Who Trolled Amber? - Pig Iron - Episode 7: Out there

Episode Date: September 11, 2023

In the last episode of the series, the team finally hears from a man they’ve been chasing for months. And they return to Maine, to tell Christopher’s parents what they have discovered about their son's life and death.Listen to the full series today. For the premium Tortoise listening experience, curated by our journalists, download the free Tortoise audio app. For early and ad-free access to all our investigative series and daily and weekly shows, subscribe to Tortoise+ on Apple Podcasts.If you’d like to further support slow journalism and help us build a different kind of newsroom, do consider donating to Tortoise at tortoisemedia.com/support-us. Your contributions allow us to investigate, campaign and explore, and to build a newsroom that is responsible and sustainable. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

ACAST powers the world's best podcasts. Here's a show of glamour and scandal and political intrigue and a battle for the soul of a nation. Hollywood Exiles, from CBC Podcasts and the BBC World Service. Find it wherever you get your podcasts. ACAST helps creators launch, grow, and monetize their podcasts everywhere. Acast.com Yeah?

Hi, hi, Jeremy. Hello. Hey, how are you? No, no, they just said that you might have information because of your seniority. Um, not out of brackets. This is the head of the media office. Michael McQuay again? It's time to go through the front door.

That was just, could not connect. Time to contact the South Sydney's government directly and to ask them what happened that day in Kaya. And it says it's calling, but it's not. And find out if they know that Chris was connected to a group of fighters and to Craig Lang. I belong to a media organisation in the United Kingdom called Tortoise. But as you can hear, these are not men who expect to be asked questions.

And they certainly don't feel that they need to answer them. None of this is surprising. One person who had worked with the military in South Sudan told me, just think about it. For decades, South Sudan has been at war. The security arm of the government is in control. And so almost everything is considered a state secret. And as a result, information isn't seen as a public right.

Journalists are viewed with suspicion. Their lives are under threat. Do you feel scared now? Does that continue? Yeah, I'm still actually... If somebody's not happy with you, they can go and just kidnap you from anywhere. But it doesn't stop me from trying. Despite the threats, I have the help of brilliant South Sudanese journalists

who give me the tools to navigate the paranoid world of the military. It's the final step before we return to America and to Chris's parents to tell them which story we think is true about what happened to their son five years ago on the front line. happened to their son five years ago on the front line. I'm Basha Cummings, and from Tortoise, this is Pig Iron. Episode 7, Out There. As we get started, we decide that Jeremy will focus on the rebels, as he already has an in with them, and I'll focus on the government,

who might be more willing to answer questions from a journalist rather than a family member. And first, Jeremy manages to get hold of a former governor who met Chris. That's actually what I was going to ask you. Is there anybody on the government side who could help understand from the government side what happened? I think you can contact the Minister of Information because he was the one who came out openly to make statements about him

and the army spokesman also. But by command responsibility, they want to be able to speak. They will not allow you to talk to the one who was down there in the theatre of war. Then he gets another warning. So I've just received a text message from a former South Sudanese senator, I think, or parliamentarian. Hello, Mr Bliss. I've been trying to get information about your relative killed in South Sudan, but have not been able to find something that can help you.

Almost everyone I approach fearfully tells me it was killed in the crossfire. Witnesses are afraid for their lives because of possible reprisal attacks. I feel ashamed that your cousin was killed in my country while on the line of duty, yet I'm unable to help. South Sudan continues to be a violent kleptocracy where a tiny number of politicians and generals have gotten rich from the country's oil, while hundreds of thousands of civilians have been killed. And though the political landscape has now changed, and the rebels that Chris was embedded with are in a power-sharing agreement and in government, it seems that his case is still, at best, inconvenient, and at worst, irrelevant.

The passage of time is a protective cloak for those responsible. There is no pressure, it seems, to answer the question, why kill a young journalist? But I don't think that that can be the end of it, in the same way that you can't answer the deaths or torture or exile of South Sydney's journalists with just a shrug. So it's time to apply some pressure. A couple of people have suggested to me that you may have information about what happened. I start by calling two generals on the side of the government who I've been told were responsible for the military operation that day in Kaya in 2017. I wanted to ask you some questions because as I understand it... These aren't the men that the essay writer told us about. Those guys seem to have disappeared into the military system.

