Pentagon’s Fictional Afghan Pay Phones

An anonymous soldier writes:

When General Hayden said that someone in Afghanistan used a pay phone, he did not lie. He merely did not explain what was used.

You’re right about there being no fixed line infrastructure. However, Afghanistan did have Thuraya coverage in 2001. You can buy a Thuraya calling card just like you can for any other phone, and just like a normal pay phone, you can set a static location and charge fees. Yet there are two big differences. One and foremost is the cost. It’s an expensive service. The second difference is rather than going through a PSTN, it is sent via sat. link. Or it could have been a HPCP. To a journalist who knows nothing of telecommunications, mentioning Thuraya or HPCP would require an explanation, and why explain when you can merely say “Pay phone” because that is what it was?

And, from my quick search, Afghanistan had no fiber. So every bit of communication would be radio wave based.

Thuraya phones receive spotty coverage in Afghanistan; they’re particularly good for travel around the Persian Gulf and Middle East. When they do function in Afghanistan, they are satellite phones. And while it is theoretically possible to purchase calling cards for a Thuraya phone and switch the cards around, it is extremely unlikely that anyone in Afghanistan would do so for one simple reason–there’s no place there to purchase them.

More to the point, Americans–the audience to which the General was presumably addressing himself–think of “pay phones” as a fixed phone that takes coins or calling card. That’s what the New York Times assumed, but that’s not what was in Afghanistan in 2001–or, for that matter, now. Thuraya phones are mobile, portable satellite phones.

Inventing your own vocabulary isn’t acceptable. It is a lie. And that’s giving the guy the benefit of the doubt.