Re: Hamill Transcript

Date: May 22, 2004

"Transcript: Hamill Would Go Back to Iraq
Sunday, May 23, 2004

This is a transcript from "The Big Story Weekend With Rita Cosby," May 22, 2004.RITA COSBY: Well, as many of you know I have just returned from Macon, Mississippi where I was able to do the very first TV interview with former hostage Tommy Hamill whose capture and escape made headlines around the globe. Here now, an amazing story of the human spirit, of survival and of a true American patriot.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

THOMAS HAMILL: (search) They attacked our convoy.

COSBY (voice-over): The whole world knew his face and name after this dramatic video was released showing steadfast American Tommy Hamill abducted by masked Iraqi insurgents. It was April 9, and his U.S. supply convoy suddenly came under attack on the outskirts of Baghdad during one of the bloodiest days for Americans in war ravaged Iraq.

T. HAMILL: It's a war zone, and you have to learn to live with what's thrown at you every day. We go out every day, you know, knowing the possibility of what could happen.

COSBY: In his first TV interview since the ambush and his incredible escape, Tommy Hamill and his wife of 17 years Kellie, described why this courageous truckdriver and dairy farmer from Macon, Mississippi entered the world's hot spot.

(on camera): How did you find out, here you are in Macon, Mississippi, how did you find out about a job over in Iraq?

T. HAMILL: I ran into a good friend I hadn't seen in years.

b: A fellow trucker?

T. HAMILL: Fellow trucker. He told me about a friend that he knew that had a truck and had just parked his truck and was going to go to work for Halliburton. Had he worked for them before and he was going to work in Iraq, you know, driving a truck. And I said, that's my line. That's something I want to do.

COSBY (voice-over): And it was a chance to possibly triple his normal salary.

COSBY (on camera): You got paid a lot more money. I was reading from $80,000 to $120,000 without taxes. That's a lot of money for a farmer from Mississippi.

T. HAMILL: It's a lot of money. It was probably going to be somewhere in the somewhere around $70,000, I guess.

COSBY (voice-over): Before leaving for Iraq, Hamill was amassed in debt, forced to sell his family farm. But he says there was something much more important than money motivating his mission.

T. HAMILL: And I wanted to go there and see in Iraq. You know, you hear things about these other countries, and how they are, how other people are, you don't know until you actually get in there. And I wanted to go over there and see how these people were living. It's been a great experience for me. I never was able to be in the military. I wanted to serve my country in some way and I thought this was the way to do it.

COSBY: Although he said, look, I want to go over there, I want to help my country, you had to have been worried that your husband said, I want to go to Iraq.

KELLIE HAMILL, THOMAS HAMILL'S WIFE: Well, I mean I was worried, but I mean, I knew the lord would be taking care of him, watch over him, have his hands around him, keeping him safe. And it's a lost (ph) decision, you know, the husband made the decision, I just followed behind him.

COSBY (voice-over): Hamill was one of 6,000 contract workers employed by Halliburton to go to Iraq. And before he was shipped out, he says in training sessions, Halliburton minced no words in laying out the risks and showing how ugly the job could be.

T. HAMILL: They went through everything that was going on over there. They didn't hide anything from us.

COSBY: What did they tell you?

T. HAMILL: They actually tried to scare us away. I mean, they admitted some casualties, some Halliburton casualties. And they had told us about them. And they had shown us some pictures of some of the equipment that had been damaged. They didn't send us over there not knowing what we were getting into. Anybody went over there, we knew what the outcome could be. We knew that there was danger and the possibility that we may not come back alive.

COSBY: And those images he only saw in photographs soon became reality, when he arrived in embattled Baghdad September, 2003.

(on camera): When you got there to Iraq, what was it like? The wild west?

T. HAMILL: No, it was — I've been in the wild west in the country. It's nothing different. We were have hostile actions against us from day one, when we got there. You know, I knew from day one, this is reality now. We're going to have to go forward with it. I made the decision to come here, and I'm going to stick with it and I'm going to stick by my God, he's going to be with me.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

COSBY: But nothing could have prepared Tommy Hamill for what happened April 9, when his convoy came under a massive surprise attack and he was taken hostage. When we come back, Hamill tells us for the first time what he endured.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

T. HAMILL: I couldn't crawl because my arm, I wasn't able to pull myself, so I just started rolling.

COSBY (voice-over): Early April in Iraq was a time of escalating and intense violence, and the beginning of a new tactic of warfare against American soldiers and civilians: kidnappings and murder.

COSBY (on camera): Walk me through that day.