But these two names I've been given now have been sent by a source who's trying to help. But they both deny any knowledge of what I'm talking about. And they deny knowing the name Christopher Allen. And they're both very unhappy that I'm calling them directly. But I keep trying. I call phone number after phone number. I send emails and finally I get a reply. The spokesman for the South Sudanese Army, General Kohang, agrees to an interview. Did you know that there was a white man embedded with the rebels?

No, we weren't aware because they came under the cover of darkness. It was only after the rebels were repulsed, then we were carrying out a search on the battlefield, that we were able to find a dead body belonging to a white man. I ask, why was Chris called a white rebel? He tells me, well, maybe we really did think that he was a mercenary. OK, I say, but have you ever encountered white rebels, any mercenaries joining them before?

No, no. So why would he think that if there haven't been mercenaries in South Sudan? That was the first time. He tells me to speak to the information minister, myself, the man who made the white rebel allegation about Chris in the first place. And it's the first of many redirections. It is Michael himself to explain to you. I cannot speak for him.

Yes. You get in touch with him, let him tell you why he has described him like that. OK. And so was it a member of the SSPDF forces who killed Christopher Allen? Say that again? Was it a member of the South Sudanese military, the SSPDF, who killed

Christopher Allen? No, we cannot say that in certainty. What are the other possibilities? The rebels that came and invaded with him are the best people to tell you what had happened to him. Because he had entered the Republic of South Sudan through the territory that was under the control of the rebels.

So if there are other questions that I'm not able to answer, it is because we are not in the know. The people who are in the know are the SPLIO rebels that are part and parcel of the government. So you could cross over to SPLIO and find out from them. He points me back to the rebels, but they're ignoring our calls. It's like stepping into a hall of mirrors. Everything is deflected to somewhere and someone else. But for one exciting moment, I think I get somewhere. I finally reach the government spokesman who was quoted in that obscure news article, the one saying that the mercenaries had pretended to be journalists.

It's the line that kick-started my theory that perhaps Craig Lang's trip to East Africa made everything riskier for Chris. Hello, is that Mr. Mawean Makol? Yes, that's me. How are you? I'm OK. So I ask him, where did you get that information from? Where did you hear that they had pretended to be journalists? Where that information came from?

But no dice. Like everyone else, he redirects me back to the information minister. Now, there could be a reason for this beyond just evasion. One contact in Uganda told us that the South Sudanese military is really complex and there's a lack of coherent control. It's possible that the arrival of Craig Lang didn't really travel much beyond the soldiers that he met at the border. But it is infuriating, and it's what Chris's family has known for years, that when you bang on the doors of a state which has killed journalists and civilians without consequence for years, there's just no reason for anyone to open the door, let alone invite you inside.

But trying to get hold of the South Sudanese government isn't my only battle. Now, you might have picked this up by now, but journalists are a strange tribe. And where you find incredible acts of solidarity, you also find discord. And when things go wrong, it can mean that reporters and newsrooms pull down the shutters on each other. When Jeremy first got in touch with me, I drew up a list of people that I wanted to speak to. And of course, at the top of my list were people who were there in Kaya. And aside from the government soldiers and the rebels, there were two other men on that list, right on the front line, a matter of meters from where Chris was killed.

And unlike the fighters, they're not compromised by the politics of South Sudan. I'm talking about the two Reuters journalists who arrived the day before the attack. I thought, this is my tribe. This was Chris's tribe. Of course they'll talk to me. I was wrong. It's about the trip that you made to South Sudan a few years ago, and it's about the reporting of Christopher Allen. It took months to persuade one of them to give me an interview,

and some of the exchanges were confusing and tense. And just when I thought we'd agreed to speak, something would change and it would all be off again. The message seemed to be leave this alone and there was another more subtle message that journalists shouldn't be the story, it's not our job. But eventually Goran Tomasovic, a celebrated Serbian photojournalist, a Pulitzer Prize winner now working for the Canadian newspaper The Globe and Mail, agrees to an interview. I don't have much to hide. It's a long time ago and it's very clear. So let's start. OK, so he's covered war for 30 years and everything Goran tells me matches up with what we know, that Chris was upset by their arrival, that there was an argument with the commander about whether they should travel to the fighting in Kaya, and crucially, that they did take different paths to the front line.

