safe, that would be a challenge in a country that was silenced by decades of dictatorship and has a growing distrust of anything involving Americans. Already, the editor of the newspaper has threatened to quit and take his entire staff with him.

But violence has turned a challenge into a major security risk.

Since he started work in Iraq in January, Sedgley has never visited the stations in Fallujah because the city is too dangerous. Last month, three employees - including a young TV anchorwoman - were killed when their bus was attacked in Baqubah, north of Baghdad. Shiite rebels seized a station in southern Iraq, and Sedgley has ordered employees in other dicey areas to lock the doors and go home.

"It's not worth the loss of lives," he says.

In the past few months, Harris has accomplished a considerable amount: refurbishing old studios; building new ones; improving the quality of programming on Al-Iraqiya, the TV network now seen throughout much of Iraq and the rest of the Middle East.

But work has come to a near halt in recent days as Harris and other companies have been in lockdown because of the violence. Even with armed guards and armored vehicles, Sedgley has been unable to move more than a mile or so beyond the Green Zone, the area of Baghdad that is headquarters for Iraq's U.S.-controlled civil administration and hundreds of American contractors.

And even the zone is not totally safe. Almost daily, it comes under attack from Iraqis opposed to the U.S. occupation.

"Every time I hear a rocket," Sedgley says, "I wonder if it has my name on it."

The process of rebuilding Iraq has been fraught with peril - and controversy. Enormous companies like Halliburton, once headed by Vice President Dick Cheney, have been accused of using political clout to land huge no-bid contracts and then overcharging the U.S. government.

A far smaller player, Harris Corp. won its contract by competitive bidding after another company failed to perform up to par. Still, the Harris experience in Iraq offers a look into a contracting process that is often opaque to the public, yet will consume billions of taxpayer dollars in coming years.

A Melbourne-based maker of communications equipment, Harris gets about 70 percent of its business from the U.S. government. Its biggest contract is a 15-year project to upgrade the telecommunications system of the Federal Aviation Administration. Harris also supplied high-tech radios used by U.S. troops during the war in Iraq.

Harris' presence in Iraq is largely due to a single employee, engineer Joe Sleiman. Born in Lebanon, Sleiman liked the idea of helping rebuild another Arab country and supporting efforts to democratize the Middle East.

"My personal motivation was that I owed back something to the area I came from," Sleiman says. "The more overt statement to my bosses was, "There's money to be made."'

Harris executives agreed. In July, Sleiman became head of the one-man Iraq Initiatives project and began searching for suitable contracts.

It was not easy. At least 30 agencies - from the Department of Defense to the Army Corps of Engineers - had thousands of contracts to award. It was fall before Sleiman heard - almost by accident - about the one Harris would eventually land.

In talking to colleagues, he learned a California company, Science Applications International Corp., had bought equipment from Harris to send to Iraq.

On further inquiry, Sleiman discovered SAIC had won a no-bid contract to rebuild and run Iraq's media network. It was among several contracts awarded to SAIC, whose senior vice president had left a year earlier to join the Defense Department.

SAIC hired a new editor for the newspaper - once run by Hussein's son Uday - and got the TV channel, Al-Iraqiya, back on the air with canned programming. But SAIC had no media experience, and ratings for the channel were poor compared with those for popular Arab stations like Al-Jazeera.

"SAIC is not a broadcast company, but (the government) gave them this contract because it was willing to take the job in the middle of the war," Sleiman says.

By fall, neither the government nor SAIC was happy, and the contract was put out for bid. Harris decided to go for it.

The company knew the technical side of broadcasting: It is a leading maker of equipment for U.S. radio and TV stations. But it knew nothing about programming. In putting together its bid, Sleiman realized Harris would have to team up with a partner that could produce news and entertainment Iraqis wanted to watch.

"What I needed was an Arabic-speaking network, but the problem was, the two top ones - Al-Jazeera and Al-Arabiya - were not on the right side of the CPA," Sleiman says, referring to the U.S.-run Coalition Provisional Authority. "How many times have they been kicked out of the country? To have Al-Jazeera on my team would have been a killer."

Sleiman approached the Lebanese Broadcasting Corp., a noncontroversial Arab network. It signed on to train broadcast staffers and make the operation look more professional. To help modernize the newspaper, Sleiman turned to Al-Fawares, a Kuwaiti company that prints the Arabic edition of Newsweek.

In January, Harris won the contract and was told to be in Iraq two weeks later. SAIC, happy to be rid of the project, "made the transition very friendly," Sleiman says, though the Harris team still worked nearly around the clock to get ready. On Feb. 14 it took over the so-called Iraqi Media Network, with its 1,000-plus employees, mostly Iraqis.

