-Caveat Lector- 3/31/2003 3:28:41 PM, Steve Wingate <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- NBC announced Monday that both NBC and National Geographic severed their relationships with veteran war correspondent Peter Arnett. Arnett was none too popular during the "1st" Gulf War (as if it ever ended) either. He was one who chose to remain in Baghdad to report from their side. It's not a matter of being on or taking their side; it's where the story is. Don't forget that he was one of three people (John Holloman and Bernie Shaw being the others) who hung out on the roof of the Al Rasheed hotel in Baghdad while the Americans laid waste to that city in Jan 1991. I would suggest he's been under stress and pressure once or twice before. Now, this is not to say that he -- like all other mediacratisers -- should be without scrutiny. Even he admits he has had "minders." ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The following is mirrored from its source at: http://www.haaretzdaily.com/hasen/pages/ ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=263972 &contrassID=2&subContrassID=4&sbSubContrassID=0&listSrc=Y The Goebbels of Saddam's regime by Peter Arnett, Haaretz.com, HaaretzEnglish Edition, 25 February 2003 It all started with the baby-milk plant story. Up to then, the Bush administration had been enthusiastically supportive of CNN's coverage of the 1991 bombing of Baghdad. Our live reports from the ninth floor of the al-Rashid Hotel suggested that the numerous cruise missiles and bombs daily hammering the Iraqi capital were finding their designated targets, namely command and control centers, military barracks and Saddam Hussein's palaces and bunkers. Our reports seemed to confirm Pentagon assessments that civilian casualties were nil. But on Day 4, bombs rained down on an industrial plant on the outskirts of Baghdad, and the honeymoon was over. I was driven to the location by my Iraqi "minder" along with a WTN film crew. We pulled off the highway past a large, faded poster of Saddam Hussein comforting a distressed child. The entrance bore a crudely lettered sign reading "baby milk plant" in English and Arabic. The structure was barely recognizable as a building. The sheet aluminum walls and roof had been ripped off and scattered in the yard. The steel roof girders were twisted and blackened. The machinery underneath was a tangled molten pile. The plant had been empty of workers at the time. Iraqi officials said the factory produced 20 tons of milk powder per day for the children of the capital. They showed us plastic spoon-making machines with their output scattered. I was walking up to my ankles in white powder. Documents lying around described the product as a mixture of malt, sugar extract and milk. I picked up an armful of intact packets to distribute to kids back at our hotel. It looked like an innocent production plant to me. That night I reported to CNN on my satellite phone what the Iraqis told me: that the plant was the only source of infant formula in Baghdad and was not a legitimate target. And I went to bed. When I awakened in the morning, I tuned in to BBC radio, and discovered that I had reported one of the most controversial stories of my career. White House spokesman Marlin Fitzwater called me a liar. President George Bush himself had watched the report, Fitzwater declared, "and was not pleased." The installation was not producing milk powder, as the Iraqis claimed, but was "a production facility for biological weapons," said Fitzwater. And as for CNN reporter Peter Arnett, he was "a conduit for Iraqi disinformation." So began a war of words. The baby-milk plant was just the first of an avalanche of images from inside Iraq that seemed to give the lie to the Pentagon's repeated boasts that its new generation of weaponry was mistake-proof. Day 8, three houses and their inhabitants were destroyed in Baghdad. Day 9, several city blocks were bombed in a town north of Baghdad, with many dozens dead. Day 10, more bombings of homes in Najaf. CNN was bearing the brunt of official wrath because it was regularly scooping the competition and attracting large audiences with its coverage. Coalition military commander General Norman Schwarzkopf solved his moral dilemma by turning off CNN in his command bunker. The Bush administration, well aware that America's viewers were fixated on the war coverage, orchestrated an elaborate campaign of character assassination. I was denounced on the floor of Congress. Representative Laurence Coughlin of Pennslyvania said: "Arnett is the Joseph Goebbels of Saddam Hussein's Hitler-like regime." The CNN president received a letter from 34 congressmen who charged that my coverage "gives