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From
Asharq Al-Awsat, Issue 8931, London
Iraqi Intelligence
Documents on Infiltration of Al Jazeera Station authority: Our credibility is
targeted. Relations between some station workers and intelligence services does
not affect coverage.
Mohamed El Shafei
12 May 2003
British sources have discovered
that Iraqi intelligence infiltrated the Qatari television station Al Jazeera long
before the fall of Baghdad. The Sunday Times in a two page story supported by
a documents received from the Iraqi embassy in Doha reported yesterday on strong
ties between Iraqi intelligence services and Al Jazeera.
The documents cover the
period between August 1999 and November 2002. One of them indicates a strong relationship
between the Iraqis and a prominent station authority.
The Sunday Times said
that the documents had been discovered in one of the headquarters of Iraqi intelligence
in Baghdad, and it indicated that thousands of other documents were in the possession
of the Americans.
A media source in London
described the documents as explaining the bias shown by Al Jazeera in its coverage
of the war before the fall of Baghdad.
One document shows that
a station authority received gifts of gold from the regime of the former Iraqi
president for putting a member of the former regime on one of its talk shows.
The Sunday Times also
claims to have copies of two letters from Osama bin Laden sent to Iraqi Intelligence
after the attacks of 11 September 2001 which were included in a report written
by an Iraqi intelligence officer in Doha to his superiors in Baghdad, in which
he suggests giving gifts of gold to the Qatari official at Al Jazeera.
The documents also indicate
two other Iraqi intelligence operations at Al Jazeera. Those involved two cameramen,
one of them responsible for influencing the views of Iraqis held by his colleagues
at the station.
A source close to Al Jazeera
said to Asharq Al-Awsat that both cameramen had left Al Jazeera, but another source
said that one of them was on vacation.
Al Jazeera media spokesman
Jihad Balout said to Asharq Al-Awsat in a telephone conversation that "if the
intent is to discredit Al Jazeera, that is not likely to happen. The stations
has come under a lot of pressure, but it will not lose its editorial quality."
He added, "the documents published in the Sunday Times come from non-credible
sources."
"This is not the first
time Al Jazeera has been subjected to a campaign of this kind. It has been described
as an al-Qaeda and bin Laden follower, and an Israeli sympathiser, and an Arab
minister once described it as Zionist. But Al Jazeera is an open forum for all
views," he said.
He added, "if there is
a relationship between Al Jazeera employees and Iraqi intelligence, that does
not influence the station's coverage or credibility."
One of the documents sent
from the Iraqi embassy in Doha to Iraqi Intelligence headquarters in Baghdad speaks
of attempts to form a relationship with Mohamed Jasim Al-Ali, general director
of Al Jazeera, but there is no evidence that Iraqi Intelligence ever succeeded
in enlisting Al-Ali.
But the document does
indicate that some station authority and cameramen were enlisted, saying that
one of them was known by the code name "Al Jazeera".
One document stamped
with the seal of the Iraqi embassy in Doha and the eagle symbol of the Saddam
regime states, "Al Jazeera 2 has helped us a great deal in our work, and has paved
the way for us to present our viewpoint on Al Jazeera."
Another document issued
by the Iraqi embassy in Doha speaks of attempts to recruit other Al Jazeera employees
onto the Iraqi Intelligence payroll. And it expresses the fear of discovery of
secret ties with Al Jazeera employees might lead to the loss of an important media
outlet for Iraqi Intelligence.
One of the documents
dated October 1999 discusses the successful attempt by Iraqi Intelligence to suppress
the broadcast of programs that would have shed light on the Halabja massacre at
the hands of the Saddam regime, when it used poison gas against the Kurds in 1987.
The document speaks of a videotape of attacks against the Kurds sent by the American
embassy in Doha which agents of the Saddam regime managed to suppress.
Another intelligence document
dated 15 January 2000 speaks of relations with Al Jazeera and the great pains
that the station took to thwart American plans toward Iraq.
Al Jazeera yesterday denied
that it was an implement of the Iraqi regime or any other government, saying that
it was known for being a station of "one view and the other".
A station authority, who
asked that his name not be revealed, in exclusive comments to Asharq Al-Awsat
noted that all of the documents published by the Sunday Times were hand written,
and all arising from one source, which was Iraqi. He added that none of the accusations
were corroborated by neutral sources and that the final proof of the matter lay
in what had been aired on Al Jazeera.
The source stressed that
the Al Jazeera newsroom has about seventy reporters, among whom is only one Iraqi.
He also pointed out that the international news team in Baghdad also had only
one Iraqi, Diyar El Omari.
He expressed the belief
that the accusations levelled at Al Jazeera are coming from Ahmed Chalabi, head
of the Iraqi National Congress. He charged that it was Chalabi who leaked the
documents to the British journalist who wrote the exposé.
He also pointed out that
in all of the documents there was not one bearing the seal of Al Jazeera and that
most of them were sent from the Iraqi embassy in Qatar to Iraqi Intelligence.
He alleged that Iraqi Intelligence may claim to have infiltrated the Sunday Times
as well, since officials in the Iraqi embassy would have been trying to show to
their superiors in Baghdad that they were completely capable of undertaking the
security work with which they were charged. He added that this is a common practice
of Arab intelligence services in all of the foreign capitals in which they operate.
A media source in the
Sunday Times said to Asharq Al-Awsat that Iraqi Intelligence documents mentioning
security infiltration of Al Jazeera cast doubt on the station as a neutral media
outlet with a viewership of between 30 million and 50 million in the Middle East
and which has had relationships with international television outlets since its
founding in 1996 and especially after the attack on Afghanistan in October 2001
and the release of the Bin Laden tapes.
ENDS
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