And the rebels started attack. I told both of the boys, you'll be careful, you know, they don't have enough weapons, you'll be careful. Alan told me, I already have been in three wars, Ghoran also confirms that all three journalists were wearing the red armbands to signal that they were with the rebels. And it's an important point because it was one of the key criticisms levelled at Chris, along with the fact that he wasn't wearing anything that identified him clearly as press and that he had no protective gear. And I think it's part of why I was so obsessed with the rules of war reporting at first. I thought if I could figure out what they were, I could figure out if Chris was breaking them. Now, after months of speaking to so many war reporters and hearing their differing answers,

I realize that everyone works differently. And so Chris wasn't an anomaly that day. So when the rebels started running in, he went with one group of rebels on the right-hand side. The moment I see they were shooting too much, they don't have enough ammo, and I start hearing the incoming, so I shoot what I can,

and I told Siegfried, listen, boy, now it's time to pull back. He asked me why. I said, don't ask me why, just fucking start walking back. Goran reads the scene. Decades of experience feed his intuition, and he notices that the rebels are under-equipped. He can see how this is going to unfold. He can see that in a matter of moments, everyone is going to need to retreat or face incoming fire. I start running back. So I just start maybe five minutes, maybe 10, I don't think more.

I said, Sigrid, let's fucking move. Let's get the fuck out of here. We're going to get killed. They were running. They were one part of rebels who were driving with me. They also knew. So you're kind of saying that if you had a sense, an intuition, that you could read the scene and see that this was going to go bad and that you would... Exactly. They reach the top of a hill. Goran asks one of the rebels, who looks visibly upset, about what's happened to Chris's group. He tells Goran, Chris is dead.

He said, oh, Mouzé, he is killed. I said, what do you mean he's killed? I have no idea. He said, are you sure he is killed? Yeah, yeah, he got shot in the head. He thinks that Chris didn't want to hear his advice. He wanted to go it alone. I'm thinking of how I'm going to pull back. I don't know how much. I didn't witness when he was killed. He says he didn't see the moment that Chris was killed. He didn't see Chris's body after. And despite being close to the eyewitness, he didn't see government soldiers celebrating himself.

And how did you feel at that moment? I felt very bad, you know, of course. But there was no time to say, where is the body? Body was left behind, I was too far, we just proceeded. There was no time to think, you know, I need to save my skin. So what do you think happened to Chris out there? I think he was unlucky. It was bad luck, he was too young.

I don't know if... I believe he didn't follow much with the ground. He didn't take enough cover. But sometimes even if you do all of these things, this can happen. This is what we do. All of us are in the business of death. We go somewhere to do this story so I'm not surprised this can happen. Part of Goran's reluctance to speak to me is because he thinks that this story has become warped by questions of whether Chris was killed deliberately. Journalists are killed all the time, he says. It's part of the job. If you're with some group, you are a target, and that's how it is. He's no stranger to the wastage of war. He's seen colleagues killed, and he's been shot himself.

So it's not unusual. It's who play with the fire, burn fingers sometimes, you know. But that's what we do. That's how it is. You know, you want to do this job or not. There is always some risk. Did you see any of yourself when you were younger? Yeah, I was much worse than Chris at his age. No one could stop me. I didn't listen to anyone. I would just fucking go, where is the fight? And I don't know why. Young blood, you know, starts boiling and you want to do pictures

that you want to see and you have people like this. I feel really sorry for that boy. Really, I mean that. Chris didn't live long enough to perhaps learn to control his excitement or temper his adrenaline. He hadn't reported in enough wars to build up the intuition that could tell Goran to hang back. But he was trying to learn, failing sometimes, yes. But as Goran was telling me, luck is slippery.

And if war is ruled by the dynamic of chaos, then sometimes the reckless survive and the experienced die. After Chris's death, Goran says it was clear that they were in danger. They needed to get to safety. Did you have an exit strategy? Yeah, I ran away in the bush. What else to do? Listening to him speak, I wonder if Goran and his colleague Siegfried Madola

were perhaps winging it themselves, operating spontaneously and on intuition. Perhaps outside of what Reuters would be prepared to admit, maybe that could explain what happened next. Because two years after Chris's death, Joyce, his mum, emailed Reuters, the newsroom where both the journalists had worked. The campaign for justice was just kicking into gear, and she was hoping that they might be able to send her any unpublished photographs of that day in Kaya or of her son, anything that might help her understand the timeline of Chris's final hours alive. But Reuters responded with a short email. They said that they had considered her request and, quote, respectfully decline. No word of condolence. No, we're sorry

for your loss. So Joyce replied, upset. We wanted to share that we were dismayed to receive such a formal, uncaring and unsympathetic email from one of the world's leading news organizations in response to a request from the bereaved parents of a fellow reporter. She received no response. A month later, she forwarded the exchange to the Reuters editor-in-chief, imploring him to help. He replied to say he'd look into it. Joyce waited for more than a month again and then chased him.

