By Andrew W. Griffin

Red Dirt Report, editor

Posted: February 7, 2010

reddirtreporter@gmail.com

MIDWEST CITY, Okla. – Mike Boettcher, a well-respected journalist and foreign war correspondent who grew up in Ponca City, Okla. spoke at the annual Oklahoma Press Association Mid-Winter Convention on Saturday and discussed his amazing career from Ponca City News paperboy to nearly getting killed a number of times covering war-torn Afghanistan.

Boettcher, teaching classes at the University of Oklahoma in Norman until May, said that while he has taken some time off from war correspondence, he is looking to return to the frontlines in the war on terror shortly after that, gathering information on a book he is working on about Al Qaeda.

But that is now. Thirty or more years ago, Boettcher was right here in the Sooner State working on getting his broadcast journalism career off the ground.

He recalled working for KTOK 1000 AM in Oklahoma City and having to drive a car nicknamed “Red Rover.” With the CB radio craze still underway, Boettcher said he felt ridiculous ending a broadcast by saying, “This is Mike Boettcher in Red Rover, over.”

But Boettcher said his life was about to change when he had the opportunity to move to Atlanta, Ga. and work for an upstart cable television channel called CNN. It was the summer of 1980 and Boettcher would be the first CNN journalist to have a live broadcast on CNN.

“CNN was basically built by Okies,” Boettcher said, but not elaborating any further.

Deciding between Mt. St. Helens, which had recently erupted in Washington state or the Cuban boatlift in the Florida Keys, CNN honchos opted to send Boettcher to Key West to cover the boatlift because “didn’t think the truck would make it over the mountains.”

Once in Key West, a happy young Boettcher said he was pleased to see his hotel room face a private topless beach.

“I’m really going to like this job,” Boettcher recalled thinking.

And it was this job that would take the Okie journalist to foreign war zones in the latter years of the Cold War from Nicaragua to El Salvador to apartheid South Africa.

Because Boettcher was assigned to cover Cuban issues, he was offered the opportunity to have his boss and CNN founder Ted Turner meet with Cuban dictator Fidel Castro. When Boettcher told Turner of the opportunity, the so-called “Mouth of the South” jumped at the chance.

Boettcher spent a week in Cuba with Turner and Castro. At one point they went duck hunting at a Cuban preserve, both men armed with shotguns.

“At one point, Ted leaned over to me and whispered, ‘Ya know, I could blow the SOB’s head off right now.’” I told him that might not be a good idea,” Boettcher said with a  chuckle.

It was in 2001, prior to the 9/11 attacks, that Boettcher said CNN had started allowing Boettcher to cover issues related to terrorism. At the time, he said, there was a lot of chatter and discussion that a big attack was in the works.

And then 9/11 happened. Boettcher said that in the information he has gathered from top people in the know, Osama Bin Laden was holed up in the Tora Bora cave complex in eastern Afghanistan on that dark day, listening to the Voice of America radio broadcast.

Boettcher said that prior to each hijacked aircraft hitting its target – World Trade Center towers one and two and the Pentagon in Virginia, Bin Laden would hold up a finger. The fourth finger was put up before his henchmen and Boettcher said, “That bulletin never came. A plane crashed in a field in Pennsylvania, saved by a few brave passengers.”

Boettcher’s in-depth study of Al Qaeda and Islamic extremist terrorism has led him to discover just how widespread the terror network really is. From Pakistan to Africa to places in between.

And the threat of another major terrorist attack is very real, Boettcher said, noting how terrorism analysts in the U.S. government have said that in the next three-to-six months an attempted attack “is a certainty,” particularly in light of the recent attempt to take down a Northwest Airlines flight in December by Nigerian terrorist Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab.

“In studying this, I’ve never heard that language before,” Boettcher said of the sobering warning offered by the analysts.

“How do we prepare ourselves?” Boettcher asked. “The nation has become weary of war since 2001.” Boettcher added that in the years since 9/11 the U.S. has been engaged in “secret wars all over the world.”

“This is a special operations war,” he said.

Again, Boettcher’s commitment to covering the war on terrorism, particularly in Southwest Asia, is unwavering, despite a bomb blast that nearly killed him. And he mentioned Lance Cpl. Jonathan F. Stroud, a young Marine from Cashion, Okla. who was among other Marines that saved his life as he was being shot at by the Taliban in the Helmand River Valley while working as an embedded journalist with his son Carlos.

“The Taliban like to shoot at people with cameras,” Boettcher said. “It’s not right but that’s the way it works these days.”

Boettcher said he was grateful for all the opportunities he has had to cover historical events – and live to tell about it.

“God has blessed me with a front row seat to history,” he said. “My job it to take that talent and bet there. I will be.”

Boettcher then shifted the discussion to the present, saying he had a stint with NBC but left when they stopped covering the wars thoroughly.

“As journalists,” he told the OPA members, “Don’t let the people forget we are at war.”

Boettcher said he was grateful for all the opportunities he has had to cover historical events – and live to tell about it. That’s why, with the help of The Oklahoman and other media outlets he will be returning to the front lines this summer.

“God has blessed me with a front row seat to history,” he said. “My job it to take that talent and bet there. I will be.”

During the question-and-answer portion, Red Dirt Report asked Boettcher to expand on his comments regarding the opium farming in Afghanistan.

While it does become heroin on the black market, the farmers don’t grow much else. And they are taxed by the Taliban, the extremist religious terror group that locals love to hate.

“That’s their livelihood,” Boettcher said of the opium farmers. “They don’t care if it going into some vein in New York.”

Boettcher said he spent time with U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency agents in Afghanistan who were there trying to burn poppy seeds.

“It’s very difficult to destroy poppy seeds,” he said, noting that they spent all day trying to do just that.

“We need to come up with new replacement crops,” Boettcher said.

And for more information on Boettcher’s thorough coverage of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan go to www.newsok.com/ontheline.

Copyright 2010 West Marie Media