The News We (CNN) Kept To Ourselves [must read]

The New York Times ^ | 04/11/03 | EASON JORDAN

[Pokey78]

ATLANTA — Over the last dozen years I made 13 trips to Baghdad to lobby the government to keep CNN's Baghdad bureau open and to arrange interviews with Iraqi leaders. Each time I visited, I became more distressed by what I saw and heard — awful things that could not be reported because doing so would have jeopardized the lives of Iraqis, particularly those on our Baghdad staff.

For example, in the mid-1990's one of our Iraqi cameramen was abducted. For weeks he was beaten and subjected to electroshock torture in the basement of a secret police headquarters because he refused to confirm the government's ludicrous suspicion that I was the Central Intelligence Agency's Iraq station chief. CNN had been in Baghdad long enough to know that telling the world about the torture of one of its employees would almost certainly have gotten him killed and put his family and co-workers at grave risk.

Working for a foreign news organization provided Iraqi citizens no protection. The secret police terrorized Iraqis working for international press services who were courageous enough to try to provide accurate reporting. Some vanished, never to be heard from again. Others disappeared and then surfaced later with whispered tales of being hauled off and tortured in unimaginable ways. Obviously, other news organizations were in the same bind we were when it came to reporting on their own workers.

We also had to worry that our reporting might endanger Iraqis not on our payroll. I knew that CNN could not report that Saddam Hussein's eldest son, Uday, told me in 1995 that he intended to assassinate two of his brothers-in-law who had defected and also the man giving them asylum, King Hussein of Jordan. If we had gone with the story, I was sure he would have responded by killing the Iraqi translator who was the only other participant in the meeting. After all, secret police thugs brutalized even senior officials of the Information Ministry, just to keep them in line (one such official has long been missing all his fingernails).

Still, I felt I had a moral obligation to warn Jordan's monarch, and I did so the next day. King Hussein dismissed the threat as a madman's rant. A few months later Uday lured the brothers-in-law back to Baghdad; they were soon killed.

I came to know several Iraqi officials well enough that they confided in me that Saddam Hussein was a maniac who had to be removed. One Foreign Ministry officer told me of a colleague who, finding out his brother had been executed by the regime, was forced, as a test of loyalty, to write a letter of congratulations on the act to Saddam Hussein. An aide to Uday once told me why he had no front teeth: henchmen had ripped them out with pliers and told him never to wear dentures, so he would always remember the price to be paid for upsetting his boss. Again, we could not broadcast anything these men said to us.

Last December, when I told Information Minister Muhammad Said al-Sahhaf that we intended to send reporters to Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq, he warned me they would "suffer the severest possible consequences." CNN went ahead, and in March, Kurdish officials presented us with evidence that they had thwarted an armed attack on our quarters in Erbil. This included videotaped confessions of two men identifying themselves as Iraqi intelligence agents who said their bosses in Baghdad told them the hotel actually housed C.I.A. and Israeli agents. The Kurds offered to let us interview the suspects on camera, but we refused, for fear of endangering our staff in Baghdad.

Then there were the events that were not unreported but that nonetheless still haunt me. A 31-year-old Kuwaiti woman, Asrar Qabandi, was captured by Iraqi secret police occupying her country in 1990 for "crimes," one of which included speaking with CNN on the phone. They beat her daily for two months, forcing her father to watch. In January 1991, on the eve of the American-led offensive, they smashed her skull and tore her body apart limb by limb. A plastic bag containing her body parts was left on the doorstep of her family's home.

I felt awful having these stories bottled up inside me. Now that Saddam Hussein's regime is gone, I suspect we will hear many, many more gut-wrenching tales from Iraqis about the decades of torment. At last, these stories can be told freely.

Eason Jordan is chief news executive at CNN.

[zingzang]

I am so furious I would SPIT on any CNN employee right now if I could.

They aren't even worth such consideration. These people have proven, once and for all, that today's yellow journalists would sell their own friends out for a story. They are beneath contempt, and burning in hell isn't good enough for them.

[adam_az]

"So why is CNN relieving themselves of a long kept secret to the NYTimes? Why not report it on CNN, LIVE?"

Because CNN is the most trusted name in news, of course! Wouldn't want to jeapordize that...

[mewzilla]

You know what really got to me? Not only did this clymer not realise jjust what it was he had written...neither did this miserable excuse for a newspaper or the guy's own network. They had no clue. So I don't know what's worse: what CNN did, or the fact that everyone at CNN and this paper were so clueless about what CNN had done.

[goldylight]

anyone have a phone number for them - i would love to call and give them a piece of my mind.

