WASHINGTON, D.C., March 26, 2002 -— The Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund today honored TIME’s South Asia Bureau Chief Alex Perry as the first-ever recipient of the Joseph L. Galloway War Correspondents Award at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C., announced Jan C. Scruggs, the nonprofit organization’s founder and president.
The award is presented to a war correspondent for excellence in reporting while educating the public about conflicts throughout the world. It was presented during a ceremony commemorating the 20th Anniversary of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Groundbreaking. In addition to the award, Perry received a monetary gift of $10,000 from the Memorial Fund Board of Directors through the support of Jerome Ledzinksi of Centurion Alliance and Jesse G. Bell of Bonne Bell Cosmetics.
A key member of TIME’s coverage of the war in Afghanistan, Perry was the first reporter to reach Mazar-i-Sharif after it fell to the Northern Alliance. He was the only outside witness to the massacre of 300 Taliban at Mazar’s Sultan Raziya School and broke the story of CIA agent Mike Spann’s death in the prison uprising at Qala-i-Jangi, the first American combat death of the war. Perry also was the only reporter to stay on scene, inside the fort, throughout the battle, providing eyewitness accounts of the uprising from the Alliance frontlines and from the positions of the American and British Special Forces. Perry also recently helped cover the biggest battle of the war to date, involving 1,000 American troops, in Shahi Kot south of Kabul.
Damn. He’s got a brass set of balls on him!
Hell of a reporter.