T. HAMILL: It was just a normal day like any other day. You know, we had our mission orders. We know where we're going. We have our briefings in the morning before we leave, and we left out that morning.

COSBY (voice-over): Newly promoted convoy commander Tommy Hamill was leading 20 vehicles, mostly fuel trucks on the road between Baghdad and Fallujah when suddenly Iraqi rockets and artillery blasted them from all sides. Hamill knew some of his close comrades were dead, in fact, the bodies of four Halliburton contractors and 1 military soldier were found soon after near the ambush site.

T. HAMILL: The fire was so intense, I told my driver, we can't get out. I said there's no way we can get out of this truck. I said, the only hope we have is staying in this truck, and going as far as we can, and hope that any minute, or any second, we are going to be out of the kill zone. We'll be away from it. But it never, never got out of it.

COSBY: With his vehicle breaking down, Hamill signaled for the other trucks to drive on and save themselves. As he took a bullet to his right arm in a hail of gun fire.

T. HAMILL: I told them I'd been shot, because I had grabbed a rag off of the dash and was trying to stop the bleeding. We had a soldier, I think he had came up with one of the trucks that had been disabled. He had gotten out. It was a truck on fire there by us. But he ran up, and this was one brave soldier. He ran up beside the truck, got up on the running board, and protected me. He was just firing away. And he was in a bad position where he was at. He was having a hard time, he was having to hold on with one arm and shoot with the other one, and having to reload. So he got himself positioned and got around on the hood of the truck. And he was firing from the hood of the truck, and at about that time the truck was just about disabled. We were just about to a stop. Just about in a few seconds, a Humvee, one of the military Humvees pulled around in front of us.

COSBY: And now, for the first time, Hamill reveals how that U.S. military Humvee accidentally left him behind.

T. HAMILL: I'm not blaming anybody. I mean this is a terrible situation. He's thinking there's two people getting out of that truck, not three. And he's got his foot on the gas pedal ready to go. Two people jump in and away he goes. They didn't find out until they done got away that I was still there.

COSBY (on camera): So they left you and didn't realize it.

T. HAMILL: They didn't realize it.

COSBY (voice-over): Now all alone and too injured to even crawl, he literally rolled away from his burning vehicle and into an angry mob.

T. HAMILL: They started yelling in Arabic, and I looked back up on the road and there was just a lone gunman standing on the road. And he was pointing his A.K. at me like he was — I thought he was fixing to shoot me. And he hollered behind him, and at that time there was a group of maybe 10 that started across the road.

COSBY (on camera): Did you think, look, you've got this crowd screaming at you, you've got the guy with the A.K.-47, did you say this is it?

T. HAMILL: I knew that these people, in a mob, in a riot situation that anything was possible. I mean I knew the contractors in Fallujah that were killed. And I actually thought maybe this was going to be it.

COSBY (voice-over): But incredibly, Hamill was soon hauled into a small, silver car where this now famous video was taken by crews from Australian television.

T. HAMILL: I was so angry that they were there. I felt that maybe they, you know, might have known ahead that this was going to happen. I don't know that, that might not be the case, but that's what was going through my mind.

K. HAMILL: To me it was a blessing that she he was shown, because I seen it — when he sees it as anger, I seen it as this was the Lord's way of saying look, I have your husband. He's alive. He's okay. And we'll get through it.

COSBY (on camera): Where does a dairy farmer from Macon, Mississippi get the courage to go through what you went through?

T. HAMILL: I don't know if it's courage. It's faith. It's faith. I thought about the Vietnam veterans, I thought these men were courageous. They were in captivity and were tortured horrendously for years. They went through this; I can go through this. I can do whatever it takes.

COSBY: Hamill also prayed often during his 23 grueling days of captivity as he was constantly passed off to different two-man Iraqi teams who moved him blind-folded and at gunpoint around the Iraqi desert at least a dozen times.

COSBY (on camera): Weren't you scared though at some point?

T. HAMILL: They made gestures. They'd point to their A.K.'s or they'd make a gesture with a finger across their throat like they were going to slit my throat, and I said no problem. Don't worry about it. I'll be right here. I knew I didn't want to anger these guys. That's one thing I knew, I didn't want to anger them. And I didn't want to show fear. I knew that these people, they dwell on fear. That was one thing, i knew I didn't want to show fear. You know, I might have had a little fear, but I didn't want to show it.

COSBY (voice-over): The night before his dramatic escape from a small home, Hamill believed his time had run out, that they had decided to kill him.

T. HAMILL: The guy was walking around the whole time with a weapon around me. I said well, maybe he's trying to get up the nerve. I don't know what's going through his mind.

