"And so even when the Brits left, they did an airlift. They put their Iraqi employees directly on planes and flew them to Oxfordshire to an RAF base there. Australians airlifted out all of their Iraqis. Denmark airlifted out all of their Iraqis in a single night, Poland the same."This is an exerpt from the radio program "Taking Names", This American Life.
Act Two. Emails from a Dead Man.
Ira Glass
It's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. Today's program, "Taking Names," the story of Kirk Johnson's seven-year attempt to save the lives of Iraqis who worked with US forces during the war there.
....
Nancy Updike
A few months ago, Kirk sent me the draft of a book he's writing about all this. And the last chapter is about a case that's still going on now. That's the case I'm going to talk about. It was sent to the List Project a year ago in July of 2012.
When Kirk got the email, he didn't know anything about it. It was just a zip file full of documents, and he started printing them and laying them all out.
Kirk Johnson
I started with my kitchen table. When that filled up from all the pages laid out, I pulled some chairs up and used the chairs. And then I started running this paper trail along the floor.
Nancy Updike
You were trying to line everything up in chronological order?
Kirk Johnson
Exactly. But I'm basically looking at a dead man's attempt to get a visa.
Nancy Updike
The documents are a back and forth between this one Iraqi man and the bureaucracies processing his refugee application. His first email goes like this. Kirk's translating it from Arabic.
Kirk Johnson
"Greetings to those of you working in the immigration office. I ask your help in considering my request. I need a speedy solution to my situation, which is filled with persistent threats. People want to kill me because I worked for the US Army. Please help me come to America. Attached are some of the certificates and records of my work. Gratefully."
And in the book, I call him Omar. But that's not his real name. So he applied on June 28. And their reply on October 9, 2011, was this. "Dear applicant, please be informed that your application is in process, but we still need a valid official email address for a supervisor or HR officer who can identify you and verify your employment and a copy of the contract between your company of employment and the US government. Please reply directly to this email, and do not change the subject line. Thank you."
Nancy Updike
In this exchange, Omar is providing six documents that corroborate his work for the United States, including contact information for American supervisors. He included copies of two contracts he'd had for projects overseen by Parsons, which is an American company. And there was a recommendation letter from the US Army. He'd worked for them as a forklift operator.
Kirk Johnson
So here in front of me is a certificate of appreciation from the Department of the Army. "Your dedicated service to the US is appreciated and will not be forgotten." October 2009 to October 2010-- and then it's got the names of his supervisors.
Nancy Updike
There were two more Army recommendation letters along with that one. And among the three, there were the names and signatures of six different US Army officers. There was also a letter from Parsons, the American company that oversaw the projects he worked for.
Kirk Johnson
"Parsons would be pleased to answer any questions concerning his employment. Contact can be made with the undersigned." And then they gave two phone numbers there.
This one here, this is one that also even says the exact long contract number that he worked under, the federal contract number. Again, at the bottom of this one, there's a Staff Sergeant signature, his DSN number, his phone number, and his Army email address.
Nancy Updike
But in spite of all these documents and all this information, it seems clear from the emails that follow that the bureaucracies involved don't think that Omar has provided exactly the information they want-- a valid official email address for a supervisor-- even though they have four phone numbers for different supervisors and the official Army email address for one of Omar's supervisors. If they found that email address to be invalid for some reason, they don't make that clear to Omar.
Kirk Johnson
In the end of December-- actually the last day of the year, December 31, 2011-- at 9:46 AM, he sent a short note saying, "Peace and respect for everyone who works in your office. My brothers, I wonder if there's any news that you might share with me. What's the latest with my case? With great thanks, Omar."
So the war has officially ended. The troops have fully pulled out. The base that he was working on doesn't exist anymore. Four days pass, and the State Department writes him back at 3:50 PM on January 4. It says, "Dear sir/ma'am, we have checked your case and found that it's in processing pending verifying your employment. Please note that once you are scheduled for an interview, you'll be contacted. Your patience does assist us in accelerating the process," which is a common phrase that I see all over the place, this strange notion that if they're just patient, things will speed up. It's not true.
