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Not the real thing

James Taranto raised a question Tuesday in his blog on WSJ.com about whether Richard Engel had overlooked a story in Sidon, Lebanon.

According to Taranto, one of his readers noticed what looked like uncut sheets of U.S. $100 bills on the ground in Richard’s report that aired Monday on Nightly News. Taranto wondered if Engel had stumbled across a Hezbollah counterfeiting operation that had been blown to bits.

Richard explained over the phone from Tyre, Lebanon, Wednesday that the bills shown were not real bills but photocopies. He said the bills were not on currency quality paper and were too small to be passed off as real currency.

He also explained that, often times when people are dealing with a lot of cash, as they would be at a bank, they photocopy the currency as a form of record keeping and to check out that the serial numbers are correct -– to make sure that the dollars they got were real dollars.

You can watch Richard's report from Monday for yourself here.

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Roadways turn to battlegrounds

The roads in Lebanon are now battlegrounds. We got a firsthand look at just how dangerous they have become as we drove on Monday from Beirut to Tyre, the war-torn city in Southern Lebanon. 

We left Beirut at around 8 a.m. this morning. Since we were not sure what exactly we were heading into, we all packed provisions for at least a week. We brought extra fuel, cans of tuna fish, satellite communications, a generator and clothing for a week. We marked our vehicles "PRESS" and we headed out in a convoy with some other journalists.

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On the road with Madame Secretary

As we left Andrews AFB yesterday, we picked up hints that we might be making an unscheduled stop in Cyprus, presumably to review the evacuation efforts. There was also talk of Beirut, but officials weren't talking. Only after a Midnight refueling stop in Ireland did top officials turn on the lights and tell us we were going to Lebanon.   

I've been to Beirut with several secretaries of state, including Condoleezza Rice, but never this way -- boarding military helicopters into a war zone, snaking through streets in a hair-raising motorcade at breakneck speeds, and then scrambling as Lebanese camera crews almost body tackled Rice to get a picture of her going into a meeting with their prime minister. A U.S. embassy official told us, "please understand, they are desperate for any solutions, she's the first person to arrive that might have some answers."

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Faces of fear in Beirut

All photos by Ann Curry, NBC News

It appears without warning in the faces you see in Beirut -- a flicker of fear moves across the eyes, darting like a frightened bird and revealing the uneasiness of being in a nation under siege.

Israeli air strikes have squeezed supplies routes in. The airport is closed. The roads are vulnerable, and at the border, you can see the big trucks parked in long lines, the drivers worried their cargo will be mistaken for Hezbollah weapons. Plenty of food is still available, but choices seem to be diminishing. More restaurants and stores are shutting down. The lights often go dark. Some hotels are struggling to operate on limited staffs. And oddly, in the lobby of one, three Lebanese women stop you, an American, asking for advice on the best road out of Beirut. 

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Anger, sorrow in Cyprus

Editor's note: Vanessa is on assignment in Cyprus with NBC Correspondent Dawn Fratangelo.

The image that stuck with me the most is of a woman who came off the first arrival of the Orient Queen into Cyprus. Her body had been overtaken with such emotion that she was trembling with anger and sorrow as she tried to tell us her story. She was unable to get her parents out of south Lebanon and had also left her husband and brother behind to attempt to do so. She had spent four days previous huddled in a garage with 35 other people trying to stay safe while Beirut was being bombed. She could not understand why no one was helping when so many civilians were being killed. She kept repeating that they had not done anything wrong yet they were being punished. Once again she had lost all hope for the country of her birth which was being destroyed after it had just got back on its feet. It was a sentiment repeated by many.

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Helpful Marines

The steaming heat of the height of summer in Cyprus wraps around us in this human drama, further testing the endurance of these men, women and children who've already been through too much. Under the noon-day sun we watch the imposing hull of the USS Nashville fill the dock, while the refugees cheer and call out from the railings of the deck. After a long line of Marines in desert fatigues files off the ship to make a protective cordon, the people begin to stream off and they just kept coming, and coming, and coming.

For most of them, fear seems to have been replaced by exhaustion, but the worry lines on the faces of the grown-ups are visible, as they try to keep their nerves for the sake of the children. But the Marines are very impressive. Offering a calm, helping hand, and a smile to everyone who needs it, and guiding the young and old down the very steep staircase from the tall ship. At one point, three Marines in a row trot down in lockstep, each carrying a stroller, with the same ease and comfort they normally display with an M-16.

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Rice headed to Mideast

After criticism that the administration has not been involved enough in seeking a diplomatic solution, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will announce at the State Dept. in two hours that she is leaving Sunday for the Middle East with a first stop in Jerusalem and will outline her expectations for a durable peace plan.

