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.

[dmeara]

This is morally equivalent to Scott Ritter not giving the horrid details of his tour of a children's prison in Iraq, because he thought it would start war and he was "waging peace".

This is despicable beyond words. It should be reported on every network.

[Slip18]

I'm sitting here laughing.

I honestly liked listening to Baghdad Bob. He was hysterical.

[diamond6]

And you call me a disruptor. Let me see if I can explain this to you in language you can understand. CNN hired Iraqis in Iraq for the Iraqi bureau. The Iraqis were the ones Jordan was protecting. He couldn't just take those Iraqis into the U.S. without the Iraqi and U.S. government's approval. Knowing Saddam, if CNN had just picked up and left, Saddam would have punished the employees whether they had anything to do with it or not.

[Howlin]

When you get a chance, read this article:

http://www.msnbc.com/news/889555.asp

Imagine our troops having to save this jerk OVER and OVER.......

[diamond6]

Thank you.

[Howlin]

The Iraqis were the ones Jordan was protecting.

Quit while you're ahead.

He never said that the Iraqis told him that the man was going to be killed.

He said UDAY told him.

Now, do you think he should have protected Uday as a "source?"

[Wild Irish Rogue]

Knowing what they did, CNN gave a forum to McDermott,Bonier ,Rather,Sarandon,Sean Penn,etc, so they could promote their pro Saddam agenda. Larry King Live was a nightly wet kiss to Iraq.If I had a journalism degree, I would burn it in shame and never speak of it again. Others may disagree,but,I cannot imagine Fox News looking the other way,year after year,while people were murdered and tortured.I also don't follow the Coward News Network's logic-they needed to keep quiet,so they could stay in Iraq and not report the story.Guess their motto is " Unfair and Unbalanced, We Don't Report, We Decide."

[kayak]

Apologies for duplicate pings ..... trying to get the word out to as many as possible.

[marajade]

"If you read the article you would know that most of their employees were Iraqi citizens."

They should have never gotten themselves in the situation they were in in the first place...

[chinche]

It's always the same deal - report what we *tell* you to report or you won't continue to be our "guests".

You assume it is always the same deal. Let’s say you are correct. CNN had the option of not being a “guest.” Why did CNN choose to be a good houseguest in Iraq given such a deal? Why did they accept the deal?

Some possibilities:

They thought it a good commercial strategy and let profits define their moral center.

They were secretly working for the forces of good.

They didn’t give a damn.

They swore an oath (to what god?) of allegiance to ironic objectivity. (That is they invented some sophist reason not to give a damn.)

They were coerced to be there and behave.

Their inner self demanded that they be reporters and so they heroically accepted the deep, intimate pain of keeping the horrific news to themselves in order to attain their true calling.

They were just following orders.

[Dec31,1999]

I've got CNN on because FNC is playing the same thing over and over. I must say that I'm really appauled by what passes for jounalism these days. No wonder the sheeple are against freedom. It's terrible!

[Lucas1]

Ping

[The Great Satan]

Unbelievable. Despicable beyond belief.

[marajade]

At least FNC can say their journalistic integrity is still intact... CNN after this, cannot...

[KingKongCobra]

I haven't posted in about a year but this is the sickest thing I think I have ever read. There are no words. CNN helped Sadam (helped, I say) to murder tens of thousands of his people just so that they could make a couple bucks by having an office in Bagdad. It's ..... I need a larger vocabulary because I can't find the words.

This should become a required course study in every journalism school in the world. The perfect example of what is NOT ethical.

[fellowpatriot]

Thanks for pinging me to this story, Howlin!

What more does anyone expect from the clinton news network? Does anyone really doubt whether or not the former administration knew about this?

I think that cnn decided to supress this story because they knew that clinton wouldn't do diddly squat about it.

cnn was an enabler to the clinton administration - this story is just another part of his legacy.

[Lucas1]

It would be nice to see this at the top of the front-page news section tomorrow morning.

[Howlin]

I also don't follow the Coward News Network's logic-they needed to keep quiet,so they could stay in Iraq and not report the story.

That's about the crux of it.

[Howlin]

I see you don't have an answer. You just proved my point. Thanks.