Writing from records
The envelope arrived Monday. The return label indicated it was from Air Combat Command -- but it was thin.
Too thin, I thought, to contain the 178-page report I'd been told to expect "any day." Another bureaucratic form letter, no doubt, probably something like: Dear Mr. LaPlante, Thanks for your Freedom of Information Act Request. Screw you.
I almost kicked myself Tuesday when I called up The Air Force Times online. Somehow, The Times had obtained the records I'd been waiting on for seven months. Worse, they were first out the gate with a story about an investigation into something that happened in my backyard -- an accidental strafing at the Utah Test and Training Range that nearly killed two soldiers.
My thoughts shot back to the envelope on my desk at work. I did Mach II to the office. Sure enough, the letter contained a CD which, in turn, held the 178 page report -- in pdf form.
Duh!
Air Force Times - 1, Matthew D. LaPlante - 0.
There's nothing good about getting scooped. But it does present a challenge: "Now that the story's out there, how can I improve on it?"
With 178 pages to work from, the possibilities were endless.
Like a kid into a jigsaw puzzle box, I dove into the reports. Picking out a piece here and a piece there, I first sought to build the border -- the better to understand the big picture. From there, I began working inward, connecting piece to piece until the story emerged.
There is a point in puzzle building when you find the piece that brings everything together. For me it was this: During the investigation, both soldiers mentioned that the sports utility vehicle in which they were driving "exploded" just as one of them was reaching down for the radio.
A mundane action that would have been lost in the tides of thousands of other mundane actions was now deeply seared into their memories. "That's it," I said aloud. "That's my piece."
A few hours later, this photo ran at www.sltrib.com:
Labels: FOIA, Hill Air Force Base