In his final response, the editor offered his condolences and told her there weren't any more images to show beyond the ones that had been published. If you needed an example of the shutters coming down in exchange to say freelancers are not our responsibility, well then, I think this is a good one. And other reporters could feel it in the air after Chris's death. One told me, I felt really sad at how everyone just kind of disowned him.

As a freelancer as well, I felt really gutted that there's a system that just washes its hands of you and that no one was stepping up for his family. When I contacted Reuters, they sent back a short statement. They said that they had provided the help to Christopher Allen's family that they were able to, and said they wished to emphasise our enduring sadness over Chris's tragic death and his family's loss. It is an uneasy relationship between freelancers and newsrooms,

and it continues. Just months ago in Ukraine, a filmmaker called Brent Renaud was killed in Irpin, outside Kiev. He was a freelancer, but he had previously worked for The New York Times. He made documentaries for 20 years during his career. He won a Peabody Award and two Columbia DuPont Awards. worked for the New York Times. Soon after the news broke, the New York Times issued a statement from its deputy managing editor, distancing the newspaper from his death. After a brief word of condolence, it read, early reports that he worked for the Times circulated because

he was wearing a Times press badge that had been issued for an assignment many years ago. One reply on Twitter read, a shameful response. ACAST powers the world's best podcasts. Here's a show that we recommend. Hi, I'm Una Chaplin, and I'm the host of a new podcast called Hollywood Exiles. It tells the story of how my grandfather, Charlie Chaplin, and many others were caught up in a campaign to root out communism in Hollywood. It's a story of glamour and scandal and political intrigue and a battle for the soul of the nation. Hollywood Exiles from CBC Podcasts and the BBC World Service. Find it wherever you get your podcasts. ACAST helps creators launch, grow,

and monetize their podcasts everywhere. Acast.com. I mean, first of all, Goran is an incredibly brave and talented photographer. And I think he's right. You know, sometimes it's luck. I mean, there was no, sometimes there is no reason. At each step in this investigation,

I've continued to test this story and the ideas in it on reporters. And Lindsay Adario, a Pulitzer Prize winning photojournalist, has thought a lot about the dynamics of war reporting. But there's a more personal connection, too. Beside a rocking chair tucked into a window alcove in Chris's parents' kitchen, Lindsay's book sits on the top of a pile that Joyce has been reading. In fact, Joyce told me that it's Lindsay's book called It's What I Do, which helped her to make sense of what Chris wanted from life. It doesn't always mean that the people who are reckless die. I mean, I know a lot of very reckless journalists,

and they somehow never seem to get injured or killed. And yet they set a horrible example for war correspondents with less experience who think it's okay to do those things. I think, you know, when I was kidnapped in Libya with three colleagues for the New York Times, I mean, there's no reason we should have survived that. I mean, there's just not, you know, I mean, we were about to be executed, beaten, blindfolded, constant guns to our head, held, tied up at the front line while bullets and bombs sort of rained around us with absolutely no cover. I mean, there's no reason.

And then Tim Hetherington and Chris Hondros were killed a month later. And so that is what destroyed me, is that like, why did we live and they didn't? You know, I could not understand. And I think sometimes, like Goran said, it's luck. Lindsay has reported from South Sudan. She knows the dynamics of that conflict. And so I tell her about our journey, about sifting truth. But it's not an easy process, for sure, because people also have their own versions of reality

and people remember things differently. And so South Sudan is a very, very complicated and bloody place. And I have worked there since before it was South Sudan. And I have covered, you know, fighting there and seeing the ground littered with bodies and skeletons. And I've had, you know, met a young boy who was locked in a shipping container while 60 plus men around him died. And he was the only survivor because they boiled to death. I mean, the brutality is astonishing. And I think, you know, sometimes you can only get to the truth when you actually find an eyewitness. And that person is traumatized as well. So I think, you know, I think part of what we need to do

