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.

[BreitbartSentMe]

Rush hasn't taken any callers yet/

[Lady Eileen]

These were in support of a regime which placed the tortured and killed women's body parts on the doorstep of her family:

The Hollywood left supports tyrants........but won't support our troops........they can all move to France where they belong.

[nina0113]

I guess I don't know the login.

Try 'annoying' for both the username & password - someone set those up as logins on a whole BUNCH of websites years ago, then shared out the information.

[Lucas1]

Quote "I guess I don't know the login.

Try 'annoying' for both the username & password - someone set those up as logins on a whole BUNCH of websites years ago, then shared out the information."

Do you need a login to read the article? Go here

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/11/opinion/11JORD.html?ex=1050638400&en=ea21e8c88feae21c&ei=5062&partner=GOOGLE

Unless I am not understanding what you are trying to do? That should load without a username or password.

[F.J. Mitchell]

CNN=Clandestine Nastiness Nurturers. Now we know the truth and may that truth make the world as free from the deciet of CNN as it is from the Monsters they have abetted and enabled.

[GOPrincess]

Rush wonders if Jordan told Rick Kaplan and if Kaplan told Clinton...

[Mia T]

url-linked images of shame
copyright Mia T 2003.

[Paul Ross]

[GOPrincess]

www.poynter.org is an interesting site which publishes articles by media writing on other media...so far there isn't much about this posted there. (But there *are* some hatchet pieces on Fox, such as today's by the LA TIMES. Also the interesting info that some reporters are "disembedding" over the protests of the Pentagon.)

[nickcarraway]

ping

[Paul Ross]

And don't forget the Clinton-holdovers and retired military honchos of his ilk who did everything they could to undermine this righteous cause....

[BreitbartSentMe]

I did try 'annoying' on the login screen that came up when I click on the link at the top of this thread. Since then I found a link on Drudge that took me directly to the page, thanks.

[FreedomFlyer]

YaYa said it best in #492 above. Think of all who must have known this but played their deception, special pleading game on behalf of Saddam for over a decade.

It's reprehensible. It's straight-up lying propaganda.

==============================

I caught CNN reporters today on air talking about the story and telling another reporter to remember to ask the CNN people in the Kuwait bureau about all the other similar stories floating around that office--presumably more murders and tortures covered up by CNN to keep access. So, from top to bottom, CNN has been covering up for Saddam.

(1) What did CNN know and (2) when did they know it?

1. EVERYTHING.

2. FROM THE BEGINNING.

If CNN doesn't fire Jordan ASAP, they should never be believed again!

[hawkaw]

Drudge has raised this to the headline for his whole webpage.

Your damn right that this should be raised to the fore front. Interesting that Rush is talking about this.

I just don't know. This should really be put out for everyone to see.

I'm just so upset over this and Yet, I shouldn't be. Between this and my stupid Canadian Prime Minister I don't don't if I can take anymore of it

hawk

[Piranha]

CNN has now posted an article about Jordan's confession on its own website.

In the CNN article, Jordan was the hero who stood up to the regime and sent his reporters to the northern Kurdish area, even though Saddam's people threatened to kill them. (As someone asked earlier, there is no word on whether these reporters were warned about the threat.)

Then, when the captured would-be assassins were captured and made available for CNN to interview, CNN DECLINED BECAUSE IT WOULD PUT ITS REPORTERS IN JEOPARDY.

Here's what the article on the CNN website says:

"The network decided to send staff members into the region anyway [after receiving the death threats], Jordan said. When the plot was uncovered by Kurdish authorities in March, they offered to let CNN interview the suspects on camera, but the network declined, fearing for the safety of its staff in Baghdad, he said."


In other words, he doesn't reveal torture and murder for more than a decade because he values the lives of CNN staff members in Baghdad, but then sends out a few reporters, knowing that they are actually threatened with death. Then, when the prospective killers are captured and made available to explode the whole story of Saddam's regime intimidating the news media, he hushes it up to protect...his Baghdad personnel. It's bad enough to cover up Iraqi war crimes, even those against their own people, but here they are admitting that they shielded the criminals who could have linked this directly to the Hussein regime!


Craven.

[Howlin]

That's because you are already a member, I bet. It works for me, too, but when I got my new comptuer, I had to relogin.

[Lucas1]

Quote "I'm just so upset over this and Yet, I shouldn't be. Between this and my stupid Canadian Prime Minister I don't don't if I can take anymore of it

hawk"

It is a SAD SAD state of affairs...makes you just want to cry...and the big question is...will anything change after this.

We can only hope...

[MinuteGal]

I understand that poynter.org is connected to the Poynter Institute, a "non-profit" group of well-to-do intellectual pin-heads and effetes which publishes and oversees Pravda West (the St. Petersburg Times) in Florida.

So you'll probably never see much slamming of the left on this site.

Leni

[Howlin]

I can almost hear Howie Kurtz justifying this already.

[Howlin]

Link?