Today, Harris operates out of the convention center in the Green Zone. For most of the past year, the only working studio has been one barely big enough for an anchor and a desk.

But the Harris team made a happy discovery next door at the Rashid Hotel, now used as a coalition mess hall. "We found a New York-type production theater," Sedgley says. "It was a huge room, quiet; you can't hear when the helicopters go over."

Harris built three new studios there, with wires running to the "control room" outside - a 1984 Chevy van owned by Lebanese Broadcasting Corp.

"People say it's the ugliest thing they've ever seen, but I love it," Sedgley says. "It's made it to Lebanon and back three times."

Like other U.S. contractors, Harris has found the obstacles to working in Iraq far greater than expected. Getting equipment shipped in has become a major problem because the roads are so dangerous. Other than e-mail, the only way to communicate is by finicky satellite phones. Because of security concerns, TV guests and other visitors to the Rashid must be accompanied by a Harris employee with a security badge. "Walking to the bathroom - it's a problem if one has to go and three don't," Sedgley says.

Another problem is that Iraqis working in the convention center have nowhere to eat. They are not allowed in the Rashid's restaurant, and they can't leave the Green Zone because it takes so long to go through security coming back in.

As a result, Harris is building a canteen for its Iraqi employees even though it is not part of the contract. "But is it the right thing to do? Yes," Sedgley says.

By summer, Iraqis will be able to come and go more freely when the broadcast operation moves out of the Green Zone and into buildings that used to house Iraq's Ministry of Information. It was here that the Harris team made another discovery: thousands of old videotapes looted from the ministry after the war, then returned for a $1-a-tape reward.

Among the propaganda speeches and pirated movies, Sedgley hopes to find Iraqi films that predate Hussein and could be shown on Al-Iraqiya.

"Iraq used to have a thriving film industry," he says. "It probably would have outdone Egypt's in two decades if not for Saddam."

Although Al-Iraqiya still runs canned fare, original programming is on the increase. There is an hour of news each night, and a weekly show, Steps, that includes interviews with Iraqi politicians. When the security situation improves, Harris will proceed with equipping stations throughout Iraq so they can do their own programming.

But Al-Iraqiya has a long way to go, many Iraqis think.

"People talking in the street say the standards are not up to those of other channels they see on satellite TV," says Alaa Al-Bakri, a Baghdad businessman. He used to watch Al-Iraqiya but says he found it neither entertaining nor informative.

"They have to go to the people, talk to them about their problems and try to get solutions," Al-Bakri says. But, he adds, "they have to be independent and neutral."

That is also a concern of Ismael Zayer, the feisty editor of Al-Sabah, the national newspaper for which Harris Corp. is also responsible.

Zayer says Al-Sabah will lose its independence if it becomes part of Iraq's new public broadcasting service, whose board of governors will be appointed by Iraq's prime minister when a permanent government is established. The newspaper thus could be subject to political influence in hiring, firing and editorial content, Zayer says.

He also complains that L. Paul Bremer, the chief U.S. administrator in Iraq, never consulted him about being part of a public broadcast service - the only commercial newspaper in the world that would be in such a position.

"No one discussed anything with us - how democratic is that?" Zayer asks."I'm like a deceived husband, the last one to know."

Al-Sabah ("The Morning") sells about 75,000 copies a day - making it the largest of dozens of papers now published here - and gets enough money from ads to be self-supporting, Zayer says. If Bremer "doesn't set us free, we will walk out - we will take our project and produce it somewhere else."

Sedgley is aware of Zayer's complaints, which also include fears the paper's revenues will be used to support the broadcast part of the operation. "He's a very strong personality and he's built a credible newspaper," Sedgley says. "We'll sort it all out."

In the meantime, Sedgley has other concerns - notably, protecting the 34 broadcast sites around Iraq in the wake of the deadly attack in Baqubah. The original Harris contract did not allow purchase of weapons, but was amended to let the company buy several hundred AK-47s - enough for armed guards to patrol each site 24 hours a day.

A looming question for Harris and all other contractors is what will happen June 30, the day the United States is due to transfer political power to an interim Iraqi government. Will anarchy ensue? Will the government boot out all the contractors or let them continue?

"The answer is that nobody knows," says Sleiman, the engineer who started Harris down the path in Iraq. "It may be like Y2K - we'll probably build ourselves up for something big to happen and then nothing will. We'll just carry on."

- Susan Taylor Martin can be contacted at susan@sptimes.com

World and national headlines

© 2006 • All Rights Reserved • St. Petersburg Times 490 First Avenue South • St. Petersburg, FL 33701 • 727-893-8111 Contact the Times | Privacy Policy Standard of Accuracy | Terms, Conditions & Copyright