Posted on 08/20/2002 2:10:54 PM PDT by Tumbleweed_Connection
CNN's exclusive videotaped look at Al Qaeda activities didn't come free: the struggling cable news network reportedly coughed up a five-figure payment to "sources in Afghanistan" executives at the network told the New York Daily News
What CNN got for its money was access to "a hidden archive of 250 hours worth of video documenting Al Qaeda's terror training and its testing of chemical weapons of mass destruction," the News reported.
CNN said that "A longtime source in Afghanistan led CNN senior international correspondent Nic Robertson to the people with the tapes two weeks ago."
While Robertson, who the News wrote "has been reporting from Afghanistan for a year" refused to reveal his sources, he insisted that none of the money paid went to Al Qaeda.
"From what I know about the people we were dealing with, absolutely not," Robertson told the News.
CNN wasn't alone in broadcasting terrorist tapes. According to the News CBS News showed some similar footage it got from its own sources on "The Early Show" and "The CBS Evening News." CBS, however, wouldn't reveal how much they paid for their footage.
Neither NBC and ABC said they were not aware the material existed, insiders at the two networks told the News.
Over at ABC News correspondent John Miller, the last American journalist to interview Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, recently went to Afghanistan for his network, the News reported, but he said he had not been looking for any tapes.
"I was aware of what I called 'Al Qaeda Productions,'" Miller told The News. "He has his own people shoot messages. I would probably have never believed there were 250 [hours]. It's a lot of material."
"Some of it is new and interesting stuff. The chemical stuff, the bomb-making stuff, it brings forward the story," Miller said of the CNN tapes. "We knew bin Laden had a chemical-weapons lab, but to see what appears in them, that's new."
CNN and CBS each warned viewers about grisly scenes showing the death throes of dogs exposed to poison gas being tested on the animals.
Robertson told the News CNN will air a tape today that shows a May 1998 gathering of bin Laden and the Al Qaeda leadership declaring war against the U.S. and the rest of the world. It will be the first video footage of what Robertson called Al Qaeda's "big moment in history."
Robertson's denial that any of the money laid out for the tapes would go to al Qaeda because he knew the people who sold them to him, recalls the tragic case of Wall Street reporter Danny Pearl who also thought he knew the people he was dealing with, and was brutally murdered as a result of his faith in them.
CNN considers itself removed from any sense of patriotic duty as an American owned and operated corporation. Just ask Ted Turner.
1. Remember, the media consider themselves neutral - they will not define these people as 'the enemy'. To do so would mean they have sided with the American government, thereby losing their impartiality.
2. Also, CNN no longer refers to anything as 'foreign' or 'foreigner'. They use the term 'international' so as to not be accused of being pro-American.
Yes, I know it sounds stupid, but these are two of the reasons they would not turn over this information to the government.
then perhaps they need to leave the country. I dont want American sons and daughters fighting to protect people who consider themselves non-citizens.
Fine by me. I don't watch the SOBs anyway. I won't miss 'em.
I find it highly unlikely that the Al Quida went around filming everything they did and that somewhere there's a cave full of tapes waiting to be discovered and sold. This stinks of just too coincidental IMO.
I don't. bin Laden's a megolamaniac and undoubtedly felt that he was (or is) the second coming of Mohammed. He had plenty of money, and plenty of buttboys who followed him around.
Why wouldn't he record his every move, and everything he did?
And, if some Afghan found or knew about the tapes, why wouldn't he hold out for some coin?
1-Who do you think they're "testing" the chemical weapons for?
2-Why did CNN buy 250 hours of this for five figures?
3-Why didn't the general public greet the continual WTC tapes with the same outrage, demanding that networks stop showing them, as with this case?
4-When I think about the CNN series on chemical weapon testing, and this material being available to the general public, I wonder if you have by any chance recorded/been recording it?
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