is just talk to a lot of people and try to get a sense and piece it together. We had arrived at that point. We had pieced it together. Now it was time to return to Chris's parents. It's just after quarter to seven. I'm just packing up to go meet Basha and Gary and then drive up to Maine, where we'll be meeting John and Joyce again. Nine months after starting on this story with Jeremy,

we travel back to Maine. We had made John and Joyce a promise that we would come back and tell them what we had discovered before it goes out into the world. And I'm feeling anxious that they will ultimately not feel like this exposure of themselves, this whole process of doing the podcast was worth the grief that they had to contend with again. We know that they've found these last few months incredibly painful. They've waited patiently as we traveled to interview people who'd seen their son in his final moments. to interview people who'd seen their son in his final moments.

But there's a reason that we didn't just jump on the phone after every conversation. I don't think that we can ethically recount everything we've been told. Not to them, and not to include in this series. I don't think it's fair, and a lot of it is useless. Just more war fog. I want to return to them with the story of what we think really happened to Chris, one we can really stand behind.

And for that, we've needed time. But the result for them has been agony. Where are the travellers? I like the jacket. Hello. Good to see you. Good to see you. Good to see you. You must be exhausted before you get here. Returning is a pleasure.

Last time we were here, it was freezing. It was March. Now the trees in the yard are in the brilliant colours of the New England fall. And they greet us with hugs and with warmth. They've prepared lunch and we sit together and eat. But there's a nervousness in the air we all know why we're here we're sitting opposite each other around the kitchen table and after lunch Joyce gets her notebook and her pen John has pieces of paper and a pencil what did they do around his body?

I guess they couldn't ascertain if it was one person. Can you say what the pathologist said about how quickly he died? Can I just ask if... How do you feel about continuing? Just carry on. I'm okay. It is a heartbreaking scene. Two parents denied any clarity about their son's death,

hanging on our every word, hoping for some truth. And I guess the question is, maybe you weren't able to directly answer it, was he specifically targeted? I think that's where all of the circumstantial and the stuff that we heard on the day all comes together. And I think that's where, without speaking to the person who pulled the trigger, I think that's the best we can do at this stage is to piece all of these different things and come up with what we think. And what do you think?

I think that it is unlikely that he was targeted for being a journalist. I think it's likely that they saw a white person and shot him. I think it's likely that they saw a white person and shot him. But beyond that, I don't think that there's evidence that we found of them, you know, them knowing who he was to suggest that it was more than that. That's my assessment based on the interviews that I've done. Yeah. I think it's very feasible that they did see he had a camera. They may have known what that meant, that he was someone taking pictures

and that was to publish in the media, but that was a role that was considered, that was demonised in South Sudan at the time. So I think what we're seeing is a context in which Chris's profession was considered just as dangerous as being part of the army or part of the rebels in the eyes of those people on the ground at the day. John and Joyce listen. They make notes. Intermittently, they hold hands. They comfort each other. But despite the pain of listening to us, just visitors to their nightmare, they don't lose their ability to see the situation.

We discussed the complexity of the essay writer, and they could easily have felt outraged and frustrated, but they responded with compassion. have felt outraged and frustrated, but they responded with compassion. There's a fluidity to truth that it bends. It's very pliable. And that's how I'm feeling about this character, that he might even believe that he's doing the right thing and he might even believe that he's doing the right thing

and he might even believe that he's got some nugget to share that will make all the difference. But I think just as much as I thought the eyewitness believed that there was this cloud and that Chris went into the smoke and they rushed after him to help him and people, I mean, it's almost like my fear about waiting so long to do this is that when do you start believing your imagined story as truth we had sent John and Joyce the early finished episodes of this series to listen to before

they went out to the public to give them a chance to prepare themselves and as the early finished episodes of this series to listen to before they went out to the public to give them a chance to prepare themselves and as the afternoon darkens outside and rain starts to fall the conversation turns to the fighters and to Craig Lang and it's where things become a bit more difficult because this is about Chris and his friendships. It's more intimate. It's not about what happened to him. It's about the people he chose. It seemed you were trying to get Swampy to say that Chris and Craig were friends. And he wouldn't say it.

