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INSIDE THE WAR ZONE
Trial and Terror
Not long after he arrived in Iraq, Tiffen captured a suspected insurgent. A few months later he was ordered to Iraq's Central Criminal Court in Baghdad to testify against the man he had arrested. Something in the way he presented the facts impressed the American prosecutor, a lawyer from the judge advocate general's corps. Here's Tiffen:
"At the end of the whole ordeal, I was getting ready to leave when one of the JAG officers said to me: 'Hey, you handled that pretty well. What do you do?' I told him I was an attorney. He kind of looked at me, and this crafty look passed across his face. He said: 'Really? How would you like to handle a prosecution case?' At that point I felt the bottom drop out.
" 'Absolutely,' I said. 'This is awesome. I'd love to do that. But this is a little terrifying, in terms of I don't know the procedure, I don't know the court rules, I'm not even admitted to the bar here. I'd love to do it, but what's involved?'
"He said, 'Don't worry, I'll take care of it.'
"So here I was a year and a half out of law school, and I was admitted to the highest court of Iraq. It was interesting because I took a very adversarial approach to cross-examining the witness [in a case involving an Iraqi caught with a trunkload of weapons]. The Iraqi judge did not like that. . . . I don't know what the outcome was. . . . I can tell you that I believe this guy [was acquitted] because he didn't commit a violent offense, and they aren't holding too many guys who didn't commit a violent offense."
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A Short Respite Before the Surge
By Ben Hallman
The American Lawyer
June 1, 2007
Adam Tiffen is packing his bags. In a few weeks the Maryland Army National Guard first lieutenant will return to Iraq for a second tour of duty, leaving behind his Arlington, Virginia, home, his job across the Potomac as a Porter Wright Morris & Arthur associate, and his fiancée. He has little enthusiasm for his orders, but he's not the type to complain, at least not to a reporter. "It's unfortunate," is all he says when asked about the deployment.
But there's no disguising his body language, or the tone of his voice: Tiffen doesn't want to go back. The work was hot, lonely, and, especially, dangerous. During his year in Iraq, Tiffen and the 40-man rifle platoon he commanded logged 17,000 miles on the roads of Anbar province. His men killed insurgents in street battles, ran checkpoints in hostile areas, and were the target of dozens of improvised explosive devices. His company, consisting of three platoons, was awarded 14 Purple Hearts.
An odd thing happened while Tiffen was away at war. He became a minor celebrity, thanks to his Web journal. He called his blog "The Replacements," a name chosen to evoke the temporary status of troops deployed abroad (the blog is at thereplacements.blogspot.com). It didn't attract attention overnight. His readership was initially small, mostly family and friends. Then, as sometimes happens in the blogosphere, word of the lieutenant's musings spread. Mother Jones printed an excerpt, as did Armchair General, a military magazine.
In His Own Words: In a webcast, Adam Tiffen describes how he used his soldiering skills and lawyering skills when his platoon captured an insurgent suspected of launching rockets.
For Tiffen the attention was unexpected, but not unwelcome. He liked the feedback, liked knowing that people back home were thinking about his soldiers. (Wrote one reader: "I love reading your blog every day. It's nice to have a soldier's perspective.") That attention continued after he returned home in May 2006. The Washington Post profiled him. He hired an agent who shopped the blog around to publishers as part of a possible book deal. Doonesbury creator Gary Trudeau received Tiffen's permission to incorporate a few lines from his blog into a comic strip. A signed and framed copy of the cartoon, along with a Bronze Star medal he was awarded for meritorious service, is now in storage at Porter Wright, awaiting his return.
Tiffen's blog fell dormant after his return, though a few new visitors discovered it after they read the Post article. His life back in Washington lacked the everyday drama that made the journal, which he often updated minutes after returning from a combat operation, so compelling to his readers. He had traded the body armor and desert boots for collared shirts and slacks, and exchanged a military bunker in Anbar province, for a climate-controlled office on Pennsylvania Avenue, a few blocks west of the White House. Instead of arresting suspected insurgents, he worked on international trade deals.
Life was good, but adjusting wasn't always easy. Coming home from a war is almost as hard as leaving for one. It's not a feeling he enjoys. That's why on his first tour in Iraq, when it came time for him to take his two weeks of leave—knowing that Uncle Sam would fly him anywhere in the world—he picked London. It was a place familiar from his time studying there, but not too familiar. Home would have been too hard. He had already said goodbye once and didn't want to do it again.
Now he has no choice. He will ship out soon, probably later this summer, and Tiffen plans a second tour as a war blogger, as well. His fiancée, a doctor, will wait, as will his condo, bills, and job. Reunions also await: His company will soon reunite for training at a base in New Jersey, and leave for Iraq together. He hopes the trip is his last. It's not easy building a career and practice, or making a life when you have to leave for war every other year.
E-mail Ben Hallman: bhallman@alm.com
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