Helen & Harry Highwater's cranky weblog of news and opinion.
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"News that's not known, or not known enough." Helen & Harry Highwater's cranky weblog of news and opinion. |
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Why a reporter is dead by Helen Highwater,
According to reliable sources, Pearl was a reporter, not a spy, and we're making no posthumous insinuations about the dead. Absent any evidence to the contrary, we believe Daniel Pearl was a reporter, and a pretty good one. What matters, though, and what cost Pearl his life, is: Someone thought he was a spy. And it isn't exactly a far-fetched idea. U.S. intelligence has a long history of using reporters as agents, and sending out agents posing as reporters. In the early 1970s, the Washington Star reported that "over 35 American journalists, some full-time, some free-lance, and some major media correspondents were on the CIA payroll." Just a few years ago, the president of the American Society of Newspaper Editors protested the practice, claiming that it could "put the lives of our foreign correspondents at serious risk."
Does that complaint have merit? Ask Danny Pearl's widow. It's hard to imagine what could be more dangerous for reporters than to have American spies posing as journalists, in far-flung corners of the world where American spies are not exactly beloved. But that's exactly what's happening: According to a CNN report, when Daniel Pearl's killers wanted to release a videotape of his murder, they gave it to "an undercover FBI operative they believed to be a journalist." Was this FBI operative wearing a press pass? Was he carrying a notepad and a tape recorder, identifying himself as a reporter? Yes, seems to be the likely answer. Why else would someone think an FBI agent was a reporter? Since 1977, "CIA policy has barred hiring U.S. journalists except in what the agency calls "extraordinary" circumstances," we are told by the Chicago Tribune. The Washington Post reported a few years ago that the CIA still, "on 'extraordinarily rare' occasions, uses American journalists or U.S. news organizations as cover in conducting clandestine operations." I wonder ... how rare is "extraordinarily rare"? And what about the FBI? We don't know; the CIA isn't talking, and the FBI doesn't return our calls. As recently as December of 2001, the respected media newsletter Editor and Publisher wondered whether the CIA was "using journalistic cover in Afghanistan." E&P's article reported that a Taliban defector claimed to have been approached "two or three times" by U.S. intelligence agents posing as reporters. The Columbia Journalism Review reports that "the CIA's use of journalists as intelligence agents is believed to have decreased since the practice was exposed by congressional inquiry in the mid-1970s. Whether it has been completely abandoned is impossible to ascertain." Now and then a haggard reporter on overseas assignment still complains that it's tiring to have everyone think you're a spy. So But we learned of Pearl's death when a videotape was handed to another 'reporter' When reporters are suspected or believed to be spies, it puts honest reporters like Danny Pearl at exponentially higher risk. This isn't heavy calculus. It's remarkably obvious. And it may have cost Danny Pearl his life. Perhaps an honest reporter will ask a few pointed questions, starting with why (not "whether") U.S. intelligence agents still pretend to be reporters. Mrs. Pearl might be interested in the answer.
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