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]

Well, that scares me to death.

And we should pull the plug on ALL of them.

[ladyinred]

These stories are horrific, and should be told. However, I have a problem with the fact that they weren't told before. Am I alone in this, or does anyone else feel this should never have been kept quiet? I can't understand how any human being could go around with these secrets for so long while people were being tortured and killed by this evil regime.

[dogbyte12]

This is the biggest media story of this war. Period. CNN let people suffer in anonymity for the prestige of a bureau in Baghdad. They could not report facts, because those would get them tortured, like their camera man, or expelled.

Basically, all they could really do in Baghdad is report on what Saddam was saying. They gave up every bit of integrity they had (if they had any to begin with) in order to get their bureau there.

CNN is guilty of the worst crime imaginable by a news bureau.

Please folks, do not let this story just fade to the back pages. Anybody who knows any local or national talk show host, fax them this story. CNN has a very great deal to explain. I want to know every single damned story that they had of the depravity in Baghdad that they buried.

This list I guarantee you is less than 1% of what they knew. This mea culpa is a day late, a dollar short, and not acceptable.

The word "Outrage" is tossed around too frequently in our political climate. In this case, it absolutely fits the bill.

There need to be resignations, public apologies. 2 hour specials run constantly, updating people on CNN's behaviour, and what they plan to do to correct it. A weasle like apology in the NY Times after over a decade of letting people suffer in silence just does not cut it.

[AndyJackson]

The writer seems to be saying that CNN was stuck between a rock and a hard place.

Liberalism has now flushed itself down the maelstrom of its nihilistic nothingness. There is no hard place on the soft mush of these folks' falsehoods and lies. It is just a squalid ooze that leaves the stench of death in your nostrils. If they were true to themselves and merely stood against the conservative position one could admire them - say like one admires Pat Moynihan. But they lie even to themselves, and the base of their own neat little fantasy land crumbles into dust - the dust of the tortured souls whose blood is on their heads.

[Rocky]

Yeah, sure. Everybody who watched CNN during the past three weeks could tell how pro-liberation they were, right? To the author of this article: Tell it to Susan Sarandon and the Baldwins. Go shout it to the peace protesters.

CNN is really pro-America. They just have to hide it to protect their staff. They hide it really well.

[ladyinred]

I just started reading replies to the thread after posting. My question has been answered, others do feel like I do. This should not have been kept secret!!!!!

[Howlin]

Basically, all they could really do in Baghdad is report on what Saddam was saying.

They are one and the same with Baghdad Bob.

Only worse, because THEY paid THEM to let them report their garbage!

[lorrainer]

I had to reread this awful piece-of-garbage article. It reminds me of "I was only following orders" excuses from the Nazis. It smells.

[Howlin]

really, is a proper reception at a cocktail party on the Upper West Side worth all this?

Bump.

[nuke_road_warrior]

We have inspected Terezenstadt,(sp?) while the Jews are obvioulsy not free, they are being treated well.

Approximate quote from Red Cross inspectors visitng Terezenstadt (Paradise ghetto) duriing WWII. Of courrse, nearly all of those interviewed by the inspectors died in Aushwitz(sp?) within a few weeks. Same kind of mentality: don't irritate the rulers, it may impact your own power/access/prestige. ARGH!!!

[hobson]

CNN allowed Saddam Hussain to hold them hostage for 12 years. I'd like to wad this story up and stuff it in Judy Woodruffs' mouth.

[spodefly]

For weeks he was beaten and subjected to electroshock torture in the basement of a secret police headquarters ...

Others disappeared and then surfaced later with whispered tales of being hauled off and tortured in unimaginable ways.

An aide to Uday once told me why he had no front teeth: henchmen had ripped them out with pliers ...

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.

None of this bothered CNN enough to lose a Bagdad bureau.

None of the above bothers these people. They are more worried about Bush:

[Howlin]

Read this, please.

[Mo1]

I have to admit I don't know what to make of this article ..

Those at CNN KNEW what was going on in Iraq and FAILED to report on it .. instead they reported that Saddam was a warm fuzzy guy who wouldn't hurt anyone and made Bush look like an evil tyrant who wanted to control Iraq and killed women and children?

I don't think I can fully comment on the feelings I have at this moment .. I am too angry!

[Humidston]

...And they laugh at us for being so idealistic. ...Call us "simpletons" and naive.

HA! At least we can sleep at night.

[1 spark]

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

Staggering, sickening, revulsion? I don't get it. This, NOW, on the tails of their usual anti-Bush, how-many-civilians-are-we-killing, anti war spin? Are we supposed to sympathize with them? Just what are they looking for with this piece? It's almost like a pathetically late and insincere effort to align themselves with the 80 some percent of Americans who know Bush did the right thing. The saddest part is, they knew all along, too, that it was the absolute right thing to do. I am at a loss for words in describing what i think of cnn.

[Bloody Sam Roberts]

Ping.

[dogbyte12]

Please make an exception and make this breaking news.

It is over a decade in the making, but this news must get out to the widest audience possible.

[Howlin]

Well, that was my very first reply? Did she know all this and still hold forth every single day with that snotty look on her face every single time she mentioned George Bush's name?

Sorry, I'm all out of descriptive adjectives.

[Howlin]

I second that.

This needs to be read and emailed to everybody we know by every single person on this forum.