COSBY (on camera): Incredibly, instead the gunman went to sleep, and hours later Hamill decided to make a break for it. He had tried to escape once before, but snuck back after he found himself alone in the Iraqi desert with no food or water. This time he would be successful. And probably the luckiest man alive.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

T. HAMILL: I didn't know whether there was a guard out there or not, but I said the lord has brought these soldiers this close to me, I said whatever's going to happen, it's going to happen right now.

COSBY (voice-over): Tommy Hamill recalls on May 2, suddenly hearing the sound of a diesel Humvee driving by. And he knew that could only mean one thing, American forces were finally nearby.

T. HAMILL: I immediately jumped up and I went to the door, they had it jammed where I couldn't push it. But I pushed hard enough, that I could get far enough out I could look out and I saw the column of the Humvees And I immediately noticed that they had soldiers on foot. And I said this is good. They can't just load up and drive off. They've all got to load up, I've got time to get to them. So, I pushed on the door. I couldn't get it to push open, I got it to push to one side.

COSBY: Then he ran to the side of freedom. Half a mile other way to stunned U.S. soldiers.

T. HAMILL: I got about halfway to them. And I think I had stumbled intentionally and felled down and was getting up real slow, like I was in distress. I wanted them to see that I was in distress. And I then I started hollering that I was an American P.O.W. In the beginning, they didn't recognize me because I had the beard. When I got to him, one said I recognize him, take the beard off, we saw your picture, we know who you are. I told them who I was, and we've seen your picture.

COSBY (on camera): What did it feel like to finally find American forces and be free?

T. HAMILL: It's hard to explain. I knew that it was over. I knew that I would be coming home. I wanted to call my wife immediately.

COSBY: How did you feel about that call?

K. HAMILL: I said, that was the best wake-up call I'd ever received.< I mean I knew he was alive.

COSBY: Did you have any idea the whole world was praying for you?

T. HAMILL: I didn't realize this would go out so far, until I got to Germany and my wife said you've got scrap books full of letters that are coming from all over the world.

COSBY (voice-over): As soon as Hamill first arrived at a U.S. military base in Germany, and soon after, back home in Macon, he's been followed by a barrage of cameras. But he, himself, has avoided the spotlight, choosing instead to attend private barbecues with family and friends. Beyond this interview, there was one offer this all American could not refuse, to throw out the first pitch at a Houston Astros baseball game.

T. HAMILL: I heard the crack of that bat. I wanted to get out there and do some batting practice with them, but I couldn't do anything with the one arm.

COSBY: Ever the fighter, he threw it with his wounded right arm, which was just operated on a few days ago. And proudly has plastered on its cast, a U.S. flag.

COSBY(on camera): What would you say to President Bush if you had a chance to talk to him?

T. HAMILL: That I'm proud that we've got a president that is willing to put all aside and stand up for what's right.

COSBY: In the midst of all of this, there has been a lot of bad news out of Iraq. You're the good news story. How does that feel?

T. HAMILL: It's good, but you know, the bad news, you know, we have to take the good with the bad.

COSBY (voice-over): Like the recent release of these damaging photos, showing U.S. soldiers abusing Iraqi prisoners.

T. HAMILL: These people are different over there. They're self- sacrificers. They don't mind killing themselves. It's hard to say one way or the other, was is good or bad, what has come out of trying to interrogate these prisoners. But if we have somebody that knows and they know we had something to do with 9/11, we need to find out what they know.

COSBY (on camera): An American recently, Nick Berg, seen on video was beheaded.

T. HAMILL: Right.

COSBY: What went through your mind when you saw that?

T. HAMILL: It's terrible. I mean I have faith that these people will be found. They will go to justice. They will be — they will pay for what they did.

COSBY: Do you ever go home and cry about what you saw?

T. HAMILL: I try not to think about it. Yes, I do. I think about it, it bothers me a lot. I wonder why, you know? Why I was spared.

COSBY: Would you go back to Iraq?

T. HAMILL: I would go back. I've got two small children. I don't want to affect their lives. It was different when I went over there. They weren't — they knew, but they hadn't grasped the realm of what would happen. They knew that daddy was going to a war zone, but they hadn't thought about what could happen. And this has happened. And I've got to think about how it's going to affect their lives. They're still in school. I don't want to change their lives. You know, if I go back, that is a decision that my family's going to discuss. And if I don't, you know, I hope that Halliburton, you know, maybe I'm qualified for something somewhere else. Maybe they've got something here close that I can do. I would like to continue working for them.

COSBY: Maybe top security expert? I think you're qualified.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

COSBY: What an amazing and inspiring American. It was really terrific to talk to him.

©Fox News"