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.

[goodnesswins]

CNN was complicit in MURDER and the Hussein REGIME....don't forget it.

[Interesting Times]

There's a bumper sticker kicking around that says 'CNN LIES' - I can't remember where to buy it. We need a newer, stronger anti-CNN bumper sticker.

How about:

CNN: Where Silence is Consent

[Anamensis]

This whole "oh the things I had to see" business by CNN sounds just like the Nazi soldiers after WWII was over, the ones who worked in the concentration camps. "Oh, the things I had to witness, oh the awful things I had to do." Man... amazing how they participate and then exonerate themselves.

[GOPrincess]

What did Fox say? (Have to leave the computer and TV once in a while and pay the bills, LOL.)

Thanks!

[Interesting Times]

Im curious if this will become a big story

You're watching it happen.

[Sir Sidney Reilly MC]

I see a Class Action Lawsuit of tortured victims against AOL and CNN for purposely hiding the truth from the public.

I see a settlement rather than going to trial to gain even more damaging information on the practices and policies driven by profits of CNN and false advertisements that they inform, tell the truth and get the story right!

I mean this is what Tobacco Companies were accused of doing, hiding information that ended up hurting people in the end.

CNN = CON NEWS NETWORKS!

[Mark Felton]

Bottomline: CNN allows murder, rape and torture to occur if necessary to protect their own self-interests.

Their self-interests in the US may be different than in Baghdad, only they can know. But we have sufficient clues to guess that their self-interest in the US includes the advancement of marxist principles as the primary vehicle to elevate their own positions as a ruling elite.

The ruling elite always require firm control over the news organs. Thus, CNN could emphathize with the ruling elite in Iraq.

Similarly, CNN could fully empathize with the UN, an organization dedicated to the mutual defense of ruling elites worldwide.

[Rocko]

And a good thing, too.

[goodnesswins]

CNN spits on human life.

[cyncooper]

What did Fox say? (Have to leave the computer and TV once in a while and pay the bills, LOL.)

Unfortunately, I couldn't give absolute attention either. What I heard was Bridget Quinn discuss briefly with Eric Burns. Hopefully someone can fill in the blanks.

[ken5050]

CNN has just issued a response to the critics, to wit: "This is not the samwe thing as 'Tailwind' "

[goodnesswins]

Must have been from the earlier segment where Burns said CNN should have at least had their "reporters" generally report some of what Eason knew....Burns will be discussing it on his weekend show.

[goodnesswins]

WHAAAATTT??? "Tailwind?" Oh, puullleease....how many people were murdered in Tailwind? THEY are crazy.

[Lucas1]

Fox News briefly discussed the situation. They basically said CNN should have done more to get the story out.

[Vets_Husband_and_Wife]

"The question is...will we find out who else is guilty."

I think we will. The reason is, I think CNN KNEW they HAD to tell about it. Why? Because the REGIME they were protecting has FALLEN and is being exposed for who it really was by Iraqi's who witnessed it.

They must be "very afraid" to have come out with this at this time. They KNOW it was going to be exposed. PURE AND SIMPLE!!

It makes me wonder what else they HAVE NOT REPORTED. I have a feeling we are going to find out much much more....

[Interesting Times]

Why would Uday Hussein feel comfortable enough to tell a CNN reporter that he was gonna commit murder?

Clearly he knew he could rely on their discretion.

[Fifth Business]

If someone has already made the following point, I apologize, but I am not going to read through 900+ posts to find out.

I wonder if the reason this is coming out now is because CNN was recently thrown out of Iraq for suspicion of spying and CIA connections. Could this be their way of reassuring tyrants elsewhere that they can be trusted?

[YaYa123]

#881 Thank you for the email addresses of the CNN honchos, who no doubt were in on the fix.

Please post that on all related threads.

[ken5050]

switch to decaf....(g) I was trying to make a small joke at CNN's expense....I guess it failed miserably, for which I humbly apologize.....

[pushforbush]

Just posted on WSJ Best of the Web---This will be a very big story going beyond Iraq, to Cuba and the PLO

http://www.opinionjournal.com/best/?id=110003329

Censored News Network
Here's a journalistic scandal for you: In a New York Times op-ed, Eason Jordan, CNN's chief news executive, acknowledges having covered up major news stories in Iraq for fear that the regime would kill its journalists or expel the network from Iraq:

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). . . .

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. . . .

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.

This is nothing new to readers of this column; as we noted in October, The New Republic's Franklin Foer reported on the compromises CNN and other news organizations made to keep a presence in Baathist Baghdad. Foer's conclusion is worth repeating:

When I asked CNN's Jordan to explain why his network is so devoted to maintaining a perpetual Baghdad presence, he listed two reasons: "First, because it's newsworthy; second, because there's an expectation that if anybody is in Iraq, it will be CNN." His answer reveals the fundamental attitude of most Western media: Access to Baghdad is an end in itself, regardless of the intellectual or moral caliber of the journalism such access produces. An old journalistic aphorism holds "access is a curse." The Iraqi experience proves it can be much worse than that.

One cheer for Jordan for coming clean about his network's collaboration with a brutal fascist regime. And a question: What are CNN and other news organizations failing to tell us about other thuggish regimes, from communist Cuba to the Palestinian Authority?