[buffyt]

I was at the gym today and overheard a man saying we should have not gone into Iraq... I said I thought it was worth it just to free all those little children who were in prison over there. He had not heard about that, and didn't seem to believe me. I can't wait for all these news stories about the rapes, tortures, imprisonments, murders, toddlers in prison, etc. come out. Will Utopians read them, believe them, care?????????

[buffyt]

Excellent suggestion! Maybe if we all ask the beautiful Ann to write a book about this, she will. Her books are so good. I always plan to just underline the good parts... then I find myself underlining every line. Her writing style is so awesome, so readable, and it shows her intelligence!

[Chuckster]

My wife just called me from work - said Rush is talking about this right now so I emailed her the article.

[headsonpikes]

"Because CNN is the most trusted name in news..."

In Canada, CNN is available everywhere on cable, and is widely regarded as a pro-Bush right-wing U.S. propaganda network...and distrusted because of that.

Seriously.

[KingKongCobra]

My email to Issacs --

I want to ask you a question

Do you have a conscience?
I'm looking for a serious answer.
How did CNN sit quietly by while Sadam killed 100,000 people over 10 - 15 years.
Not the estimated 2 million who starved to death because of sanctions but the 100,000 who were yanked out of their homes and tortured and killed.
You KNEW. You had first hand knowledge of toture within your own staff and from direct interviews with government officials. You knew beforehand of death threats which were carried out.
And you sat by without a word. You violated every ethical standard of journalism. WHY? Why be in the country if you won't report the news? Was it worth the 30 pieces of silver?
You are no longer a news organization and nothing you print or say can ever be believed.
I ask again - Do you have a conscience?
It's time to clean house at CNN. Start at the top, they should all be replaced. Then, go to all your offices with criminal dictators and tell them NO MORE LIES.
Start reporting the damn news and tell those dictators that if they retaliate you with turn over all your documents to the UN Security council. Be tough. Be a real news service or fade off into irrelevence.
You want your customers back? This is how to get them. You want to fade into history and become a college course on what not to do? Stay with your current team.

It's your call.

[girlscout]

Bump to read.

[FReepaholic]

>>... At last, these stories can be told freely...<<

Yeah, but I notice that the story is being told in a newspaper. I wonder if CNN will tell the story.

[jaz.357]

EASON JORDAN

NADROJ NOSAE...sounds IRAQI.

[texasbluebell]

Someone has probably mentioned the comparison to the situation in the 30s and 40s when Walter Duranty of the NYT failed to report what he knew about the crimes of Stalin, but just in case anyone wants to read a good column about it, here's one from the National Review that came up in a search:

The Paper of Record--An apology that is long overdue.

[blackie]

"How can CNN "reporters" still face the cameras?"

The same way democrats and all liberals face the camera ... by lying through their teeth!

They are all clueless, classless, cretins!

Be Well - Be Armed - Be Safe - Molon Labe!

[TheMole]

The best joke in this story is the idea that there is going to be a lot of "soul-searching" at CNN -- like there was anything left to search.

Oh yes, says Jordan, now it can be told ... Saddam and sons are psychopathic sadists. Hey, I'd already figured that out. The more important news that they keep to themselves at CNN is any good news about the Bush Administration and the Republican Party. After all, electroshock torture, mutilation, murder, terror -- these are mere petty details compared to the evil that is George W. Bush.

[texasbluebell]

And the sad thing is, I'll bet there aren't many red faces or heads hung in shame at cnn right now.

[hotpotato]

I'm late to the table here and it may have already been said but I suspect there was no honor in Jordan coming forth now with the truth. Too many people knew what CNN knew and will now also be telling what they know. Better to "right" a story by wrapping it in "remorse" in an attempt to generate sympathy than to have to answer some hard questions later.

I wonder if this story will be written/televised for the Arab world to read/see?

I wonder if CNN will learn to report the truth rather than be a spokesperson for a despot? How dare they sell themselves as reporters of the truth They've polluted their journalist pool with people who will sell their souls to the devil for a story. How dare *any* CNN representative accuse *any* embedded reporter of being biased and not objective.

[mewzilla]

Oh, I'm sure there are a flock of a lot of red faces...But for all of the wrong reasons. I wish I could consign CNN to rot in the same Hell they helped Hussein and company force on the Iraqi people all these years.

[GOPrincess]

Tony Snow speaking to Sean Hannity on Eason Jordan and CNN: "A grotesque miscarriage..."

Says that CNN will look worse the more we discover about the atrocities, and the better the U.S. will look.

[Howlin]

I'm going out.....somebody keep notes of everything that they say, especially the panel. I'm dying to know what Fred thinks!