According to a senior U.S. official, she will say that there are no quick fixes and that the U.S. wants a permanent, long-term solution - NOT an immediate cease fire. 
She will say that she is serious about this effort, but she will not lower the bar in order to get a quick solution. Aides say Rice does not want  "innocent lives to be lost as a down payment for future conflict." Before leaving Sunday, she may meet with the Saudi Foreign Minister who will be coming to Washington this weekend. While in Israel, she is likely to make a side trip to Ramallah to meet with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

At this hour, State is organizing a wider summit on Lebanon to take place Wednesday in Rome and to include Russia, European leaders, Egypt, Jordan Saudi Arabia and Lebanese Prime Minister Siniora. Following that meeting, Rice would go on to an Asian summit in Malaysia, and stand ready to return to the Middle East if developments warranted.

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Back in New York

For a time today, two-thirds of the network evening news anchors were inside the same steel tube hurtling across oceans and continents en route home to the United States.  Charlie Gibson and I landed just a few hours ago at JFK, and I'm now playing catch-up on our coverage plans and all that I have to do before airtime. Tonight we are going big on the Middle East once again, with several truly interesting and well-reported stories from the region. Our Engel/Fletcher combination will start us off, followed up by Ann Curry, Kerry Sanders and Dawn Fratangelo on the exodus. We will try to have a frank talk about policy with Andrea Mitchell, and we will take a look at the reception President Bush received from the NAACP today.

To all of you who have e-mailed us regarding our coverage of the conflict this past week, I wanted to assure you that we are reading and weighing all opinions carefully.  I'm aware of the charges of bias, favoritism, imbalance, impartiality, etc. News organizations know that anytime the dominant story emanates from the Middle East, viewer sensitivities become heightened, and viewer comments become... emotional. For each e-mail accusing us of being pro-Israel, another accuses us of being the broadcasting arm of the Hezbollah. While there were practical reasons (having mostly to do with safety, infrastructure and ease of movement) that led us to to base our anchor location in Israel during this past week (which I'm more than willing to explain at greater length), my job here is to make sure we get the coverage right. I have a lot of help at that task, which is crucial during a week like this one -- when I'm in the field as PART of the coverage. We talk about it constantly, we measure our words, we ask each other questions and we question each other's underlying assumptions. We realize we are judged every day, and we realize the power of our words and pictures right now. We're all humans and we're all professionals, and we ask to be judged on the body and balance of our work as a whole... on this topic and everything else we cover.

We hope you can join us for tonight's broadcast.

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'Early Nightly,' A Word About Safety

For today's entry -- a word about safety. I couldn't help but notice an e-mail written to our blog, "The Daily Nightly," by a very kind woman in Plano, Texas. It had to do with my safety and the safety of our team of correspondents.

I'm not in this job to take undue risks. We've seen that happen before. I'm not in it to leave NBC without an anchorman, leave my wife without a husband or my children without a father.

We are here though because there's no substitute for covering the story... For being here, seeing it, touching it and smelling it.

Because as you see this, we are on route home to our studio in New York where we will go on covering this story for days and weeks probably, sadly. And we will be educated -- our coverage will be educated by the fact that we were here and will be back here because it's what we do.

Click here to watch it.

We'll see you tonight on NBC Nightly News.

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Wednesday's outlook in the Mideast

Another eerie and incredible day here, and our broadcast tonight will go back and forth across this sweeping region as we cover two distinct sides in this fight.

As a member of our brave traveling party pointed out today, "the gravel beneath our feet was once walked on by Jesus Christ." These days, the territory is a landing pad for Katyusha rockets, while Israeli shells whistle by in the other direction overhead. Tonight you will see what we found when we came upon an Israeli artillery battery, operating on what is normally a fairgrounds in a valley just over a mountain ridge from Lebanon. You will see the fires we found burning all over the hillsides -- that's what happens when rockets (those that don't hit buildings or people) come to the end of their life. Richard Engel will take us to where the shells and bombs are landing -- the slow destruction of portions of Lebanon -- the countryside and the people, getting blown up in the Israeli effort to move Hezbollah from its northern border. An observation: judging only from the ammunition stocks we saw today, Israel does not appear to welcome an early, diplomatic solution. Another observation: Hezbollah is not facing a shortage of rockets -- the countryside is littered with their husks, and their presence has cleared Northern Israel of all but the bravest and most essential holdouts. It's that kind of jittery atmosphere. In the north, a concussion means an incoming rocket or an outgoing shell. In Tel Aviv, you wonder: has the fighting now come here? In Beirut, daily life is an enormous challenge -- and it must be all but impossible not to lose hope.

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