So sometimes I felt like you were leading with, you're putting words in people's mouths. At least in the condensed version that we hear it. But I'm not the only one who's wondered about this relationship. I know when they came to my brother's house after Chris's death, there was an agent, two agents, but one was there definitely to investigate Chris's connection and wanted to clear certain things. When you say that it was definitely there, what makes you think that? Definitely there for that purpose. I think they wanted to know what we knew from memory.

This all is, of course. What was his... Why was he there? They wanted to confirm that he was a journalist. Yeah. what was his... Why was he there? They wanted to confirm that he was a journalist. Yeah, our gut feeling at the time was, are they checking out to see if he's a mercenary or not? I haven't been able to prove that the South Sudanese government

connected Chris and Craig Lang. I haven't spoken to anyone who said we knew a guy called Chris Allen had pretended that they were journalists and so we thought that he was pretending too. Given what John and Joyce had told me that they thought that Chris had been investigated by the FBI, I went to them and to the State Department and the US embassies in Kenya and South Sudan to ask if they had connected him to the mercenaries and to Craig Lang. But their responses didn't answer my questions, and I sent freedom of information requests, which I've been told can't be answered before February 2025. But one former spook who

worked with the FBI told me, never underestimate quite how plodding these institutions are. So maybe it was all a dark coincidence, and I'm the only person to make the connection. And beyond what it all meant in South Sudan, maybe it's a relationship, Chris and Craig's, that only made sense to the two people in it, one that blurred the lines between source and friend, fellow adventurer and subject. Maybe this was Chris bleaching the film stock of his own life in the people he met and the places he went. I mean, what I would say for me is that

we hope that the end result of this is helpful. It's been agony, absolute agony for me. It's been more than we thought, I think. We feel dragged through the dirt like crazy, and we couldn't have anticipated that, and that's not anything you're doing, but the experience on this side has been agony. Well, I think, correct me if I'm wrong, but I still sometimes, well, perhaps we shouldn't have done this. And your brother said, you know, what are you doing this for?

After episode two, my brother jumped up and said, his tears are coming down my eyes, what the fuck are you doing this for after episode two? My brother jumped up and said, his tears are coming down my eyes. What the fuck are you doing this for? So certainly that question sits. And who knows what you're going to end up saying about Chris and where this all goes. But we did feel like we were giving you Chris on a platter when we said yes. And there were risks involved. And if it doesn't lead to some kind of accountability and justice,

I think we will have put ourselves through agony for nine months. And what if the end result is understanding Chris, that more people understand who he was, what he cared about, why he went to war? Would that make it worth it? I think when your brother asked that question, I said, well, you know, something like, God forbid, anything bad would happen to his daughter, what would you do?

You know, you want to find out the truth. You would fight to uncover the truth. You would want to find out why this terrible thing happened. It's a scene that's hard for me to convey, how intimate and close it all feels, and yet how sharp it is at the edges and so they ask if it's cost us this much what has it cost you was this just a job and I can see that for you both that is that's not what you signed up for but that for me is where the power is as a journalist is that I think his story has meaning it has enormous meaning to me and where we started in March with this sense that

Chris had kind of been forgotten and booted out of journalism and treated as if he was an anomaly and that he had done things wrong by the end of process, and I've said it to Jeremy and Gary, that it feels like bringing him back, that all the people I've spoken to, all the war reporters see something of themselves in Chris. They think he got unlucky, he lost his life. It's an enormous price to pay, but his instincts and his draw to what he wanted to do with his life are familiar and are not unusual.

And that to me feels like a very important thing. And I hope that that does bring you some comfort because I know that was very painful at the time. It's been really complicated for me as well because I've gone through all of these questions in my mind constantly about, like, why I'm doing it, who I am to do it, why should I be the person to do it, you know, all these things. And as with many answers in this process, sometimes the answer is that no one else was doing it, so that was why. But I think it's good, ultimately, that I did. Absolutely. The thing that went through my mind a lot when we embarked on it is that Chris would have been mortified at being the focus of this.

But now, with what it is, my read is that actually he'd be pretty into it. Do you think he would have liked it? I think he... I think because, as I understand him, he loved to delve into people's stories and you're delving into his. I think he would not appreciate the entertainment factor.

But I think he would love that there's a truth that's being exposed that might make a difference. Do you think he would have? I think he would have come round to it. Yeah, he would not. Somehow he would have. So it does attract him, I think.

