Posted on 04/10/2003 9:16:06 PM PDT by 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.
What's your Martindale Hubbell rating? If you have one? (Doubtful, since you didn't even know it existed)
Also, the lack of a rating means nothing. Read this from M-H: "In the United States, 43% of the active bar is rated. Omission of individual lawyer ratings should not be construed as unfavorable since Martindale-Hubbell does not undertake to develop ratings for every lawyer. In addition, certain lawyers have requested their ratings not be published. In other instances, definitive information required to establish a rating has yet to be developed."
Neither I nor any of my associates have ever based our opinion of an attorney on a M-H rating. Obviously, this kind of thing is highly subjective.
He almost does.
"Eason Jordan is the chief news executive and newsgathering president for the CNN News Group. In this capacity, he oversees CNN's worldwide news coverage, the network's editorial policy and direction, CNN's Satellites and Circuits department and CNN Newsource's affiliate news-feed service, which is distributed to approximately 900 broadcasters worldwide. He also contributes to CNN's strategic planning as a member of the CNN Executive Committee. Jordan is based in CNN's world headquarters in Atlanta..." more Eason bio
yitbos
He wasn't CNN's executive vice president of newsgathering and international networks until 1995-1997, and ONLY from 1997-2000, Jordan served as CNN's president of newsgathering and international networks. In my initial post I said I couldn't fault him because I understood that, had he revealed the information he had regarding the tortured individuals their families would've risked tremendous consequences including CNN reporters stationed in Iraq. So I understood Jordan's decision. However, I made very clear my position regarding CNN for still showing us biased reports from biased reporters who clearly have a leftist agenda.
My anger is not so much at Jordan but at CNN, unless he decided to keep quiet in order to advance his career at CNN.
Really ?
Now might be a good time to read the posted article again . Nail the facts down the best you can .
And it's not just CNN. From the article:
Obviously, other news organizations were in the same bind we were when it came to reporting on their own workers.
I've no doubt of that. He's proven by his ramblings on this thread that he is very good at dissembling, defying logic and common sense, and twisting things to make the guilty seem innocent. All necessary qualities for a defense attorney.
What a snide, arrogant and condescending individual you are. Are you Chirac? Up to now, the only person I've seen who is so arrogant and so convinced of his own superiority that he completely fails to realize how much of a clown he appears to everyone else is Chirac. You are certainly in the running to match his arrogance and his self-absorbed foolishness. I doubt very much that you are the conservative you pass yourself off as being, because your attitude in enlightening us peons with your babbling is very much like that of an elitist liberal.
Your sole mission on this thread seems to be to obfuscate the issue of CNN's complicity with Saddam and to distract from the very obvious conclusions that anyone with half a brain can draw from the article. Your antics might be enough to fool the typical O.J. jury, but it won't work with intelligent FReepers. Everyone on this thread sees you for the clown that you are, yet you continue talking to yourself. You have yet to show a fraction of the common sense, intellect, and wisdom that I and others here have displayed. It must be very lonely in your mutual admiration society of one.
BTW, my IQ is 160. What's yours?
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