« VIOLENCE CONTINUES OVER POPE'S SPEECH | Main | David Looks in The Mirror »
September 20, 2006
Terrorist Working for the Associated Press
This just in from one of our readers...
"The Associated Press proudly calls itself the "essential global news network" and a "bastion of the people's right to know around the world." But when it comes to the "people's right to know" whether Associated Press employees are cooperating with terrorists overseas, the "essential global news network's" motto is: Bug off.
On April 12, I learned from military sources that an Associated Press photographer in Iraq, Fallujah native Bilal Hussein, had been captured in Ramadi in an apartment with insurgents and a cache of weapons. This was news. I asked the AP for confirmation. Corporate spokesman Jack Stokes informed me that company officials were "looking into reports that Mr. Hussein was detained by the U.S. military in Iraq but have no further details at this time." After reporting the alleged detention on my blog, I followed up several more times with AP over the past five months for status updates on Hussein. No reply.
On Sept. 17, the Associated Press finally acknowledged that Hussein was being detained. The AP's overdue revelation was likely part of an attempt to drum up sympathy for Hussein, who has made critical public statements against our troops in Fallujah, and undermine Bush administration interrogation efforts involving military detainees. The AP article not only confirmed Hussein's capture, it also revealed (buried deep in the story) that it knew of Hussein's capture from at least May 7 -- when it received an e-mail from U.S. Army Maj. Gen. Jack Gardner revealing bombshell details:
"The military said Hussein was captured with two insurgents, including Hamid Hamad Motib, an alleged leader of al-Qaida in Iraq. 'He has close relationships with persons known to be responsible for kidnappings, smuggling, improvised explosive device (IED) attacks and other attacks on coalition forces,' according to a May 7 e-mail from U.S. Army Maj. Gen. Jack Gardner, who oversees all coalition detainees in Iraq."
In fact, the Pentagon said on Monday, after three separate independent reviews, the military had deemed Hussein a security threat with "strong ties to known insurgents . . . involved in activities that were well outside the scope of what you would expect a journalist to be doing in that country." Hussein "tested positive for traces of explosives."
Let me repeat that: An Associated (with terrorists) Press journalist gets caught with an alleged al Qaeda leader and tests positive for bomb-making materials. That. Is. News. How does a news organization explain away its decision to sit on it for five months? Like this: "The AP has worked quietly until now, believing that would be the best approach."
The best approach to journalism? No. The best approach to suppressing a damning connection to terrorists.
The mainstream media enjoys mocking bloggers as journalistic wannabes who don't do any "real" reporting and have no concern for the "public interest." But as in the case of the Reuters photo-faking debacle this summer, it is bloggers in their little home offices -- not the professionals on the ground thousands of miles away -- who smoked out a war story with profound national security implications. Well before I reported on Hussein's capture, military bloggers and media watchdog bloggers had raised persistent questions over the past two years about Hussein's relationship with terrorists in Iraq and whether his photos were staged in collusion with our enemies. (For a thorough overview, see here.)
Hussein's up-close-and-personal insurgent propaganda photos include a Pulitzer Prize-winning image of four terrorists in Fallujah firing a mortar and small arms at our troops in November 2004, several chilling photos with terrorists before, during and after the Iraqi desert execution of kidnapped Italian civilian hostage Salvatore Santoro, and repeat images of Sunni locals in Theater of Jihad poses.
In an investigation of war photo staging and fakery earlier this spring, National Journal's Neil Munro exposed another dubious Hussein photo taken in October 2005 of a purported funeral image outside Ramadi. An accompanying article claimed the U.S. had bombed the crowd including 18 children. But according to the military, video footage of the air strike against terrorist roadside bombers in that incident showed only what appeared to be grown men where the bomb struck. Munro reported: "AP officials declined to make Hussein available for an interview."
The Hussein case may be the tip of the iceberg. In December 2005, AP television footage was used to spread bogus reports (see here) of a fake "uprising" in Ramadi. Earlier this spring, independent milblogger Bill Roggio identified another suspicious AP/Hussein-photographed scene in Ramadi (see here). And blogger Clarice Feldman at The American Thinker recently highlighted an Iraqi intelligence document that bragged about "one of our sources (the degree of trust in him is good) who works in the American Associated Press Agency" (see here).
I e-mailed the AP yesterday to find out whether any other AP employees are currently in military detention. The people have a "right to know," don't they?"
by Michelle Malkin
Sep 20, 2006
Posted by Post Scripts at September 20, 2006 07:28 PM
Comments
Posted at Little Green Footballs
http://littlegreenfootballs.com
From The Associated Press, Corporate Communications:
Some blogs are asserting that AP photographed and videotaped an execution of an Italian man named Savatore Santoro near Ramadi in December of 2004. This is not true. The man was already dead by the time anyone working for The Associated Press was brought to see him. The photographs of the dead body, taken by Bilal Hussein, and the captions transmitted with those photos, appear below the following AP story filed on December 16, 2004. This AP story explains that masked insurgents stopped Husseinl and other AP journalists, including an AP video journalist, at a roadblock and took them to the site where the blindfolded body lay, already stiff with rigor mortis. They propped the body up and allowed the journalists to photograph and videotape it.
