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.

[diamond6]

I know exactly what you mean! He knew about a murder PRIOR to it happening. (actually 2 murders) He's admitting it to cleanse his soul. Would this hold up in a court of law? Hmmm?

I hate to break this to you, but he had no legal obligation to warn of a possible murder. He may have had a moral obligation to inform them, if he knew where they were to warn them. There's no indication he did.

[CheneyChick]

I haven't read all the posts here, but I did read the article. I'm very troubled that this CNN dude could knowingly let all this go on for years. How does he sleep at night? I hope he is haunted forever by the fact that he knew what the right thing to do was, but didn't do it. Lives were lost, people suffered - all because of greed.

[Mo1]

Ok .. will do

[Diddle E. Squat]

Perhaps we should now request that the New York Times(Half The News That's Fit To Print) admit to all the stories it has held back on since 1993?

[weegee]

BUMP TO THE TOP

[LittleRedRooster]

I guess I just dont understand, I know they wanted to keep the news office in Baghdad but if they weren't going use it for news, I gotta tell ya the part about the assination of the King of Jordan and the two brothers in law, if that aint news then what is.

Just like all these crazy basta*ds that cant see right from wrong because it gets in the way of their adgenda.

[MediaMole]

My reply to CNN:

I have just finished reading the article by Eason Jordan in the New York Times.

Never before have I felt more revulsion for the moral character of any news organization. To continue to work in Saddam Hussein's Iraq, when you knew the truth about the regime's torture and murder is absolutely unconsionable.

CNN and Mr. Jordan are complicit in the murder of the two defectors, who could have been saved if anyone at the network had acted on the information they had.

CNN had information that would have changed the public's perception of the regime in Iraq, but failed to act. Would CNN have reported the existence of Auschwitz if reporting on it threatened the ability of the network to stay in Nazi Germany?

Mr. Jordan's actions may have saved the lives of those he knew, but how many thousands of innocent Iraqis died as he and CNN aided the regime and prolonged the terror?

As a photojournalist I have always felt that my duty as a human being comes before my duty to report a story. That attitude may have kept me in a small town weekly, but my conscience in clear. CNN has made the decision to place continued access and favor over duty to help one's fellow man.

[MamaLucci]

I wonder what other stories they are not reporting on...

The entire decade of the nineties comes to mind.
Incredible.

[AndyJackson]

They abused the purpose of freedom of the press!

The term freedom of the press is meaningless in the face of what they have done. This is not journalism. This is being the willing organ of a kind of modern totalatarian thuggery of the likes matched in sinister darkness by Stalin, Hitler, Sadam Hussein and the minions of Emperor Palpatine. They became everything that George Orwell foretold. They are nothing but fawning imbecillic amoral toads. A brine shrimp has more backbone and starch than the CNN editorial and reporting staff.

[Humidston]

Let's face it - They probably ALL held back on stories because THEIR GUY was leading us down the primrose path for eight years and he was Golden, doncha know!

[Cultural Jihad]

I agree with your words. CNN shirked their journalistic responsibility by keeping silent until it was politically safe to speak out. Their behavior can be compared to Scott Ritter's, who claimed he didn't want to talk about what he saw inside the children's prison because he is waging peace.

[Howlin]

He may have had a moral obligation to inform them,

Well, Counselor, I guess you answered her question, didn't you?

This country is about morals; they don't appear to have any.

[The Hon. Galahad Threepwood]

I would have pulled my people out of Iraq the moment it because clear that their presence was preventing me from reporting the truth.

[TLBSHOW]

thanks for the ping my friend!

[Howlin]

I would have NEVER sent them in if I had to PAY to "report."

[citabria]

RE #92

A PIGS * TRAITORS Bump.

[Utah Girl]

This is an incredible story, very infuriating.

[Freedom2specul8]

Did he not have a legal obligation because he was outside of the U.S.? Otherwise, I would guess that in the U.S., he'd be held accountable.

[diamond6]

Obviously, CNN has a liberal slant, but I really don't think you've answered my question. Instead, you go an emotional rant about Bill Clinton. Do you really think it's a news organization's job to make sure that Bob Dole became president in 1996? I think the Republican party should have presented a much stronger candidate. If they had, Clinton would not have had a second term. But you can blame the American people for turning a blind eye to what Clinton's character was all about and voting for their pocketbooks. But again, this is off the topic, what would you have done?

[Howlin]

Check this out.