Farris Hassan talks about trip to Iraq

COSBY:  And you were willing to take that risk?  How does a guy, a 16-year-old from a private school in Florida, have the guts or the chutzpah to go over there?

HASSAN:  Well, I don‘t know about guts.  I‘ve always felt life is not worth living without taking great risks in order to achieve great things.  I‘ve always thought that we will all die some day, whether it‘s at 66 years old or at 16 years old, and that if I am to die, I‘d rather have it happen in trying to do something good, trying to help my fellow man.

COSBY:  Did you see bombings?  Did you hear bombings?

HASSAN:  I had counted 22 explosions.  After that, I stopped counting.

COSBY:  Why did you want to go Iraq?  Your parents are of Iraqi descent.

HASSAN:  That is not the reason.  My loyalties are to the United States and the United States only.  I am mind, body, heart and soul an American.  I have no loyalties to any other countries but the United States.  If the situation in Iraq was happening in any other country in this world, in Thailand or in Africa or in Israel, I would have traveled there.

COSBY:  What did you do when you got to Iraq?

HASSAN:  In Baghdad, I had a driver who was arranged for me by family connections take me to—I was hoping to go to the Sheraton Hotel Ishtar.  When I arrived there, however, I found it had—it was closed, to put it nicely.  And I found out a few weeks earlier, it was hit by suicide bomb—a few car bombs and that had put the hotel out of commission.  From there, I thought that the best place for me to stay was in a hotel that housed many Westerners and Americans and other journalists.  So I moved to the Palestine Hotel.

COSBY:  What did you see?  What did you experience when you were in Baghdad?  Did you see bombings?  Did you hear bombings?

HASSAN:  Yes.  On my first day, I counted 22 explosions.  After that, I stopped counting.  I‘m sure many of them—there was six vehicle bombs that day.  And there was, in fact, a gun fight.  It just felt like it was just a couple blocks away from the hotel.  I could hear the machine gun fire back and forth.

And that night, when I was—I spent Christmas night with the soldiers down at my hotel, guarding the hotel.  I heard a helicopter crash.  The whole ground shook and vibrated.  It was a big explosion.  That was probably about 11:30 at night.  And I later found out a couple—the next day that it was—two helicopters had collided, and one of them had crashed and two Marine had died.  And that really made the experience real to me.

COSBY:  You actually moved about the streets, even though you don‘t speak the language there in Iraq.  How did you do that?

HASSAN:  Well, I knew that as long as I didn‘t open my mouth, I would be fine because I look Iraqi and I can blend in with the crowd.  And I got some nice advice from an interpreter that I should pretend I‘m Kurdish, and that I speak a Turkish dialect of Arabic, so people wouldn‘t know I‘m American.

COSBY:  Where else did you roam in Baghdad?  Where else did you go?

HASSAN:  I left the hotel and walked for about 25 minutes.  I went to a restaurant and I went to just food shops.  I was looking around for some food.  After that, I realized that I couldn‘t survive out there for more than an hour outside of the hotel.  It was too dangerous.

COSBY:  Weren‘t you worried that they were going to discover you‘re an American and try to kill you, take you hostage?

HASSAN:  Yes, I was—I was—I was aware of the danger.  And I wouldn‘t say that I was scared.  I wasn‘t frightened.  I wasn‘t unnerved.  But especially when I was in the restaurant, trying to find a menu and asking the hostess for a menu, and I could tell they were all looking at me funny, and especially after I took out my “Arabic At a Glance” guidebook—once I knew they could tell I was American, I knew I was in a dangerous situation and I left.

COSBY:  You also reached out to some news organizations when you were there.  Why did do you that?

HASSAN:  Well, by my third day in Baghdad, I realized that I couldn‘t do any humanitarian work or research in the current—in my current situation because I could not leave the hotel.  And I had absolutely no connections in Baghdad and I was completely by myself.  So I approached the Associated Press, not to tell them my story.  I just asked them if I could tag along with their news crew when they went out to cover stories in Baghdad.

COSBY:  You told me before that you contacted another news organization.

HASSAN:  The first organization I contacted in the Palestine Hotel was Fox News.  And I told them I was a 16-year-old junior in Iraq for research, and I wanted—I was looking to do humanitarian work.  Told them I was completely by myself and I wanted to meet with the producers to see they could help me out in any way.

The first time, the person—the Arabic man who answered the phone told me that, oh, he‘d just give my message to the Fox News men.  I waited and that they‘d call me back if they were interested.  I spent the whole night that day in my hotel room awaiting the call, but I did not receive it.

