since posting and interest from the mainstream media about the above story the link to the interview has developed a fault or has been hacked...apologies to those who cannot now hear it...anyone able to fix the problem...in the meantime, those wishing to hear it could try radio 5, UK, the interview seems to have been on sunday morning

HOLD ON.

This is a story from BEFORE war was declared. There are loads of traves and references to it all over the net from almost one month ago.....

see:


 http://www.ccmep.org/2003_articles/Iraq/031003_pentagaon_threatens_to_kill_inde.htm

copied from :

 http://www.gulufuture.com

1) http://homepage.eircom.net/~gulufuture/news/palestine_hotel090403.htm

Journalists Die,
Networks Lie...

8th April, 2003
by Linda S. Heard
OutLookIndia.com

Iraq is being 'liberated' while truth is incarcerated. Former BBC reporter Kate Adie warned that non-embedded journalists in Iraq could be Pentagon targets before the war began. She was right.

Today, an American tank shell was fired at Baghdad's Palestine Hotel--temporary home of international reporters and film crews--causing casualties among those who bravely stayed in a war zone so that we could know.

Two cameramen one employed by Reuters and the other working with Telecinco - were victims of the Pentagon s version of freedom during this attack.

Sky's David Chater said he saw the tank turn towards the hotel and spew out its deadly load. He wonders how independent reporters (as opposed to embeds) can continue to do their jobs when such danger emanates from their own side. Not from the Iraqi side but from 'our boys'.

That's the whole idea. Those people who are giving the orders to fire upon journalists want them to flee in terror. We must not see the criminal acts yet to be perpetrated against the civilians of Baghdad. We have seen too much already.

The Baghdad office of Al Jazeera, housed in a residential district, was hit too, reminiscent of Kabul. This time a journalist and a cameraman lost their lives. Al Jazeera's mistake was to have given the Pentagon its office coordinates.

A further 'accident' on the same day resulted in a Reuters' vehicle being attacked, and another 'stray' bomb or missile 'coincidentally' destroyed the office of Abu Dhabi television. Its terrified employees contacted the International Committee of the Red Cross begging it to assist in extricating them from the battle zone. The Pentagon was informed but said there was nothing it could do except to advise the Abu Dhabi crew to keep their heads down. I am sure they found that very helpful.

Early on in this war, ITV's Terry Lloyd was allegedly killed by a U.S. bullet while two of his colleagues went missing following the same incident. The Pentagon tells us that it is still investigating, yet, even while their own employees fall, the Western television networks refuse to condemn this assault on the truth, making excuse after excuse about the 'fog of war'.

In a 'blue on blue' incident a 25-year-old BBC translator was killed in northern Iraq and a cameraman wounded in the head when a convoy of Kurdish fighters and American special forces was bombed by a US fighter jet.

But veteran BBC reporter John Simpson, who was slightly injured during the attack, calmly commented that such things happen during conflict, and thanked the Americans travelling with them for their first aid capabilities. How polite! "Your chappie who is probably rattling with 'go-pills' (amphetamines) has just killed my friend but, hey, such things happen. Thanks for the bandages, by the way."

From the point of view of the Coalition of two and a bit, who repeat over and over again that 'every effort is being made to protect civilians', what shouldn't we know?

We should not have learned about soldiers who shoot first and ask questions later, as seven Iraqi women and children found to their cost as well as the drivers and passengers of numerous vehicles, erroneously mistaken for suicide bombers.

We should not be supprised that the Coalition's boys and girls are dropping cluster bombs and firing depleted uranium tank shells, without any thought to how much misery these weapons of mass destruction will certainly cause in the future.

We should not have seen the British marines, who when arresting a middle-aged suspect, forced him to the ground and repeatedly yanked off his kuffiyeh (Arab headdress). This was an appalling insult to that man's dignity and his heritage, done without any respect to the traditions of the people Bush and Blair claim to befriend.

We should not have born witness to the way that prisoners were handcuffed and hooded by this "liberating army". There is a photograph doing the rounds of one of a hooded man cuddling his terrified infant behind coils of barbed wire. One can only wonder what that boy will think of his "liberators" when he grows up.

In Najaf, American soldiers headed towards the golden-domed Imam Ali Mosque, one of the most sacred Shiite sites, and were kept back by sheer people power. Hundreds of unarmed men steadfastly marched towards those armoured servants of the U.S. military machine shaking their fists in a rare display of courage.

The confused soldiers were ordered to step back... and smile. We were not told by our media of the bravery of those men defending an icon of their religion, only of the diplomacy of the American troops in retreating.

In Nassiriyah, an enraged middle-aged resident shouted 'they are molesting our women' with reference to body searches being undertaken at checkpoints, and called Bush, Hussein and all Arab leaders "Liars". He then sobbed tears of frustration and humiliation. This emotive scene, which has caused outrage in the Moslem world, was courtesy of Al Jazeera, Pentagon bad boy number one.