It would have attracted him, but his name kind of lives on. In the end, this has all been about getting close to war, to violence, and most of all, to the story. It's Chris's whole theory of reporting, about getting as close as possible. And yet it may have been part of his undoing. It may have warped his decisions and moved his compass points. It is, in the end, what he wanted.

And I don't think that I could have done this reporting without getting close to John and Joyce or to Jeremy. Even here, in the quiet quiet leafy world of maine the lines blur god they're just so wonderful you okay yeah yeah yeah i mean i feel like the last time we left, it was just shattering how nice they are and how cool they all is. After we get back from Maine and we're finishing this final episode of the series,

a South Sudanese reporter sends me a text. It's an audio file and a news article. It's a recording of Michael McAway, South Sudan's information minister, the man who originally called Chris a white rebel. And ironically, he's speaking on International Day to end impunity for crimes against journalists. And he brings up Chris. When the journalists decided to go to join the rebels,

who decided to attack Kaya because he wanted to take the photo of the rebels overtaking Kaya, capturing Kaya. And because of doing that, he lost his life. This man had entered South Sudan illegally in the first place. He is a rebel and this is why I declared and that you may be clear of that statement we are getting. I said we have killed a white rebel. Yes, because he was killed on the side Yes, because he was killed on the side of the rebels.

So he was a rebel. Five years since he originally made the claim, he repeats almost exactly the same line. We killed a white rebel. Yes, because he was killed on the side of the rebels. So he was a rebel. This is very funny and we are being asked to investigate. Whom do we investigate now? Or do we investigate the then rebels who are now,

with whom we have reached an agreement and we are now in the same government? Should we start investigating them now? Because I'm seeing that issue coming up every now and then. It seems our investigation has ruffled some feathers, and he's doubling down. And that laughter is full of confidence, isn't it? It says, we can do as we like. The U.S. Embassy in Juba released a statement as a result, saying that they continue to call for a formal investigation. But it's not going anywhere. And so this, what you've listened to,

might be the best that Chris's parents ever get. A podcast series about their son that has been agony for them to take part in. Nothing about that feels right, whatever you think about Chris and his decisions out there in Kaya in 2017. If I started this investigation thinking that Chris was an anomaly, a bad example, well, my thinking has changed. Joyce, Chris's mum, asked me at her kitchen table, what has this meant for you?

And I garbled some response to her because I was overwhelmed by the moment. But I've thought about it a lot. I think I've become a more compassionate reporter in the last few months, more willing to accept the reality of being in the world, more accepting of the chaos and the complexity of being out there,

and accepting that it feeds reporting as much as it might tip it off course. And yes, Chris was reckless at times, and perhaps the intensity of the friendships he found on the front line moved the needle of his moral compass. But Christopher Allen wasn't an outlier. He modelled himself on that compelling idea of the war reporter. Like so many others, he felt that lonely impulse of delight, that complicated draw to the front line, and he answered it and tried to find meaning in it and tried to understand it. And he did it all imperfectly in a moment when journalism itself was vulnerable, stretched, staggering, when the cash had dried up, but the demand hadn't. And the situation remains much the same as war has

returned to the East. But I'll finish with a word from Chris from his journals in Ukraine. I read it as his calculation for a life lived deeply. This is no stage play without consequences, but a life lived fully conscious of the consequences which may come with our decisions. This is part of what it truly means to choose and therefore to live this series was written and reported by me basherasha Cummings. Additional investigation was by Jeremy Bliss. The producer is Gary Marshall. Additional reporting and editing by Xavier Greenwood. Additional editing by David Taylor.

The sound design is by Carla Patella, with original theme by Tom Kinsella. With thanks to Charlotte Alfred, the Association for Media Development in South Sudan, and Juma Peter, the Union of Journalists of South Sudan and Rebecca Vincent of Reporters Without Borders. The executive producer is Kerry Thomas.

Pig Iron is a Tortoise production. Thanks for listening. To hear about all of our investigative series, follow Tortoise Investigates wherever you get your podcasts. For the best Tortoise listening experience curated by our journalists and with additional episodes and content, download the Tortoise audio app. Or if you just want early and ad-free access to our podcasts, you can subscribe to Tortoise Plus on Apple Podcasts.