Nancy Updike
Not only was the process not on the verge of accelerating, Omar was trying to get out during a period when US officials admit that refugee processing for Iraqis had ground almost to a halt. It stayed slow for over a year. The US was beefing up its security screening procedures, because two Iraqis in Kentucky had been arrested and charged with sending money and weapons to al-Qaeda in Iraq.
The two guys in Kentucky had never worked for the United States, like Omar had. They hadn't gotten into the US based on American military or civilian supervisors vouching for them in writing, the kind of letters Omar had. Omar was a different kind of case altogether. But he was Iraqi.
Kirk Johnson
The next email that he wrote to the State Department-- this is February 16, 2012. I have all of these emails, but this one was the only one that was all in red. He had changed the font color.
He says, "Peace and respect to you all. I'd like to explain some of the critical developments that have happened to me in Kirkuk. I feel that I'm in a very critical situation. My security isn't good, and I'm seeking your guidance. I fear for my life, the life of my family, and I'm asking for you to help me by transferring my case to a neighboring country. If you were able to transfer my file to Turkey, then my family and I will go to finish the visa process there. I await your speedy reply, God willing."
He's clearly trying to escalate the situation here and offering to flee to another country if--
Nancy Updike
If that'll speed things up.
Kirk Johnson
Right.
Nancy Updike
The next email back to Omar had a new paragraph that Kirk had seen in emails to other Iraqis and that would turn up again and again in Omar's case.
Kirk Johnson
"Please note that you have to provide us with different contact info--" and then this is all in bold-- "official email address for a supervisor or HR officer who can identify you and verify your employment. Once we receive this, we will proceed with your case. Kind regards."
And this is where-- I had a wrestling match with the publisher, because in the initial submission of my book, I put the entire back and forth-- and it was 60 pages long-- because I wanted them to see how many times the exact same reply came back where they kept saying, please note that you have to provide us with different contact info.
Nancy Updike
Omar didn't write back saying, "I don't understand what's wrong with the contact information I already gave you. Please explain that to me so I know what to do." And the bureaucracy he's writing to is churning through about 500 new applicants a week in a system that operates like a customer service center for a credit card or phone company. Emails are answered in the order in which they're received by whichever employee is free to answer them, which means that one applicant might get emails from half a dozen different employees.
Finally, Omar asks a cousin in the United States to please track down one of his old supervisors and get new contact information. And then in the chronology of documents, there's a death threat against Omar. It's attached to his email. It's got a seal and a date on it.
Kirk Johnson
From the Lightning Brigade of Ansar al-Sunna, which is-- we know them to be an al-Qaeda affiliate in Iraq. This is now several months after the war is over. Omar is not working for the Americans anymore. The Americans are gone.
But this militia didn't care. An excerpt from the letter that I translated says, "To the atheist agent Omar, you are warned that if you do not accept the orders of the mujahideen by leaving your work with the American forces, your work as a spy-- we have warned you many times before, but you did not heed them. Nor did you return to the correct path. So we, the army of Ansar al-Sunna in Iraq, have decided to carry out the punishment of execution if you do not leave your work."
Nancy Updike
So he's caught, and there's two bureaucracies. There's a bureaucracy of a militant organization that's sending him their outdated threat email, which is saying, you have to leave your job, that he's already out of, or we're going to kill you. And then there's also this bureaucracy saying, you have to send us more information that he's already sent them.
Kirk Johnson
Our bureaucracy doesn't know if he worked for us. And their bureaucracy is certain that he did, but they don't realize that we're gone.
Nancy Updike
We showed this threat letter to three Iraqi translators with experience reading death threats from different Iraqi militias. And they disagreed about its authenticity. One translator pointed out that the death threat had the same kinds of grammatical errors that Omar's emails and later his brother's emails did, so we can't be sure it's real.