The next day, I gave Fox News a call and I asked them, you know, What‘s going on?  I really am in a desperate situation.  I‘m sure that your producers would like to meet me.  And the man on the other end of the phone told me that he had given them my message and that if they were interested, they‘d give me a call.  And then he hung up on me.

COSBY:  So they never called you back?

HASSAN:  They never called me back.

COSBY:  They could have had this amazing story, but never called you.

HASSAN:  Yes.  Well, they could have helped me, but they never did.

COSBY:  You eventually did get through to the Associated Press, and they published your essays.  How did you feel about that?

HASSAN:  I was worried that the publicity I would get would somehow glorify what I did and encourage other people to do the same, to travel to Iraq by themselves surreptitiously and create a mess.

COSBY:  The Associated Press also called the U.S. embassy and said, We got to get this kid out of here.  Did you realize, at that point, that you needed to leave?

HASSAN:  I—the reason I  greed to go to the Green Zone is because I thought it was a safer place and I was told that the headquarters of the humanitarian organizations that were still left in Baghdad would be in the Green Zone.  So I would say the main reason why I went to the Green Zone was so I thought maybe I‘ll be able to get in touch with one of these humanitarian organizations and finally realize that goal.

COSBY:  You show up the Green Zone.  And then, at that point, U.S.  officials say, We got to get you out of here, right?

HASSAN:  Uh-huh.

COSBY:  How did you finally leave Iraq?

HASSAN:  Well, they told me that they could not force me to go and that it was my decision to leave Iraq.  I finally had to leave on Friday, after the news story broke and my parents were doing interviews and I was all over the TV and the newspapers, this 16-year-old American in Baghdad.  And I believe one of the news organizations released the information I was actually staying in al Rashid Hotel, and that frightened the military a lot that, you know—I‘m sure, at some point, Abu Musab Zarqawi checked his Jordanian hotstuff (ph) mail at Yahoo and saw the story.  He‘s probably the last person you want knowing who you are and where you are.  So at that point, for security reasons, I had to leave Baghdad.

COSBY:  And the 101^st protected you, 101^st Airborne?

HASSAN:  Yes, they did.

COSBY:  How many guys were protecting you?  And where did they take you?

HASSAN:  Actually, for—the Green Zone is a very safe place, so not I didn‘t have a very heavy escort.  I took a helicopter from Baghdad to the airport and stayed in the military base overnight.

COSBY:  And then where did you go?

HASSAN:  From there, I had a State Department escort me from Baghdad to Amsterdam.  They left me in Amsterdam.  And from Amsterdam, I went to Miami.

COSBY:  On your way back, you stopped at some of these cafeterias.  What did you see?

Andrew Dallos Farris Hassan and Rita Cosby

HASSAN:  Well, in the military cafeterias, I saw Iraqi soldiers and American soldiers sitting down at the same table, eating dinner together and watching football and talking and laughing casually.  And I was amazed that—you know, I really believe the Iraqis are starting to—are understanding that we‘re here to help them and we‘re their friends.  And I could definitely see a bond and relationships being developed.

COSBY:  Was this about publicity?  Did you want all the attention, 15 minutes of fame?

HASSAN:  No.  I felt so guilty on when I was returning to the United States and I saw on the news two soldiers had been killed in Iraq, and they were sidelined.  And my story was in the headlines, in the center. 

I thought about the soldiers in Iraq, a soldier just watching what‘s going on, and he‘s thinking, you know, I‘m here, risking my life every day to help these Iraqis rebuild their lives, and my friend was just shot the other day, and this 16-year-old—this rich 16-year-old comes to Iraq, nothing happens to him, we go through a lot of trouble to get him back to the U.S., and he‘s getting all the press coverage, and no one‘s giving us attention.

COSBY:  And it turns out that Farris Hassan is very lucky.  Just this weekend, an American journalist was kidnapped.  Jill Carroll—she‘s a freelancer for “The Christian Science Monitor”—was kidnapped, her Iraqi translator killed.  Their car was ambushed in Baghdad.  And they were apparently trying to meet with a Sunni politician.  “The Christian Science Monitor” says that, so far, no one has claimed responsibility for her abduction.

And we‘re going to have much more of our exclusive interview with Farris Hassan Tuesday at 9 p.m. ET.  Find out if he‘s getting punished by his school for skipping classes and going to Iraq, and what his parents had to say to him when he landed back in the U.S.  Plus, why is he worried that his story may inspire copycats?  Here‘s a preview of tomorrow‘s interview.

COSBY:  What would you say to another kid who says, Look, Farris went there.  He got all of this press attention. Why shouldn‘t I go?

HASSAN:  I want to tell them that I came this close on several occasions to being kidnapped and dying.

Watch 'Rita Cosby Live & Direct' each night at 9 p.m. ET on MSNBC. 

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