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.
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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...
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.
Comes as no surprise. I am sure they will run across documents that speak of CNN in the same way.
The best way to have really interesting news is to create it by playing one side against the other.
The MSM are lying liberal/socialist/Marxist/communist/progressives, nothing they report should be assumed to be the truth.
Activism/Chapters not!
I can't figure out what would upset them about this, being as they see themselves as internationalists & helping Hussein's government would be no different then helping the US government. The struggle to keep their mask on has gotten much more difficult with the democratization of information sharing.
911 Commission Final Report = oxymoron
Their report should be treated like the way the left treats our Constitution (living breathing document)
And I'll bet there are folks sweating bullets, waiting to see what gets translated next....
Thanks for all your hard work, jveritas.
touch all the bases dude... ya hit another one out of the park!!! 8^)Also reported at National Review
http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=MzU5Zjg5MmVhNTg3MDA5YTBlN2I0ZWE4OTExNjAwODk=
One of the things AP needs to realize is that they have already lost their credibility. When it comes to them having to "explain" something like this, it's already too late for them.
http://www.mediainfo.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003120636
An 'AP Spy for Saddam'? News Service Responds to Blog Charges
By E&P Staff
Published: September 11, 2006 9:40 PM ET
NEW YORK Attempting to blunt buzz in the blogosphere about an alleged "Spy for Saddam," the Associated Press released a retort late Monday by Linda Wagner, director of media relations and public affairs, terming the charges "absurd."
The AP statement explains the background. It follows.
*
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 [in 2000] 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....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." ...
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."
since there is only one document with no confirmation, it can't be true