a demented dictator a propaganda mouthpiece to over 100 nations." Conservative members of the British Parliament compared me to turncoats of the Second World War. And there was much more. My critics' rationale was that my observations were either direct lies or, if they were backed up by video, then the incidents themselves had been fabricated by Iraqi intelligence. The suggestion was that Saddam Hussein would raze his own cities for propaganda pictures. Maybe some people might even believe that, if it was repeated enough; and certainly in these first weeks of the war, the Bush administration was escaping serious criticism. But then came February 13, and the blame game was over. At 4:50 that morning, an American jet dropped two precision-guided missiles on a civilian air-raid shelter in the Amariya district of Baghdad. Women, children and old men were packed inside; nearly 400 died. Reporters descended and within hours the most gruesome pictures of the war shocked viewers around the world. The Pentagon tried to argue that the shelter was a legitimate target because it sprouted radio antennae and could have had a military use. Few were buying that. The Russian foreign minister who visited a few days later told me President Mikhail Gorbachev had sent him to Baghdad "because such carnage has to end." The debate over the Amariya bombing shifted attention from my credibility to the Pentagon's. The pictures had been so shocking that people did begin to question policy. Few argued that the consequences of a bombing raid that killed so many civilians should be ignored, particularly in a high- tech war where such mistakes were not meant to happen. Long after the war, I learned that policy had indeed been changed by the shelter carnage, and that so-called "military-civilian targets" were struck off the bombing lists, at least for what remained of the Gulf war. The Pentagon fortunately resisted a more direct way of controlling the media in Baghdad by not bombing the al-Rashid Hotel or the Information Ministry. General Colin Powell, then joint chiefs-of-staff chairman, waxed indignant at the time at the very thought of such actions. But since then, the tolerance of unpleasant war images seems to be taxing the patience of American policymakers. The Clinton administration approved the bombing of the television center in Belgrade during the Kosovo war just hours after several Western TV reporters had completed their evening newscasts. The Kabul bureau of the controversial al-Jazeera, the "Arab CNN," was blown apart during the assault on Kabul in 2001. Eager journalists will no doubt again be manning the hotel roofs of Baghdad should another war break out. Let's hope that the "war of words and images" remains a verbal one. Copyright � 2003 Haaretz Reprinted for Fair Use Only. http://www.wsws.org/articles/1999/apr1999/cnn-a22.shtml WSWS : News & Analysis : North America : CNN nerve gas story Pentagon pressure behind CNN firing of Peter Arnett By Barry Grey 22 April 1999 CNN's firing of Peter Arnett, the Pulitzer Price winning journalist who achieved international acclaim for his on-the-spot reporting from Baghdad during the Gulf War, sheds further light on the subordination of the US media to the military and intelligence establishment. CNN announced on Tuesday it had agreed to a settlement with Arnett, who has worked for the network for 18 years, to terminate his employment two and a half years in advance of the expiration of his current contract. The network's statement came one day after Arnett told the press that CNN had rejected his request to report on the current war from Belgrade, and had effectively muzzled him since last July. Arnett received a Pulitzer in 1966 for his work as an Associated Press reporter in Vietnam. By the time of the Gulf War he had become CNN's premier international correspondent. He came under criticism at that time from government and military circles for his objective reportage of civilian casualties resulting from the US bombing of Baghdad. Last summer the Pentagon, backed by retired military brass, prominent political figures and associations of special forces veterans, began a campaign to drive him off of the air waves. The occasion was an investigative report aired by CNN on June 7, entitled "Valley of Death." The segment, narrated by Arnett, concerned Operation Tailwind, a secret incursion by Army special forces into Laos in September of 1970. The TV report, a joint production of CNN and Time magazine, presented compelling evidence that US commandos had used deadly sarin gas in an operation to kill American soldiers who had defected into Laos from Vietnam. "Valley of Death" included interviews with Tailwind commandos, statements