In Extremis: The Life and Death of the War Correspondent Marie Colvin

by Lindsey Hilsum

Marie had agreed to work with Anthony Geffen, a young documentary producer, on The Faces of Arafat, a film about Arafat for the BBC and HBO. Anthony knew Marie was the key to access, so he put up with her unreliability: she never seemed to understand that the camera operator, sound and light technicians, and producer needed her to turn up when she had said she would. She and Anthony were in one of the Tunis safe houses, talking to Arafat off camera, when a small explosion shattered the windows. Everyone in the room dived for the floor as Arafat was whisked away—he was on a plane out of Tunis in less than half an hour. Some months later, a senior Israeli intelligence official mentioned the incident to Anthony. “We didn’t want to kill Arafat then,” he said. “We just wanted to frighten him.”