A View From Both Sides (Page 2 of 4)

May 3, 2006
By: Knoxville Voice

"There are some very progressive believers in the Middle Eastern press that are being left out by the U.S. media and haven’t been able to get out their point to their people because they didn’t have access,” he said. “Had we empowered these people, they would have that ring of credibility that my voice just could not give.”

Along with the Arabic media, Rushing was also chosen to escort two students from the American University in Cairo who were making a documentary about Al-Jazeera network. At one point during an interview, Rushing admitted that he sometimes felt like he was “spinning” the news and information coming out of CentCom. He showed a marked concern that this was a common occurrence.

“The whole time I was thinking that I wasn’t the subject of the documentary, Al-Jazeera was,” he said. “They asked me to sit down and talk to their producer, and I did.”

One year later, while working as a film liaison for the Marines in Los Angeles, Rushing got a call that would propel him into the whirlwind of instant celebrity that would soon follow.

“A guy left a message thanking me for what I said in some documentary called Control Room,” he said. “I had no idea what he was talking about.”

Like any red-blooded American thirsty for information, Rushing “Googled” his name and the title, “Control Room,” on the Internet. His life would change forever.

“I got the information to contact the people who did the film and I called them up,” Rushing said. “I said ‘My name is Josh Rushing, I think you made a movie about me’.”

The documentary was shown at the Sundance Film Festival and met with tremendous critical acclaim. Though Rushing missed its debut, he said he has attempted to watch the film on several occasions.

“It’s difficult to watch because the audience sees a documentary and I see a home movie,” he said. “Every corner you couldn’t see around, I could remember around.”

His newfound minor celebrity status aside, Rushing discovered, to his dismay, that his role in the film incited many bloggers to anger, calling him an “anti-Bush poster boy,” and demanding that Rushing be “taken out” by a special ops team.

The real trouble began, however, when Rushing received a call from the Pentagon.

“When your cell phone rings with the Pentagon’s number on your caller ID, it could never be a good thing,” he joked.

The Pentagon was calling to tell Rushing that the media had swamped their offices with requests to talk to him about Control Room. The Pentagon’s response to the requests was “no comment.”

Rushing was ordered to walk away from reporters asking questions and was told that the Marine Corps did not want to give the impression that it endorsed the film.

“They did not handle the situation wisely,” Rushing said of the Pentagon tendency to remain silent. “If you want a story to go away, you never say, ‘No comment’.”

As the story grew and Rushing’s reputation as a “rogue bearer of the truth” set in, his relationship with his superiors became as thorny as his thoughts on the way media on the Iraq war was being handled in this country.

“When your boss is getting nailed by the New York Times on a weekly basis, it becomes an uncomfortable situation,” Rushing said. “There were a lot of things I felt I needed to do that I could not do in uniform.”

After 14 years, Rushing resigned his position, leaving him unemployed, pension-less, and without healthcare. In order to survive, he and his wife took out two mortgages on their home.

Once word of Rushing’s resignation reached the mainstream media, all the major network morning news shows began courting him to tell his story.

“I knew if I went on Good Morning, America, I would have about three minutes to tell my story, which I can’t,” he said. “I knew Dateline would make it scandalous and make me out to be a whistle blower.”