Journey Among Brave Men

On July 4, 1962, near the beginning of the First Iraqi-Kurdish War, New York Times foreign correspondent Dana Adams Schmidt left his post in Beirut to be voluntarily smuggled into Iraqi Kurdistan. It was the beginning of a nearly two-month journey that would climax in a days-long visit with the leader of the Kurdish rebellion, the most loved and feared man in Kurdistan, Mullah Mustafa Barzani.

Accompanied by armed Kurdish guides and a 72-year-old Turkish interpreter, the six-feet-three-inch...