Posted on 09/12/2006 10:01:26 AM PDT by jveritas
AP Responds to Captured Iraqi Intelligence Document September 12th, 2006
We received an email from a Mr. Jack Stokes with an Associated Press email address, containing a statement from Ms. Linda Wagner, Director of Media Relations & Public Affairs, Associated Press. The subject line of the email from Mr. Stokes’ is:
AP Statement/Blog “Spy” Accusations/American Thinker so one must assume the statement is responding to our weekend item referring to the captured document containing the phrase, “We were informed from one of our sources (the degree of trust in him is good) who works in the American Associated Press Agency ….”
However, Ms. Wagner’s statement does not refer to The American Thinker or any other site by name, lumping all together under the label “blogs.” Following our publication of the document’s phraseology, other sites, most of them blogs, did comment.
In the interest of fairness, we reproduce Ms. Wagner’s statement here:
To: All interested parties From: Linda Wagner, Director of Media Relations & Public Affairs, Associated Press, info@ap.org All the information in a handwritten Arabic document from Iraq that some blogs claim to be evidence that an AP employee worked for Saddam Hussein was actually published and distributed worldwide as a wire story by Associated Press two weeks prior to the date on the document.
Since the information in this AP story was distributed worldwide, it would be absurd to consider its substance as espionage. Speculation by the blogs rests entirely on use of the term “one of our sources” in the Iraqi document. However, an AP employee who provides a government official in any nation with a copy of a published AP story is providing public information, not espionage services.
Additional background: A number of blogs have posted items with speculative headlines such as: ”Did The AP Have A Spy For Saddam?” and “Hussein’s AP Spy?” and “The AP Gave Saddam Information.” The source for these speculative headlines is a document that has been posted by the U.S. Foreign Military Studies Office Joint Reserve Intelligence Center as one in a collection of unclassified documents from Iraq, captured by the U.S. military. The document’s description on this government site is “Correspondence and Handwritten Intelligence Reports Issued by Iraqi Intelligence Service (IIS) regarding UNMOVIC training on inspection of Iraqi weapons.” The document, dated July 25, 2000, is handwritten in Arabic, and is posted on the U.S. site at: http://70.168.46.200/Released/07-25-06/ISGQ-2005-00026108.pdf This U.S. military site is an unsecured public web site that can be found at: http://70.168.46.200/. According to a prominent disclaimer on the site’s home page:
At the request of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the US Army Foreign Military Studies Office has created this portal to provide the general public with access to unclassified documents and media captured during Operation Iraqi Freedom. The US Government has made no determination regarding the authenticity of the documents, validity or factual accuracy of the information contained therein, or the quality of any translations, when available. The ODNI press release and public affairs contact information is available at http://www.odni.gov/
AP’s own translation of the Arabic in the document indicates that all the points of information in it come from the AP wire story below, which was distributed worldwide on July 12, 2000. The sources for nearly all the information in the AP story were U.N. officials, except for one sentence about the reaction of Iraqi officials to a potential U.N. inspection. In the Iraqi document, an introductory sentence written in Arabic and translated by AP, states:
“We have learned from one of our sources (in whom the degree of trust is good) who works for the American news agency Associated Press that the agency transmitted the following through the computer system in its branches in the countries of the world:”
Read more at the americanthinker.com http://americanthinker.com/articles.php?article_id=5845
Document: Associated Press (AP) Employee Spies For Saddam Intelligence Service. (Translation) http://www.freerepublic.com/perl/post_article
The AP explanation of the document above is laughable, regardless of the content of what the Saddam intelligence spy in AP told them, he is still a spy and he gave the information to Saddam Intelligence directly, and Saddam Intelligence consider him a “trusted source”.
AP responds to the Iraqi translated document about one of their employee spying for Saddam. It is a very lame and laughable response.
Do they really think we're that stupid?
I guess so.
AP Responds to Captured Iraqi Intelligence Document (AP employee spied for Saddam)
Release/Translation of Classified PreWar Docs ping. If you want to be added or removed to the ping list, please Freepmail me.
Please add the keyword prewardocs to any articles pertaining to this subject.
Yes they do, and that is why they are called the elite liberal media.
