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.

[george wythe]

After reading the posted article and some of the comments, I'm so disgusted I can throw up.

I hope God will forgive these "journalists," because it will be difficult for us mortals to forget this.

[ken5050]

Most excellent essay..thanks. Might I suggest that later on you repost this as a vanity thread....

[semaj]

Disgusting cowardice. CNN Should have all their licenses pulled and run out of business. We should allow their offices to be looted and burned to the ground, not just in Iraq, but in Atlanta too.

[Lucas1]

It is nice that Rush is covering this story...BUT THE REAL QUESTION IS WHO ELSE IS COVERING THIS STORY - OR BETTER YET WHO IS NOT????

FOX NEWS WHERE ARE YOU ON THIS....

[Lucas1]

Is it wrong to suggest everyone contact Fox News...and demand coverage on this story? Will CNN get away with this? What can we do to help this story become what it truly should become...the downfall of CNN.

[GOPrincess]

Can you post a link to the interview source that could be used to send this interview to friends along with the NYT piece? Thanks.

[Rocko]

Great e-mail read by Rush from "Howard". Hope it gets posted somewhere; at least on Rush's site.

[Lucas1]

Quote "Disgusting cowardice. CNN Should have all their licenses pulled and run out of business. We should allow their offices to be looted and burned to the ground,
not just in Iraq, but in Atlanta too."

Imagine how the people of Iraq would/must feel if they knew this? CNN represents who?

[GOPrincess]

Fox News definitely needs to cover this in a serious way -- and not just in "The Grapevine" or "Below the Fold." This is major, serious news.

[irish_links]

"...I felt the same way about the reporters at the Palestine Hotel!! They had minders limiting what they could report so WHAT IN THE HELL GOOD WAS THAT??!!..."

How true. I never watch CNN, so I don't know how they reported the conflict and the events that led up to it. But I did see repeated live reports on FNC from stringers who were stationed in Iraq. They were typically British, presumably working for Sky TV, and moonlighting for Fox.

Anyway, prior to the beginning of hostilities, they reported, to a woman, how all the Iraqis they spoke to were against the war, were preparerd to die for Saddam and were diligently preparing for a hard fight. Of course, all these conversations took place with the Ba'ath minder lurking in the background, undoubtedly with a notebook in his hand taking names and notes.

How could these people call themselves journalists? They certainly knew that they were participating in a propaganda chirade intended specifically to prop up the evil and corrupt Ba'athist regime. And yet they played along willingly.

Why? Why? Why? To get the story? Some story, a pack of lies in defense of a tyrant. To advance their careers? Maybe. Because Ba'athist propaganda was what the "right" people back home wanted to hear, that the reporters themselves wanted so desperately to be true (are you listening Robert Fiske!!!!)? Yes. Most definitely, yes.

The mere thought of these cretins (most certainly complicit in the deaths of many innocents) makes my blood run cold.

[Freedom'sWorthIt]

"The censorship, to me, is only part of the outrage - the fact that they proactively opposed the man who was prepared to do something about it damns them and is a major part of what covers them in Iraqi blood today."

Not only "opposed" President Bush but refuses to PRAISE the liberation of the Iraqi people today! THAT is the essence of the outrage!!!!

Despite learning more and more of the atrocities perpetrated against the Iraqi people - VERY FEW IF ANY in the Clinton News Network or on ABCCBSNBC will DARE to utter one single word of commendation to President Bush or to our Troops for HIS and THEIR valor, courage, brilliance, and wonderful liberation of these people from the Hitleresque Saddam!!!

IT IS THEIR OPPOSITION TO AN END TO THESE ATROCITIES THAT DAMNS THEM - AND THEY ARE, INDEED, DAMNED!

[Piranha]

Most excellent essay..thanks. Might I suggest that later on you repost this as a vanity thread....

Thanks for the complement. Regarding your suggestion, I'm new around here. How do I do that? Is there an instruction page for Freerepublic? I've looked for one but haven't found it.

[PogySailor]

And this e-mail he is reading NAILS IT! CNN and their peers that have shamefully covered up the horrors of Saddam's regime have their hands covered in blood.

What else have they been suppressing? How many human beings had to die to give CNN "objectivity"?

[BreitbartSentMe]

Yea, and I couldn't access the NYT piece, without going through the 'annoying' login in process, which failed. I guess I don't know the login. Anyone?

[Lucas1]

Quote "Can you post a link to the interview source that could be used to send this interview to friends along with the NYT piece? Thanks."

THE INTERVIEW OF LIES

http://www.wnyc.org/onthemedia/transcripts_102502_jordan.html

BOB GARFIELD: Let's say there's an -- a second Gulf War. Is that the
mother of all stories? Do you have to be there? Are there-- decisions
you'll make on the margins to be s-- as certain as you possibly can
that you will have a presence there?

EASON JORDAN: We'd very much like to be there if there's a second
war; but-- we are not going to make journalistic compromises in an
effort to make that happen, being mindful that in wartime there is
censorship on all sides, and we're prepared to deal with a certain
amount of censorship as long as it's not-- extreme, ridiculous
censorship where -- which we've actually seen a number of cases in
previous conflicts -- not just with Iraq. But-- sure! We want to be
there, but it's --we don't want to be there come hell or high water. We
want to be there if we can be there and operate as a responsible
news organization.

[Rocko]

Here.

[BreitbartSentMe]

"Who's responsible for more deaths, Halliburton, Enron, (Etc) or CNN" Ouch, that hurt. Hey, CNN, better put some ice on that!

[Freedom'sWorthIt]

I dare Eason Jordan to walk freely in downtown Baghdad or Basra. I dare him. The freed Iraqi's would (justifiably) murder him for his complicity with the BUCTHER REGIME!

[Piranha]

You just have to register on the NY Times website. There is no charge.

[eureka!]

Yes, well said. And welcome aboard. You can find all you need to know about the rules and HTML stuff on the home page...