CNN, Fox News, NBC, the BBC and Sky News are trying to sell us an antiseptic war, one in which there are no torn and bleeding victims. In their war the enemy is destroyed in its thousands while the coalition suffers only those losses inescapably witnessed by the cameras of independent journalists.

A BBC spokesman, when asked why the British network was portraying such a sterile conflict, said that people with children wouldn't like to see such gory images coming into their living rooms. In other words, it's fine for those sensitive souls to support their nation's finest, but not to see the obscene results of their handiwork.

The Anglo-American media hasn't shrunk from distorting the truth and putting out disinformation in its scrambling to prove which one of its outlets can serve as the most effective propaganda arm.

If the media comes across some bottles of liquid, these are painted as possible chemical weapons. Boxes of white powder are turned into anthrax. A meat hook hangs from a ceiling and that room must have been a torture chamber. The finding of some 200 decomposed bodies in southern Iraq is touted as a sinister find.

Late on Saturday night, a Sky News anchor interviewed one of the inevitable "experts" about the discovery of the makeshift morgue. "How can we know who these people are?" she asked. The pathologist said that samples of DNA would have to be taken and dental records sought.

Did he imagine that these unfortunates were discovered near Harley Street instead of in the middle of a desert? Dental records indeed! We saw a British soldier flicking through a file on which was written "Iran" in Arabic and inside were photographs and names of the victims. Despite this evidence, Sky's southern Iraq-based reporter hinted darkly that this discovery could only mean one thing.
What it did, in fact, mean was that Iran and Iraq had been in the process of exchanging corpses of soldiers who lost their lives during the Iran-Iraq war--now confirmed by state-run Tehran Radio.

Murdoch's Sky News once again proved that the unrelenting vilification of the Iraqi regime is part of its agenda with the facts not being allowed to get in the way of a good story.

Have you noticed that even when the truth does come to light, the media rarely issues a retraction, leaving its audience forever in the dark, its views tainted by false facts and incriminating innuendo?

Meanwhile, Britain's Sun newspaper--a Murdoch-owned tabloid rag--puts the photograph of a dissenting British Member of Parliament on its front cover with the word 'Traitor' emblazoned on the page. It even went as far as publishing his email and telephone number inciting its ignorant readership to tell the MP their thoughts. The result was a barrage of insults and death threats forcing the paper's victim, George Galloway, to surround himself with bodyguards.

Al Jazeera has been accused of following an agenda too and this is why it has been evicted from the New York stock exchange, the victim of professional hackers, and has had to look for a new server for its website.

While it is true that Al Jazeera is certainly playing to the bias of its Arab audience, it does show graphic videos, worth more than a million words. It didn't concoct those images of ashen-faced, lifeless babies, victims of carpet bombs in Al Hilla or those heartrending scenes of the victims of man's inhumanity to man, filling the beds and covering the floors of Iraqi hospitals.

Iraqi television has an agenda too. It's called showing your side of the story against all odds. It made the mistake of screening a downed Apache helicopter and was bombed. It later ran images of captured American service personnel and dead British pilots and the Ministry of Information was promptly targeted.

Broadcasting out of the Palestine Hotel--temporary home of foreign journalists--Iraqi television still won't do as it's told. After it showed footage of a burning American vehicle, the coalition promptly unleashed a warning bomb just 100 yards from the hotel. According to a coalition spokesman pressure is being put on those companies, which sell satellite time to Iraqi TV to desist.

As I write, the stubborn Baghdadi people have yet to welcome the liberating armies, with the exception of around 20 waving to U.S. tanks in front of a backdrop of scorched and half-demolished homes and shops on the outskirts of their city. Great photo-op!

Another gem of Pentagon propaganda was the so-called 'rescue' of one of its female soldiers, the now famous Jessica. They made it look like a re-run of Entebbe. The helicopter landed, the troops rushed out and after creating a diversion rushed into Jessica's hospital room before carrying her off to safety.

During their press briefings in Qatar and Washington they made no mention of the Iraqi doctor who had told them where she was. They did not say that the hospital had not been guarded and that Jessica had been well treated and they did not dampen the rumours that she had been shot several times. It took her father to do that. It would probably have suited the US administration better had she been tortured and raped.

And how the British press lapped up those photographs of U.S. servicemen lounging around one of Saddam's many palaces taken by embedded reporters who ensured we knew that the Iraqi leader had gold taps on his bidet while his people starved. Couldn't we say the same about Buckingham Palace while children sleep in the doorways of nearby Regent Street, or the White House while bag ladies doss out in cardboard boxes?

