Posted on 04/10/2003 9:16:06 PM PDT by 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.
But it's another thing entirely to have *known* how bad the Iraqi regime was, and then to editorially blatantly *oppose* and *obstruct* administration efforts to actually do something about it. All along, CNN's editorial position has been akin to, "why is Bush going after that nice Saddam guy?", and acting like a paid arm of the "no blood for oil" peaceniks.
It must have been obvious that the truth of CNN's relationship with Saddam's regime would come out in the aftermath of a successful war against Iraq. CNN executives -- and probably those of other networks as well -- had *every* incentive to oppose the war in hopes of keeping their own complicity hidden. But it's too late for that now, hence this premptive attempt to present the situation in a friendly leftist venue as regrettable but necessary.
I don't think the decision-makers have any clue what they just admitted about the rotten soul of CNN, or about what is likely to follow.
In order to maintain its office in Baghdad, CNN watched as its Iraqi employees and contacts were arrested, tortured and murdered.
And CNN was silent.
Thanks for the ping, Howlin.
This is a profound article (confession) that has enormous implications for the media.
Putting the best face on it, the media were held hostage by a rogue regime. They were like a parent whose child had been kidnapped by a vicious killer. And, rather than report the kidnapping to the authorities, they chose to rigidly comply with the instructions (implicit, in this case) on the ransom note.
In this event, the media made an ill-advised judgment, sacrificed their professional responsibilities and are just another helpless victim of the Saddam regime.
The alternative interpretation is that the media willfully chose to be used by this rogue regime in order to maintain their reporting privileges from an exotic, newsworthy venue. In which case, the media are no less than willing accomplices to Saddam's regime.
Were I CNN, I'm not sure I'd have wanted Mr. Jordan to make this public. It amounts to a confession of a.) weakness or b.) complicity, not a report.
This is appalling!
To me this is the most important story of the war. CNN has for years been the most important news source for the Yuppie crowd. I'm sure it's responsible for the opinions of much of the leftist hollywood and university protesters.
So what do we make of the fact that they've been systematically omitting the worst of the coverage of Iraq? And what other news agencies have biased their coverage or avoided interviewing critics of Saddam for fear of getting them killed?
Finally, what will history make of Peter Arnett and Robert Fisk?
Yes, I was thinking exactly the same thing -- see my #561.
They may hate them considerably more once they understand why.
It really does. Some people are defending CNN's performance on the basis that it was journalistically preferable to have reporters inside Iraq, even at the cost of such compromises. I disagree strongly with this, given that those reporters couldn't report the truth anyway.
But I don't see how anyone can defend CNN knowing that Jordan went out of his way to lie to the American people about the quality of CNN's Iraq coverage.
Now, wait a second! Are you saying that the free Iraqi people might have a grudge because CNN didn't report on the children's prisons or Uday raping 12 year olds, but did report on Saddam's birthday party, and his 100% voter support election instead?
It was on the Op-Ed page. Amazingly, CNN considers this "opinion." I would have run it above the fold on page one.
But to then become an anti-war agitator here at home is beyond comprehension.
The question that shuts these types up: "So you'd have been accepting of CNN covering up the rape, torture and/or murder of your own spouse/daughter/loved one as long it was for The Good of the Bureau?"
CNN DISGUSTS ME. May God hold all their decision-makers to account on Judgment Day for the atrocities they have hidden, for their role as accomplices to Saddam's brutal regime.
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