For the full text and photos transmitted on 12/16/04 by AP, see:
http://www.ap.org/response/response_091906a.html
The video suggest AP is fibbing...find it at:
http://www.riehlworldview.com
"Apparently Bilal Hussein didn't only photograph Salvatore Santore, he also videotaped his execution. It's been edited out of the video below - supplied originally by the AP."
""A group called the Islamic Movement of Iraqi Mujahideen announced that it had killed an Italian hostage called Salvatore Santoro,' the Qatar-based broadcaster said on Thursday, showing footage of Santoro with a blindfold and a gun pointed at his head."
"The group read a statement in the tape accusing Santoro of working for the United States, Al Jazeera said. Images of his passport showed an Iranian tourist visa."
"The channel said it obtained the videotape from the Associated Press."
Posted by: Tina at September 20, 2006 10:32 PM
First, I have to confess that I truly despise this woman [Malkin]. Having confessed my prejudice, I will suggest in mitigation that all of the stringers working in Iraq probably have their respective axes to grind, and this one, well, his connections explain why he was even able to be out and about getting "stories." That Iraqi woman reporter who got kidnapped ... I don't think she's been heard from since. It's dangerous out there.
I think we have to cut the AP some slack. Getting any kind of help at all, under the current conditions, well, it's damn near impossible, is what it is.
Posted by: Libby at September 21, 2006 01:08 PM
Ahhh shucks, Libby, lets just cut them some slack. The words propaganda, perfidy, deceit, treachery, betrayal of trust...when the stakes are: human lives, our military and support personnel and the innocent people living there...it's da*n near impossible to make every effort to just give us THE FACTS as they happen. Pathetic.
Posted by: Tina at September 21, 2006 09:11 PM
Tina: "Ahhh shucks, Libby, lets just cut them some slack. The words propaganda, perfidy, deceit, treachery, betrayal of trust...when the stakes are: human lives, our military and support personnel and the innocent people living there...it's da*n near impossible to make every effort to just give us THE FACTS as they happen. Pathetic."
Now, see, this is entirely Ms. Malkin's influence. This is why I find her despicable. It may very well turn out that the reporter gets released, when it's found that he was, in fact, doing his job. I mean, if you want to find out what the insurgents are up to, who would you talk to?
It may be not. But it may be so. We don't know yet, and neither does that Malkin trollop. But she's got you inflamed and insensed all in a tizzy. You shouldn't let her do it to you.
Posted by: Libby at September 22, 2006 02:30 PM
I find it interesting that when it comes to filing news stories it is perfectly acceptable to hire shall we say...unsavory characters.
But when it comes to developing HUMINT they were the first ones to scream when the CIA had a bad guy on the pay roll.
After all Libby, its kinda hard to get any kind of help at all when you are trying to infiltrate shadowy terrorist networks.
Posted by: Nick Freitas at September 22, 2006 04:35 PM
"But she's got you inflamed and insensed all in a tizzy. You shouldn't let her do it to you."
I was at this long before Michelle Malkin was on the scene. She does a good job of reporting, something the old "drive by" media just won't do.
NO ONE has hung the guy. Just "THE SERIOUSNESS OF THE CHARGE " has been enough in the past for the press...enough to drag a good man's name through the mud for political reasons...this is life and death. I think we can afford to be wrong. The worst that will happen to the reporter is some inconvenience since we don't engage in beheadings or hanging battered and burned bodies from bridges. If he is guilty we may be saving lives. I think there's enough evidence to be suspicious and to hold him:
"He has close relationships with persons known to be responsible for kidnappings, smuggling, improvised explosive device (IED) attacks and other attacks on coalition forces,"
"tested positive for traces of explosives."
Posted by: Tina at September 22, 2006 10:44 PM
Malkin follow up on the laws that apply:
"Andy McCarthy, a prosecutor of the 1993 WTC bombing case who is intimately familiar with the limitations of the law-enforcement approach to fighting terrorism, patiently explains the historical norms to the NYTimes, Associated Press, and knee-jerk Bilal Hussein groupies crying 'charge or release:'"
"Under the laws and customs of war that developed over centuries and are far older than our country, enemy combatants can be detained until the cessation of hostilities. While this makes the Times scream hysterically about human rights violations, the laws of war are actually very civilized. The idea is to deplete the resources of the enemy, and glean whatever intelligence can be gleaned -- all of which theoretically ends the war faster, with less carnage (including civilian casualties). Being a member of the press -- like being a lawyer, or an imam -- does not render one ineligible to be an enemy operative. It matters not that this guy is a photographer by day. What matters is if he is helping the enemy. If he is doing so, he's an enemy combatant. If he is doing so out of uniform (i.e., as a saboteur), he could be a war criminal. The laws of war require that, to be treated as an honorable prisoner of war, a person has to identify himself readily as a soldier (i.e., be part of a real army, wear a uniform, answer to a fixed chain of command, carry his weapons openly, refrain from targeting civilians, etc.).'
"If an enemy operative conducts (or knowingly abets) offensive operations without doing those things, he is considered an unlawful (or unprivileged) enemy combatant. Both lawful and unlawful enemy combatants can properly be held until hostilities are concluded, but unlawful combatants can be tried as war criminals. There is no requirement that this be done, however. The Supreme Court's recent Hamdan case reaffirmed that they can be detained without trial."
So the guy CAN BE DETAINED until the end of the war.
Posted by: Tina at September 23, 2006 10:14 AM