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Gee, does this mean that the AP believes that other translated Iraqi documents regarding Al Qaeda and WMD even exist? Given their complete absence from the american debate, it would seem the AP can see some but is blind to the rest. Are they written with invisible ink? Paper?
If the shoe fits!!!!!!!
100% correct.
The Goebbels' wing of the DemonRat Party. These guys (MudSLime Media) are absolutely despicable.
Did anybody doubt that the reference was to an actual AP story? Or contend that AP had done anything wrong in distributing the article?
So, why does Ms. Wagner belabor this point?
And why does she never address the phrase that was actually at issue: We have learned from one of our sources (in whom the degree of trust is good) who works for the American news agency Associated Press...
There is a rather clear connotation here that "one of our sources" is a.) on the Iraqi payroll (or is, at least, an Iraqi sympathizer) and b.) works for AP. That would tend to make him/her a spy, would it not?
Hmmmmmmmmm. I wonder how Ms. Wagner failed to grasp this point...
I'll bet CNN's jealous.
That is exactly the whole point. The AP employee spied for Saddam intelligence and the document is very clear about it. As I said AP explanation of the document is very lame and laughable.
This is the AP report (fair use)
____
Associated Press Worldstream
July 12, 2000; Wednesday
SECTION: International news
LENGTH: 386 words
HEADLINE: New U.N. weapons inspection agency for Iraq starts training staff
BYLINE: EDITH M. LEDERER
DATELINE: UNITED NATIONS
BODY:
The new U.N. weapons inspection agency for Iraq has started its first training program for new staff, who could be deployed in late August if Baghdad drops its opposition to inspections, according to U.N. officials.
The Security Council created the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission, known as UNMOVIC, to replace the U.N. Special Commission whose inspectors left Iraq in December 1998 ahead of U.S. and British airstrikes.
Rolf Ekeus, the first executive chairman of UNSCOM, and Charles Duelfer, its last acting chief, spoke to the 44 UNMOVIC staff members from 19 nations during Wednesday's closed-door training session.
Richard Butler, the outspoken Australian arms expert who replaced Ekeus and left when his contract expired in June 1999, was not invited to participate, U.N. officials said.
The four-week training course, which began Tuesday, will cover historical, legal, administrative and political issues related to weapons inspections and monitoring activities in Iraq. It will also include the historical and cultural background of Iraq, with guest lecturers from Columbia University, the U.N. officials said.
The 44 trainees including between six and eight who served with UNSCOM will all get general training, including a three-day safety course set up by the U.S. government, the U.N. officials said. Afterwards, they will get specialized training on ballistic missile, biological and chemical weapons, and issues related to arms exports and imports.
U.N. officials and diplomats said UNMOVIC's executive chairman, Hans Blix, told the Security Council when he delivered his first report in June that he would probably be able to send a small inspection team to Iraq at the end of August.
The focus of initial inspections would be to examine the sites that UNSCOM had been monitoring, the U.N. officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Iraq barred UNSCOM from returning, and top Iraqi officials have said Baghdad would not accept new weapons inspectors from UNMOVIC, but others have left open the possibility of compromise.
U.N. economic sanctions imposed after Iraq's 1990 invasion of Kuwait can only be suspended if Iraq cooperates with the new inspectors, and can only be lifted if Iraq is declared free of its weapons of mass destruction.
The degree to which people will go nowadays to spin a story so thoroughly as to think they can disguise an elephant in the living room is frustrating. I can't believe it. Any common sense reading of the document clearly shows that the AP asset was on Iraqi Intelligence pay rolls. How much clearer could it be? But I digress.
The response actually attracts attention to the specific thing they so carefully avoided. That's the last thing a PR release should do.
So, we are left with two more questions:
1. Is Ms. Wagner really that incompetent a practicioner?
2. Or is AP simply institutionally unconcerned by charges that their agency harbors Saddam sympathizers or Iraqi spies?
The MSM is truly capable of disappointing every day, aren't they?
It is hard to spin such a hard fact and hence the very lame explanation.
It cannot get any clearer in the mind of any person whose IQ is over 80 and does not hate President Bush.
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