Chris Wattie

Chris Wattie
Allegiance	Canada
Service/branch	Canadian Forces Queen's York Rangers
Other work	journalist, author

Chris Wattie is a Canadian journalist who writes predominantly for Canada's National Post newspaper. Wattie is based in Toronto, Canada.

Education

Mr Chris B Wattie studied at the Royal Roads Military College in 1979, student #14098.

Career

Chris Wattie is a senior national reporter with the National Post, and one of the first Canadian reporters embedded with the army when he accompanied Canadian troops on the International Security Assistance Force mission in Kabul in 2004. He was the first reporter to uncover the mission’s problems with their aging Iltis vehicles, leading to their eventual withdrawal from overseas operations and replacement by new light utility vehicles. He was also the first reporter allowed to accompany the mission’s ISTAR (for Intelligence, Surveillance and Target Acquisition and Reconnaissance) company on operations, a secretive unit devoted to finding and tracking Taliban insurgents. He was also with the Canadian Forces’ disaster assistance response team in Sri Lanka for the aftermath of the 2005 tsunami, writing about the Canadian government’s slow response to the humanitarian disaster. In 2006, he became the first reporter allowed access to the Canadian Forces’ elite Canadian Special Operations Regiment, a newly formed special forces unit based in Petawawa. In January 2006, he travelled to Kandahar with the first troops of the Canadian battle group deployed to southern Afghanistan and was embedded for eight weeks with Task Force Orion, the first Canadian army battle group on the ground in the heartland of the Taliban. As a result of his experiences embedded with the task force’s Charlie Company, Wattie wrote his first book Contact Charlie: The Canadian Army, the Taliban and the Battle That Saved Afghanistan

Main article: 2006 Iranian sumptuary law controversy

On May 19, 2006, the National Post, a major Canadian daily newspaper, headlined a story bylined by Wattie claiming that Iran was enacting a law requiring non-Muslim religious minorities to wear "special insignia": yellow for Jews, red for Christians and blue for Zoroastrian.^[1] These claims spread quickly, particularly over the Internet, causing significant and widespread reaction, but were challenged when they could not be independently confirmed. According to Ha'aretz, while the story spread quickly among blogs, "serious news publications such as The New York Times, on the other hand, chose to ignore the affair pending further examination." By the end of the day, the original article was no longer available on the news website. Instead a new story by Wattie questioned the accuracy of the earlier claims, which he attributed to "a news story and column by Iranian-born analyst Amir Taheri in yesterday’s National Post".^[2] The National Post's published an apology and an explanation for the erroneous reporting in its May 24, 2006 issue.^[3]

Wattie also serves as an army reservist with The Queens York Rangers in Toronto, Ontario.

He started his journalism career at The Charlatan at Carleton University.

Publications

Chris Wattie is the author of Contact Charlie: The Canadian Army, The Taliban and the Battle that Saved Afghanistan.^[4]

He was the ghost writer of Gen Hillier's autobiography, A Soldier First.

Awards

• Ross Munro Award Honorable Mention (2005)^[5]

References

1. ^ "Iran eyes badges for Jews: Law would require non-Muslim insignia", Chris Wattie, National Post, May 19, 2006 (no longer available)
2. ^ "Experts say reports of badges for Jews in Iran is untrue", Chris Wattie, National Post, May 19, 2006
3. ^ "Our mistake: Note to readers", National Post, May 24, 2006
4. ^ Chris Wattie http://www.amazon.ca/exec/obidos/search-handle-url?%5Fencoding=UTF8&search-type=ss&index=books-ca&field-author=Chris%20Wattie
5. ^ Ross Munro Award & Vimy Award Dinner, LtGen (Retired) R. J. Evraire, November 18, 2005

External links

• Contact Charlie: The Canadian Army, the Taliban and the Battle That Saved Afghanistan

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