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.

[Tolerance Sucks Rocks]

Ping of importance.

[Tolerance Sucks Rocks]

Ping of importance.

[Cold Heat]

List of pertinent E-mail addresses can be found on previous replies.

[CFC__VRWC]

HOW and WHO CAN WE "FREEP" over this sickening, immoral conduct? Time Warner?

I honestly don't know, but I do know what I plan on doing.

1. Block EVERY CNN CHANNEL I get with my DirecTY service.
2. Send an e-mail to DirecTV explaining what I have done with CNN and why I'm doing it.
3. Tell everyone I know who has cable what CNN has done, in the hope that they'll be outraged enough to call their cable providers and request that CNN be dropped for Fox News Channel.

[Tolerance Sucks Rocks]

Ping of importance.

[HuntsvilleTxVeteran]

bmp

[Cold Heat]

What has become of America?

I believe they call it ignorance, duplicity and PC tolerance.

Apparently this crap is handed out in liberal amounts in our schools. (particularly our institutions of higher learning)

[PhiKapMom]

They sure did shut down email. I had to fill out a form on their website!

[oldmanlegg]

"Why didn't he tell our govt about this?"

A good point.

However, if they would of told Clinton would he have done anything?

I keep thinking, did CNN or one of the other networks know about 9/11 in advance? If they did they obviously didn't tell. Any company that advertises on this network should be boycotted!

[Victoria Delsoul]

I am biased against CNN because of the THEIR bias. CNN is the closest thing to an AL-Jazeera branch in this country that we have here.

LOL, you are so right about that!

[cyncooper]

I haven't been on this thread for awhile, but dashed over to give a heads up.

Joe Scarborough is going to talk about it on his MSNBC show shortly.

[oldmanlegg]

"Why didn't he tell our govt about this?"

A good point.

However, if they would of told Clinton would he have done anything?

I keep thinking, did CNN or one of the other networks know about 9/11 in advance? If they did they obviously didn't tell. Any company that advertises on this network should be boycotted!

[oldmanlegg]

"Why didn't he tell our govt about this?"

A good point.

However, if they would of told Clinton would he have done anything?

I keep thinking, did CNN or one of the other networks know about 9/11 in advance? If they did they obviously didn't tell. Any company that advertises on this network should be boycotted!

[PhiKapMom]

He is on now giving his commentary and will soon have on the rep from MRC!

[turbocat]

On Scarborough now - slamming CNN

[oldmanlegg]

Why didn't he tell our govt about this?

A good point.

However, if they would of told Clinton would he have done anything?

I keep thinking, did CNN or one of the other networks know about 9/11 in advance? If they did they obviously didn't tell. Any company that advertises on this network should be boycotted!

[oldmanlegg]

"Why didn't he tell our govt about this?"

A good point.

However, if they would of told Clinton would he have done anything?

I keep thinking, did CNN or one of the other networks know about 9/11 in advance? If they did they obviously didn't tell. Any company that advertises on this network should be boycotted!

[oldmanlegg]

"Why didn't he tell our govt about this?"

A good point.

However, if they would of told Clinton would he have done anything?

I keep thinking, did CNN or one of the other networks know about 9/11 in advance? If they did they obviously didn't tell. Any company that advertises on this network should be boycotted!

[Tench_Coxe]

Yeah. I can just imagine things if CNN was around about 60 years ago:

" We were worried about our sources in the Jewish ghetto getting killed for telling us about the camps, and the trainloads of their fellows being shipped off to them. We decided it would be best not to say anything, not get kicked out, and be present in Berlin to record its fall."

[Almondjoy]

Complicity? you open your mouth and nothing makes sense.. when you use such bold words you better be knocking down the door of proof.. oh wait that's right it's just your opinion because you don't know anything!!!!!! Stop while your ahead.