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.

[fishtank]

Resist liberal lies.

Prosecute leftist treason.

[cyncooper]

Rush interrupts the reading to ask listeners if they EVER got the impression from watching CNN that Hussein was the madman who needed to be removed. Or was it Bush who was portrayed as the madman.

Unbelievable, says Rush, and points out just who is writing this piece.

Back to the article he goes...

Rush read then interrupts again to ask if the anchors couldn't have been informed so their attitude could properly reflect the proper demeanor. Rush says the more you read of this the more unbelievable it gets, especially since George Bush became president and the way CNN portrayed him, vs. the way Hussein was portrayed.

Back to reading...

[MizSterious]

"PT Barnum was right."

CommonTator used to say he disagreed with Barnum--he thought there had to be more than just one born every minute. I agree with CT.

[Matchett-PI]

Rush is talking about this story right now. He led off his program with it.

[kcvl]

EVER got the impression from watching CNN that Hussein was the madman who needed to be removed?

[Agamemnon]

Rush opened with this article on his show just now!

[Yankee]

Tator is, of course, correct.

One needs to take into consideration, the amount of "imbecile inflation" that has occurred since Barnum's time.

[Cold Heat]

Amen Brother!

Thanks Dave!

It seems that some do not see the depth and far reaching concequences of this news.

Most of us do however.

[abenaki]

very good points,Quark. Mr Lincoln said much the same thing: "Honesty (truth) is the best policy". This crowd at CNN have no respect for the heroes who have died to preserve our freedoms,especially Freedom of the Press.

[<1/1,000,000th%]

But these "alleged atrocities" are no justification for attempting to defend ourselves. /sarcasm

[Grampa Dave]

This story documents a lot of what many of us have felt about CNN.

Then, your personal reply was so eloquent and expresses what so many of us feel personally about the POS who control and work for CNN.

[BreitbartSentMe]

well, Rush just finished reading the article, and went to commercial. based on some of the comments posted here, I think my internet feed is delayed a couple of miniutes, so sorry for any duplication that might come up.

Rush is HOT on this issue, is outraged, and says everyone who reads this should also be outraged.

[GOPrincess]

I am astonished CNN put this out -- did they think we would feel sorry for them? They knowingly stayed there, complicit in all this. I had my doubts about those reporteres who chose to stay in Baghdad during the war, with their "minders," but figured there was at least some value that they were there when Baghdad fell and the minders disappeared. This is so, so much worse -- words fail. And CNN has basically had an anti-war tone all this time? Why, so they could stay there not covering what was happening even longer, and be complicit in the knowledge of planned murder and torture even longer?

Something needs to happen to CNN for this. What, I don't know.

[Rocko]

Go, Fox News!

[Countyline]

"Always remember, CNN, the NYT and their ilk are communists, plain and simple so be wary of anything they do or say."

Wise words indeed ...

[The Hon. Galahad Threepwood]

If anyone gets through to Rush on the phones, be sure to mention The Interview which Toskrin linked to last night. As bad as the basic story is, Jordan's lying is even worse, and even more important.

[KneelBeforeZod]

awful things that could not be reported because doing so would have jeopardized the lives of Iraqis, particularly those on our Baghdad staff.

BLESS THIS MAN!!! He saved dozens of reporters at the cost of only millions of others! My Hero!

[BreitbartSentMe]

Even if he needed to protect his people in Iraq, that doesn't explain how CNN covered all of this. Pres Bush and his admin over the last year talking about WMD and atrocites, Mr. Jordan could have taken his lead anchors, woodruff, et al, tell them what he knew. Newsworthy content he withheld. He ought to feel terrible, all members of media & congress who knew but didn't say

[Freedom'sWorthIt]

Andy Jackson has done a good job of putting words to my rage. kcvl - done a good job of keeping the appropriate email address before us. (Thanks). Others are doing a good job of voicing what I am thinking.

But we still have not done this topic with all the thought and ACTION PLANS that it deserves.

[kcvl]

They knew of the atrocities, they knew of the rapes and they kept quite.