from high-level (unnamed) veterans of the military and intelligence apparatus, and an on-camera discussion with retired Admiral Thomas Moorer, who was chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the time of Operation Tailwind. Top CNN news executives reviewed and approved the segment prior to its airing. The program evoked public attacks and private protests from Pentagon officials, the Special Forces Association, and figures such as retired General Colin Powell and former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. The latter, who was Nixon's national security adviser at the time of Tailwind, would be directly implicated in the illegal actions alleged in the CNN report. Powell and Kissinger, among others, contacted CNN executives and demanded that they retract "Valley of Death" and issue a public apology to the military and special forces groups. CNN quickly caved in, issuing an ostensibly "independent" review of the program in early July, while concealing the fact that the review had been co-authored by the network's general counsel. The review acknowledged that "Valley of Death" was based on exhaustive research and "considerable supportive data," and rejected any allegation that the producers had falsified evidence. Nevertheless, it recommended that CNN retract the story, which the network immediately did. The co-producers, April Oliver and Jack Smith, refused to knuckle under and disavow their report. They were promptly fired, and their senior producer resigned. Arnett took the ignoble course of denouncing his own story in an attempt to save his job. Instead of being fired, he was publicly reprimanded. This, however, satisfied neither the right-wing Special Forces Association nor the military and intelligence establishment. They were determined to humiliate Arnett, silence him and ultimately force him off the CNN payroll. They wanted to send an unmistakable message to any journalist who might be inclined to investigate illegal actions by the Pentagon and the CIA, or in any way deviate from the official Pentagon line. If a man of Arnett's reputation could be purged, no reporter was safe. At the time of the "Valley of Death" controversy, the Pentagon bluntly told CNN management that the network would be effectively quarantined if it did not fire Arnett. As the Wall Street Journal reported on July 8, 1998: "Military officials continue to press the network to dismiss Mr. Arnett." The Journal went on to quote Retired Major General Perry Smith, a former CNN consultant who had resigned in protest over the Tailwind report. "Gen. Smith said he told Mr. Johnson [Tom Johnson, chairman of the CNN News Group] that US military leaders felt that dismissing Mr. Arnett was the only way the network could regain its credibility in light of the nerve gas report. Pentagon spokesman Kenneth Bacon has criticized the CNN report, and the network said 'hundreds' of former military officials, including former Gen. Colin Powell, have come forward to complain. "'I basically told Tom you have no choice if you ever hope to have a relationship with the US military,' Gen. Smith said." While CNN did not immediately fire Arnett, it effectively banished him. Since last July he has appeared only once, in a story filed last December from Algeria. CNN's capitulation to Pentagon blackmail in the Tailwind episode has undoubtedly played a role in reducing the press corps to little more than a public relations arm of the Pentagon in the current Balkan War. Even by the abysmal standards of the American media, the degree of self- censorship and cowardice displayed in the coverage of the US-NATO assault on Yugoslavia is remarkable. It should be added that it did not take a great deal to convince media executives and journalists alike to toe the line, and Arnett himself bears no small responsibility, having set a lamentable example by his own capitulation. The final act in Arnett's humiliation, coming in the midst of the expanding attack on Yugoslavia, is a further measure to intimidate the press and keep it in line. See Also: April Oliver speaks: Fired CNN journalist on dismissal of Arnett: "They will do anything to stem the flow of information" [22 April 1999] The evidence of US nerve gas use in Operation Tailwind 24 July 1998] Fired journalists defend report on nerve gas use in Vietnam War [24 July 1998] Why did CNN retract its nerve gas report? A closer look [16 July 1998] Fired CNN journalists speak out: Kissinger, Powell demanded retraction of nerve gas report [13 July 1998] CNN withdraws report on US use of nerve gas in Vietnam War [3 July 1998] Top of page Readers: The WSWS invites your comments. 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