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.

[Howlin]

Just for the sake of argument, since he's 'telling all,' what reason would he have for NOT stating in the article that he informed the United States government?

I'll say this again: that man was a HUGE source to us; and he's dead. If we had know about the plot, he'd be here today.

[Howlin]

We demand to know if FOX NEWS operates this way as well...

Exactly!

[Howlin]

You are a red herring and/or a strawman and/or a disruptor.

And at this point I don't care, but you are trying despeately to take this thread off course.

I'm not playing anymore.

[Cold Heat]

FOX was bumped after a short time.

Their Sky (euroweenie) News outfit likely has the same story as CNN.

[nutmeg]

Do NOT miss this disturbing article.

[The Hon. Galahad Threepwood]

Thanks, but none of this matters. Nothing's going to happen. No one's going to report this. Most people will never even hear about it. And most certainly, nothing's going to change.

We're doomed! DOOOOOOOOMED! AAAAAAAAAAUUUUUUUGH!

I think I'd better ooze off to bed.

[Howlin]

Oh I saw that Chater guy on Fox admitting he had reported what they minder wanted him to.

[Howlin]

That's when I started reassessing my views concerning the "hotel jockeys" versus the embeds!

[diamond6]

I don't believe the U.S. would have jurisdiction, since this happened outside the U.S., but I think that's beside the point. We don't hold people responsible for the murder of another unless the person was actively participating, aiding, hiring, or conspiring with another to do so, except in very limited circumstances. One situation which would require legal intervevtion would be a psychiatrist who's patient said he was going to kill an identifiable person. In that case, he would have to take steps to prevent it.

[Lucas1]

GAWD I would love to see this make the DRUDGE REPORT - RED ALERT - HEADLINE OF THE DAY

Wonder if Drudge will pick this story up...

[Cold Heat]

If that's true, and Jordan knew it, then he should have told the U.S. government. But do we know that for sure?

Some rather shallow thinking.

The government already knew about these things and then some. it is the American and foreign public that was not getting the message due to this appeasement by CNN and likely others.

[MamaLucci]

CNN would not report in THIS country under those
conditions....what about journalistic integrity, the
sacred first amendment, CENSORSHIP?! Blah, blah, blah.
But when the rubber met the road, all of their ethics
went right out the window, and for what?
They didn't GET the story, they HID IT!
It may not be criminal, but it by God should
put them out of the news reporting business.

[marajade]

" ... to a degree I can understand their concern for associates in Iraq that would surely have been killed had the stories come out."

They should have just left...

They have no integrity or truth or honor in them...

[Cold Heat]

We don't hold people responsible for the murder of another unless the person was actively participating, aiding, hiring, or conspiring with another to do so, except in very limited circumstances

Too the wood shed with you..................Sheesh!

[Toskrin]

Compare what Mr. Jordan says now with what he told a WNYC reporter in October 2002 regarding truthful reporting from Baghdad.
http://www.wnyc.org/onthemedia/transcripts_102502_jordan.html

[Howlin]

I agree. They should have left.

[diamond6]

Gotten out of there if I could not report what is going on without someone getting killed or tortured!

Come home, report to CIA or Rumsfeld what I was seeing. They would not have to put it on TV which would have gotten even more killed.

Those would be good ideas.

[marajade]

By staying... I find they were complicit IMHO...

[chinche]

Silence is consent.

[diamond6]

Should they report the news, even if reporting it will get their sources killed? Are you not aware that there are things the military does not report, precisely because of that reason?