by Jerome du Bois
I'm jumping on the accelerating Eason Jordan Fables story by approaching it from a different angle. But first, of course, I acknowledge those who did the real work on this important media exposé, beginning with Rony Abovitz and Rebecca MacKinnon, who both have eyewitness accounts of Jordan's latest spate of poisonous spittle. Hugh Hewitt,
Ed Morrissey, and The Baron are all over it. As are others.
In fact, it just exploded. See PowerLine's new post, with Hugh Hewitt's email with Rony. Rony's new post is a must-read. As is Ms. MacKinnon's email correspondence with Jordan himself.
As for the MSM, as of today, only the Washington Times has taken note. (Will even Fox News Watch ignore it tomorrow?)
[Update: LaShawn Barber has the best roundup so far.]
[Update 2/6: There is now an entire blog devoted to Easongate, hosted by Bill Roggio, Blackfive, Brian Scott, Chester, and Charles Goggin.
Let me add to the long tail buzz by going back in time.
On January 26, 2005, one day before Jordan made his most recent incendiary remarks at the World Economic Forum at Davos, the President of the United States held his first post-election press conference.
At one point, he called on John King from CNN.
John.
Q Mr. President, I want to try another way to ask you about Iraq. When you made the decision to go to war in Iraq, you clearly had majority support in the country. A string of recent polls have shown a clear majority of the American people now believe it was a mistake to go to war in Iraq. You've asked for $80 billion in more money on top of the billions already spent. The Army says it will probably have 100,000 or more troops in Iraq for at least another year. What would you say to the American people, including a significant number who supported you at the beginning of the war, who now say this is not what we were led to believe would happen? [My emphasis.]
I'm going to post the President's answer below, and then I'll take over the press conference for a few fantasy minutes as the President turns the tables.
PRESIDENT BUSH: A couple of things, John. I'd say the world is better off without Saddam Hussein in power. A world with Saddam Hussein in power would have been a more dangerous world today. Secondly, that we're making progress in helping Iraq develop a democracy, and in the long term, our children and grandchildren will benefit from a free Iraq.
In terms of troop levels, obviously we're going to have the troop levels necessary to complete the mission, and that mission is to enable Iraq to defend herself from terrorists, homegrown or terrorists that come in from outside of the country.
And so our mission is focused on not only an increase in the number of Iraqis in uniform, whether it be army or National Guard or border patrol or police, but to make sure the quality of their ability to fight is enhanced. And so over the next year we'll be advancing our plan to make sure the Iraqis are better prepared to defend themselves and to fight. There have been some really fine units that have been stood up so far, and obviously we want to make sure there are more units that are capable of fighting.
Listen, this problem will eventually be solved when the Iraqis take the initiative. And the Iraqi people see Iraqi soldiers willing to defend them. And so -- and the American people, when they see the Iraqis step up and begin to fight, will see progress being made toward an objective which will make this world a better place.
I don't want to rehash a --something that I'm sure you got tired of hearing me talk about on the campaign trail, but it is-- the decisions we make today can affect how people live 30, 40 or 50 years from now. And I bring up once again my example about working with Prime Minister Koizumi of Japan. And it wasn't all that long ago that Japan was a bitter enemy. And today, because Japan is a democracy and a free country, the Japanese are strong allies with the United States of America, and we're better off for it.
The story today is going to be very discouraging to the American people. [Thirty-one killed in helicopter crash.] I understand that. We value life. And we weep and mourn when soldiers lose their life. But it is the long-term objective that is vital, and that is to spread freedom. Otherwise the Middle East will continue to be a cauldron of resentment and hate, a recruiting ground for those who have this vision of the world that is the exact opposite of ours.
[Babble of voices . . . the scene switches to fantasy; the President holds up a silencing hand.]
PRESIDENT BUSH: Just a minute, before we go on, John. I have a question for you. Let me introduce it this way. You used a phrase in your question a minute ago: this is not what we were led to believe would happen.
It's that one phrase which concerns me: what we were led to believe.
[President Bush reaches into his jacket pocket and extracts a folded set of papers. Straightening them out, he spreads several printed sheets out on the podium.]
You work for CNN. One of your bosses is Eason Jordan. On at least one occasion over the last two years, Mr. Jordan has claimed the US military was deliberately killing --torturing, actually-- US journalists --your colleagues, John; my fellow citizens. He made these statements abroad, to mostly foreign audiences, leading them to believe they were true. They are not.
Now, I used a phrase a minute ago I'd like to re-emphasize:
Otherwise the Middle East will continue to be a cauldron of resentment and hate, a recruiting ground for those who have this vision of the world that is the exact opposite of ours.
Your boss's remarks make me wonder --this isn't my question-- what vision of the world does he, and you, have?
[Shuffling the papers]
JOHN KING: Sir, if I may --
[The President looks up sharply. King shuts up without further prompting.]
On April 12,2003, Eason Jordan published a famous op-ed essay in the New York Times. I'm sure you remember it, John. In it, he admits that CNN covered up many atrocities just so CNN could broadcast from Baghdad, leading people to believe what they saw with their own eyes. But it wasn't the true story.
[Looking down, reading]
Five days later, Bob Steele of the Poynter Institute wrote:
Here's a journalism ethics case that will go in the books. It's an example of moral complexity with multiple dilemmas that defy simple answers. CNN chief news executive Eason Jordan is at the center of a controversy triggered by his revelation that CNN did not report some stories about atrocities in Iraq over the past dozen years. Jordan says reporting them would have risked getting innocent people killed.
Later, Hugh Hewitt had this response:
A victim of Saddam during the period of Saddam's brutality and CNN's complicity might look at all MSM and conclude it could not be trusted --ever. That victim, or his or her family or friends, might not think of CNN's complicity in Saddam's evil as an "example of moral complexity with multiple dilemmas." They would conclude that it was toadyism. And they would be right. [Blog,p.98.]
[Almost aside] You know, we've got some big bufos in Texas, but they're nothing like the size of the ones in this city.
[Continuing] As you know, John, there are so many victims who could bring this charge, but, as it happens, Eason Jordan himself provides us with one, in his famous confessional piece:
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.
[Bows head] Let us have a moment of silence for Asrar Qabandi, who would have been 44 years old this month. . . .
I wonder, John --this isn't my question, either-- have you ever given this woman a single thought? --I know you've read this confession-- or were you led to believe the company's shareholders were more important?
JOHN KING: Sir, I think I have the right--
PRESIDENT BUSH: Right. Now we get to it. Your right to this, your right to that. Especially your right to access --access to Saddam's palaces, and access to this room. Your rights. God knows I'm not a perfect man, nor is anyone in this room. But hopefully we stand for something, we have standards, we stand beside the good. We share that in this room, or we should. So, given that CNN, for money, let all the horror happen, for a dozen years --while we tried to discourage it from the sky-- and helped create the conditions that made war necessary, my question is this:
As a representative of CNN, what makes you think I should treat you differently than a representative of Al-Jazeera?
[Long silence, after which JOHN KING turns and marches out without a word.]
PRESIDENT BUSH: [Putting papers away] Now, let's welcome Carl Cameron, shall we?
[Appendix: Here is a copy of Eason Jordan's 2003 confession.
Eason Jordan, April 12, 2003, NYT Op-Ed page.($)
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.]
Posted by Jerome at February 4, 2005 12:00 PM | TrackBack