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.

[nutmeg]

Do NOT miss this one.

Please FReepmail me if you want on or off my infrequent ping list.

[TLBSHOW]

I cannot believe Eason Jordan wrote this story and allowed it out. Let alone that the times printed it. The only answer I see is the demons were eating this guy up for years and he had to break the truth or he would lose his soul.

[Howlin]

However, do you really expect a news organization to take a political stand on what's right or wrong.

I want a NEWS ORGANIZATION to report THE NEWS, not hide it. Especially not for their OWN advantage.

They're suppose to report the news, not decide what WE should hear.

[cyncooper]

Ping to a disturbing article.

[Howlin]

Email it to everybody you know; put it on your FR state board so everybody will see it.

[Cultural Jihad]

I found the article. My head is swimming with the implications. Not to mention the stories are getting more and more graphic of what exactly was going on over there.

The same thing happened after the fall of the Iron Curtain. We always knew these guys were crooks, but the world really had no idea just how widespread the corruption was and how decadent the lavish lifestyles were of these supposed proletarian dictators. Even today, has anyone ever read in the New York Times an unkind word against the Soviet Union? Any mention of the millions murdered by those thugs?

[Lunk]

Did I miss something? The last paragraph says:

"At last, these stories can be told freely."

Where the hell are they broadcasting from Abu-Dabi? Last I checked there was genuine, unadulterated freedom of the press in Atlanta...

They always had the freedom to tell these stories. They haven't, apparently, had the courage or the character to actually share them with us until now. Not sure what he was trying to accomplish with the article but he'll probably get a pulitzer for sharing his angst...

[The Hon. Galahad Threepwood]

I think YOU should write a letter to the NYT.

Thanks for the vote of confidence. Maybe I will tomorrow.

[nutmeg]

CNN has a window studio on Sixth Avenue... you know how people hold up signs outside the windows of "The Perky Katie Show" over at NBC??? Hmmm...

>:-)

[Howlin]

Don't lose the fire!

[The Hon. Galahad Threepwood]

As appalling as this story is, I don't think it is going to go anywhere. It will be suppressed. Depressing.

I agree. It'll spend a couple of days in the talk-radio ghetto, and then die. None of the news orgs who had people in Baghdad are going to run with this one.

[marajade]

"I hardly know what to make of this; I couldn't begin to express what I'm feeling right now."

I think anger would be a good place to start...

They knew what kind of man Saddam was and still biased themselves against Bush and going into this war...

Does CNN have any conscience at all?

[Petruchio]

This does not surprize me. Not at all. The same thing is going on with every other network. And, not only in Iraq but in every one of those hellhole countries. Think. Remember on 9-11 when the street celibrations in the west bank happened? The press was told if they filmed it they would die. Those short clips that we did manage to get out almost cost the camaraman's life. From what I have been told, he still cannot work in the west bank.

On the other hand, how CNN and the rest have tried to styme President Bush at every turn is something I will rage about. Because they knew he could improve the situation and still blocked him. They could have supported the Bush effort without revealing information that could come back to harm the reporters if they wanted to.

[nutmeg]

Your e-mail to CNN in #52 was perfect.

[Cold Heat]

What I expect from any news organization is not to compromise it's morality and integrity for the right to have a reporter in a country.

What the hell is the sense in reporting news that is totally sanitized under duress! Why appease a dictator to have a seat at the table in order to call yourself a international reporting organization.

The result is that the truth is never told and the dictatorial government survives!

It is against all logic!

[TLBSHOW]

FYI

This is the stuff satan stories are made from...

[Howlin]

I think you should write a letter to the NYT, too!

Now. While you're still furious!

[nutmeg]

Do NOT miss this disturbing article.

Please Freepmail me if you want on or off my infrequent Connecticut ping list.

[gcruse]

Eason Jordan, you son of a bitch.

You feel better now that you can talk about the
horror of this regime, the horror that you kept to
yourself? And the reason you give for your silence
was that it might jeapordize your bureau as they
reported what you knew to be lies about the nature
of this regime? You bag of maggots. You pile of
puke. How dare you feel relief. How dare you live.

[Lunk]

CNN knew....