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.

[dogbyte12]

Ping everybody on your lists please.

[Freedom2specul8]

Is it possible, that there is evidence being found by the troops about the reporters, and the reporters are afraid of it leaking? Or is that too tinfoilish?

[Howlin]

I already did.

Ping lists, please.

[Howlin]

Kim, I'll bite on anything after this. Honest.

[AndyJackson]

You left off my favorite poster child of CNN - Puala Zahn. Her flipped out hair-do looks like she is trying to be a combover but has too much hair. That and Judy Woodruff who looks like Bill the Cat.

[Beth]

I can't find the words to decribe CNN. I thought they couldn't get any lower, now I read this.

They've proven themselves unworthy of the First Amendment.

[JohnHuang2]

Thank you for the ping, Howlin.

Didn't think it was possible, but my opinion of CNN just diminished further. CNN is beneath contempt.

[Illbay]

"Now that I have that off my chest, let's go to our intrepid on-the-scene reporter, with a half-hour tribute to those valiant men and women who are protesting the unjust war that they allege is merely about 'blood for oil'.

"And in the interest of 'fairness' we won't challenge a single one of them with the notion that they might be aiding and abetting a brutal dictatorship!"

[razorbak]

Notice that CNN dumps this story into a news cycle that is so dominated by other events that it will get little play. Also, you know good and well, if CNN people knew this, their cocktail buddies at the other networks did also. But they attack Ari Fleischer as if he were Dr. Goebbels.

[Howlin]

Hit your ping list, will you?

[jocon307]

"...how many major news organizations didn't have people inside Iraq? Even Fox did. What if they're all compromised this way?..."

Galahad (of the excellent name) you are correct, Sir. I'm ready to believe CNN might be worse than the rest, but I'm also ready to believe its sins may only be among those of many others. And I think this author should be acknowledged for speaking the truth, even at this too late date.

All this, all this horror that will now be revealed will show to all who can think for themselves that Bush, and Blair, were not b-s-ing anyone.

We live in a fallen world, so far fallen from perfection and even, often, good, that to have forthright men like Bush and Blair in the lead is as good as we are going to do sometimes.

Most of the folks in the West won't soon slip back into the haze of celebrity worship we were lately in. Sure, sure, people will go on with their own personal lives, but that is all the more reason why LEADERSHIP is important.

And Freerepublic is a big part of what is going to change this world. This is the information age, that is really the great change. As great as the Industrial Revolution, as great as the Renaissance. No one knows where it is going to take all of us; but is it going to take all of us somewhere we've never been before. And in the Information Age, it'll be to the good to get Truth out there, in front.

[goodnesswins]

bump for later

[Mo1]

This needs to be read and emailed to everybody we know by every single person on this forum.

I am emailing now .. I cannot believe this .. They have the blood of the Iraqi People on thier hands

I wonder what other stories they are not reporting on

[NYCVirago]

Also, you know good and well, if CNN people knew this, their cocktail buddies at the other networks did also.

Absolutely. But why would they want to give aid and comfort to the enemy, namely, Bush? It might get them disinvited from their limousine liberal soirees.

[Pokey78]

The thing about it is that the author still works for CNN, and I'll bet that they have no idea the outrage this will cause across the country. They will be blindsided.

[stands2reason]

Bump to your comments. And welcome to FR!

[Freedom2specul8]

Well, if they were CONFIDED in by saddam's sons, about murder..one would think they were held in higher standards or something. Meaning they reporters must have done a lot to kiss up to them?

[diamond6]

Excuse me for offering a dissenting view, but just what would you have done that would have saved the employees from being tortured or killed?

[Illbay]

In fairness, even if they had closed their Baghdad bureau, all the Iraqi employees there--probably most of the staff--would have been left behind, and would have been tortured or killed if CNN followed through.

No, the other people here have it right: What is nauseating is that CNN has aided and abetted the DOMESTIC enemies of the Bush administration. They haven't done diddly-**** to challenge the allegations of the "anti-war" (anti-American) activists.

That's just unconscionable.

[Freedom2specul8]

" unjust war"

I need to go reread the article!