Word: garcias
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Welcome to Diego Garcia--6,720 acres (2,720 hectares) of restricted military base on a depopulated atoll in the middle of the Indian Ocean, 1,000 miles (1,600 km) from the nearest continent. Back in 1966, the U.S. signed a secret agreement with Britain allowing the Pentagon to use the territory as an air base in exchange for a big discount on Polaris nuclear missiles. Five years later, hundreds of Navy Seabees arrived by ship and began pouring the 12,000-ft. (3,600 m) runway that would become a bulwark of American cold war strategy...
...troubled history and sensitive security role has helped make Diego Garcia pretty much off-limits for journalists. That, in turn, has made it something of a holy-grail dateline for reporters covering the military. Not that I saw much of it. After President Bush deplaned, he was greeted by an honor guard on the tarmac. We were taken 100 yards to a low, beige outbuilding and shown to an auditorium, while Bush met the base commander and some unspecified others. When I tried to leave the building to look around, I was told by some courteous airmen that I didn...
...Qaeda leader Hambali, who is believed to have been held on the island, I at least wanted proof I'd been there. Twenty years ago, Time's Chief of Correspondents, Dick Duncan, offered a case of fine Bordeaux to the first correspondent who filed a legitimate story from Diego Garcia. The equivalent in 2007 media dollars is probably a box of Chablis, but in any case I wanted evidence...
...airmen guarding the exit spotted a civilian contractor, William L. Corke, who offered to grab some T-shirts. Half an hour later, Corke returned with a bag of shirts with colorful pictures of scantily clad women and mermaids bearing the words, "Fantasy Island, Diego Garcia...
...visit to Iraq. I'd rather have had something on detainee treatment or on the last remnants of Chagossian villages; maybe next time. However, the dateline for the story I did file was quickly transformed in blogosphere reprints into a joint byline that read, "by Massimo Calabresi and Diego Garcia...