Former Hostage Jill Carroll Shares Her Story
COOPER: Jill Carroll, the American freelance journalist held captive in Iraq earlier this year is speaking out about her ordeal now, in an interview provided to us by the "Christian Science Monitor," Carroll describes how she tried to win over her captors in a desperate attempt to gain her freedom.</s>COOPER (voice-over): One month into her 82-day ordeal, Jill Carroll says she began to crack. Moved from house to house, forced to record one hostage video after another, repeatedly promised she'd be set free, only to remain a captive.</s>CARROLL: The next two months, I started to like lose it. One point, I just finally, somehow something broke and I would just start crying all of the time.</s>COOPER: Back home her parents were begging for her safe return. Making their case on Arab television and on</s>CNN. MARY BETH CARROLL, JILL CARROLL'S MOTHER: I, her father and sister, are appealing directly to her captors to release this young woman, who has worked so hard to show the suffering of Iraqis to the world.</s>COOPER: Mary Beth Carroll spoke of her daughter's love for Iraq, how Jill made sure her reporting reflected the local perspective. Mary Beth needed the militants to see her daughter as a real person, not just a symbol for a cause. On the other side of the globe, Jill was working a similar strategy.</s>CARROLL: I had heard people say before if you were ever taken hostage, you should humanize yourself to them, immediately in the first house, I started talking about my sister, I have a twin sister, we're the same. We're halves of one whole, oh, she will be so worried about me because what will she do without her other half?</s>COOPER: She started studying the Koran, memorizing whole passages to the delight of her captors.</s>CARROLL (voice-over): It became a slippery slope. Because after a while the question became, OK, you've been learning about Islam for the past three days, why haven't you converted yet? I said, wow, gosh, didn't plan to convert. I wasn't doing -- I wanted to find a way to reach them. And that was actually more dangerous, because when you go halfway it's like worse because then they think you've seen the beauty of Islam and you are saying no to it and that's way worse than just being an ignorant infidel, if you will.</s>COOPER: She also turned to another book, her reporter's notebook, making her captors a pledge they found irresistible.</s>CARROLL: Why don't you tell me everything you want world to know and I'll right it all down and one day when you let me go, because they always said they would let me go, you let me go I'll tell the world.</s>COOPER: She said she interviewed the men for hours, they lapped up the attention and rewarded her with chocolate. Carroll says her captors were also making bombs and they did it in front of her. One man spent his days wearing a suicide vest, loaded with explosives, just waiting to go off.</s>CARROLL: He would cook our meals, this one guy, he would cook our dinner on this open flame on this little gas stove. You had to sit back carefully from the stove to cook because he was afraid the heat would set off the dynamite and I was like, for God's sake. But this is all because, in case soldiers came into the house, he would blow up the house and kill all of us including the soldiers.</s>COOPPER: Jihad for them was the one true cause, martyrdom, and honor, not just for the men.</s>CARROLL: So this woman, this woman I was with all this time, one day, during the second or third day we were in the kitchen, and her husband came in, that guy and he says, you know, Umali (ph) she wants to be a suicide bomber. And Umali, yeah, do I. She obviously really blushing, he was praising her and she was really proud of it. And I was like, she's got three little kids right there in kitchen floor playing. I'm playing with the kids that night and they're making dinner and she's four months pregnant.</s>COOPER: It went on like that for weeks. Carroll thought of other captives who had made it out alive and those who hadn't. She says she prayed to herself, recited Shakespeare under her breath. One more morning, nearly three months into ordeal, the militants drove Carroll to the headquarters of the Iraqi Islamic Party, a Sunni political group, they handed her a gold necklace and wad of American money.</s>CARROLL: And they grabbed my hand, and he start taking out money out of his wallet, and putting $100 bills into my hand, these are $100 bills we're sorry for your trouble. This one is for your computer, this one for your father, tell him we're sorry.</s>COOPER: And then just like that Jill Carroll was set free. She wandered into the Iraqi Islamic Party office and before too long, she was on her way back to the United States.</s>CARROLL: I'm overwhelmed at how wonderful the paper has been, my family and everyone.</s>COOPER: But Carroll's homecoming was not without controversy. Shortly after her release, the Iraqi Islamic Party produced a videotape of an interview she had done with them just after she was set free.</s>CARROLL: They gave me clothing, plenty of food. I was allowed to take showers, go to the bathroom when I wanted. Very good. Never hit me. Never even threatened to hit me.</s>COOPER: On heels of that tape another hostage video surfaced, Carroll claiming Americans liars, predicting victory for the insurgency. Did she mean it? Carroll insists she did not.</s>CARROLL: I knew what I was supposed to say. I learned what to say. And so I said what they wanted me to say. Of course. Like, you don't say no. That's not part of it. If you say no you're dead.</s>COOPER: She said she feared for her life during both those tapings, even after she was free.</s>CARROLL: Especially after a few months or a few weeks, you are not thinking normally, even after a few days, you are not thinking normally at all and you are in massive survival mode.</s>COOPER: And in the end, that is what matters. Jill Carroll did survive. She's back at the "Christian Science Monitor," working as an editor, safe behind a desk in Boston.</s>COOPER: Jill Carroll's full story of the 82 days in captivity can be found on the "Christian Science Monitor's" Web site csmonitor.com. Another Middle East hot spot in southern Lebanon, the guns quiet but peace is anything by secure. Tonight the French pledging more help but it may not be enough to stop more fighting from breaking out. We'll take you there. And in Iraq, there is no silence just more bloodshed. We'll show you a side of the war may have never seen before. An inside look at what's really happening to the people caught in the crossfire when 360 continues.