PAUL HUNTER - Reporter's Notebook Notes from an Afghan field trip May 26, 2007
Not-so-secret top secret Camp Mirage, May 21
On the way to Afghanistan with the prime minister this week, everything was supposed to be top secret. We weren’t allowed to tell anyone where we were going.
After a stop in Germany, we flew to a staging base called Camp Mirage, where the secrecy seemed heightened even more. Even after leaving the base, we were told we should never describe where we’d been, other than saying it was "somewhere in southwest Asia," because neighbouring countries might not like the existence of such a base.
When we’d arrived at Camp Mirage, our BlackBerrys and cellphones were taken from us, and we were told the internet service was closed for what they called a comms lockdown (communications lockdown), presumably in case any of us had ideas of telling tales.
Top secret, except for one thing — ask any soldier there and you’d learn the place is easily located on Google Earth. There’s even a Wikipedia entry about it, complete with exact latitude and longitude.
So much for state secrets.
Attention Lonely Planet editors En route to Kabul, May 22
Canadian Press reporter Alex Panetta, who’d made this trip before, had a tip for flying into Kabul on a Hercules aircraft: "Keep the helmet on; you’ll sleep better, trust me. And use earplugs, or your ears will ring for days afterward."
He was right on both counts. It's also very, very important to go to the bathroom before you take off.