Whether or not it was real, Omar at this point fled to Turkey with the idea of finding an apartment and a job and then bringing his family. But he couldn't get permission to work in Turkey, so he went back to Iraq and started moving his family from house to house, hiding.
Finally, his cousin in America did track down new contact information for one of his American bosses, a guy from Parsons. And on April 5, nine months after Omar's first email, the US State Department contacted Omar's former boss.
Kirk Johnson
Exactly 25 minutes later, at 11:47 AM, Omar's old boss at Parsons says, "Yes, I remember him to the best of my knowledge, and attached is further reference. I hope this is sufficient." And he included this letter, where he said, "To whom it may concern, it's my pleasure to provide reference for Omar. His performance working as a maintenance and laborer for the Parsons-Iraq joint venture was outstanding. I knew Omar for more than two years of my capacity as a materials logistics manager, around May 2004 to August 10 of 2006. He was an extremely positive asset as to our endeavors while in Iraq. If I can be of any further assistance or provide you with any further information, please do not hesitate to contact me."
He's got his office number, cellphone, email address, and it's on official Parsons letterhead. When I saw this, this seems like-- I was relieved when I saw this, because until this point, when I first looked at this case, I didn't know how the story ended. I just thought that this was another typical case of the process dragging on for somebody, and maybe they needed our help to nudge it forward.
So I was getting anxious until I saw this letter. And I was like, this is great. Everything's on official letterhead. It's directly to people that I know in the State Department that are all cc'ed on this email.
Nancy Updike
Omar got an email back saying, "We got the contact information you sent, and we'll be in touch." Omar wrote back immediately.
Kirk Johnson
Kind of a hopeful but still desperate email. He says, "Peace and greetings, my brothers. Now that you have the official email address, I'm wondering whether my file might be transferred to Jordan. Are there any steps left that I need to do? I need resolution. Time is passing here. I don't own anything. I don't work. I'm moving from house to house, from here to there. I beg you to find a solution. Please call me."
Next email-- this is dated April 17. This is less than 10 days after they told him that they had received the employment letter. On April 17, 1:41 PM, they sent Omar this letter. "Dear sir, thank you for your email. We have checked your case and found that it's in processing your employment verification." I'm reading this exactly as it's written.
"Please understand that the process is lengthy and might need a long period of time. Your patience does assist us in accelerating the process. Since your employment has been verified yet, you aren't advised to transfer your case to Jordan. Kind regards."
If you, as an American, can tell me what that means-- those sentences together-- I'd love to know. But it's like asking Siri to save your life or something. You're talking to a robot that seems incapable of learning, much less giving you a visa.
As April turned into May, he kept sending them emails telling them, "I'm in real danger here. I've received another new death threat. I carry the letter with me, which I can send to you or bring with me when you interview me. I'm waiting for your call." And then he puts, like, six exclamation marks at the end of that.
Nancy Updike
Again, the death threat was included in the documents. And our translator raised the same questions about this one as with the earlier one.
Kirk Johnson
Seven weeks after that, after the State Department's employment verification unit received the verification letter from his boss, Omar again receives an email that says-- this is on May 22, 2012.
"Dear sir or madam, please note that we are unable to verify your employment. Kindly provide us with different contact info, official email address for a supervisor or HR officer who can identify you and verify your employment. Please reply to this email, and do not change the subject line. Kind regards."
Nancy Updike
It's like they've gone back to the beginning.
Kirk Johnson
Right. This is the last round of correspondence, because less than two weeks later, on June 9, Omar gets a phone call. His wife said that he took the call in the other room, spoke for a couple minutes, and then came back in. They were still sitting around the kitchen table. He told his wife that he needed to step outside but that he was going to come back soon.
Nancy Updike
Omar's decapitated body was found later that night. That's what Omar's widow told the List Project. His death certificate is the next one in the chronology of documents.