In Basra, the people have already been liberated and are celebrating their freedom by looting and stealing while British commanders look on saying that there is nothing they can do about such lawlessness. (I do hope Athens will be freed soon. There's a gold bracelet in the window of a jewellery store at the end of my street, which would look great on my wrist).

Iraq's new interim rulers--led by Viceroy-Designate pro-Likud former U.S. General Jay Garner with links to SY Coleman, a company specialising in weapons guidance systems--are patiently awaiting their glorious destiny in a luxury Kuwaiti beach resort.

Fat-cat Iraqi exiles hope for some crumbs. Like Hamid Karzai before him, the normally well turned out Ahmed Chalabi head of the Iraqi National Congress has donned a uniform and headed off to northern Iraq to make his victorious entry into Baghdad like Hannibal without the elephant.

American oil companies wait for this war to receive a stamp of legality from the United Nations before they can draw up lucrative contracts. U.S. companies look forward to being recipients of bounty from Iraq's reconstruction and the Israelis hope for a long-awaited oil pipeline from northern Iraq to Haifa.

Evangelical Messianic Christians circle like soul-scalping vulture in Jordan until they can make their vainglorious entry into Baghdad bearing bread and Bibles.

And the Iraqis? What do they get? Why! Liberation, of course. The Saddam regime is coming to an end. The pro-Israel American neo-cons are about to take its place, while the Arab world shakes its collective head with dismay, and the media buries its dead.

Linda S. Heard is a specialist writer on Middle East affairs.


-------------------------

And

2)  http://www.GuluFuture.com/news/kate_adie030310.htm

PENTAGON THREATENS
TO KILL INDEPENDENT
REPORTERS IN IRAQ

10th March, 2003
by Fintan Dunne, Editor
 http://www.GuluFuture.com

The Pentagon has threatened to fire on the satellite uplink positions of independent journalists in Iraq, according to veteran BBC war correspondent, Kate Adie. In an interview with Irish radio, Ms. Adie said that questioned about the consequences of such potentially fatal actions, a senior Pentagon officer had said: "Who cares.. ..They've been warned."

According to Ms. Adie, who twelve years ago covered the last Gulf War, the Pentagon attitude is: "entirely hostile to the the free spread of information."

"I am enormously pessimistic of the chance of decent on-the-spot reporting, as the war occurs," she told Irish national broadcaster, Tom McGurk on the RTE1 Radio "Sunday Show."

Ms. Adie made the startling revelations during a discussion of media freedom issues in the likely upcoming war in Iraq. She also warned that the Pentagon is vetting journalists according to their stance on the war, and intends to take control of US journalists' satellite equipment --in order to control access to the airwaves.

Another guest on the show, war author Phillip Knightley, reported that the Pentagon has also threatened they: "may find it necessary to bomb areas in which war correspondents are attempting to report from the Iraqi side."

Transcript follows below.

Audio of this very frank discussion of the problems facing reporters in Iraq.
Guests: Kate Adie, BBC; Phillip Knightley, author of The First Casualty, a history of war correspondents and propaganda; Chris Hedges, award winning human rights journalist, and former Irish Times Editor Connor Brady on the Sunday Show, RTE Radio1 9th March, 2003.
Listen
K. Adie
Realplayer 3 mins
Listen full Gulf media freedom segment Audio
26 minutes[ Realplayer] Links valid until 16 March
DOWNLOAD ENTIRE SHOW HERE
Tom McGurk:
" Now, Kate Adie, you join us from the BBC in London. Thank you very much for going to all this trouble on a Sunday morning to come and join us. I suppose you are watching with a mixture of emotions this war beginning to happen, because you are not going to be covering it."
Kate Adie:
" Oh I will be. And what actually appalls me is the difference between twelve years ago and now. I've seen a complete erosion of any kind of acknowledgment that reporters should be able to report as they witness."

" The Americans... and I've been talking to the Pentagon ...take the attitude which is entirely hostile to the free spread of information."

" I was told by a senior officer in the Pentagon, that if uplinks --that is the television signals out of... Bhagdad, for example-- were detected by any planes ...electronic media... mediums, of the military above Bhagdad... they'd be fired down on. Even if they were journalists ..' Who cares! ' said.. [inaudible] .."
Tom McGurk: "...Kate ...sorry Kate ..just to underline that. Sorry to interrupt you. Just to explain for our listeners. Uplinks is where you have your own satellite telephone method of distributing information."
Kate Adie: " The telephones and the television signals."
Tom McGurk: " And they would be fired on? "
Kate Adie: " Yes. They would be 'targeted down,'
said the officer."
Tom McGurk: " Extraordinary ! "


Listen full Gulf Media Freedom segment Audio

26 minutes[ Realplayer]

Kate Adie: " Shameless! "

He said:
' Well... they know this ...
they've been warned.'

This is threatening freedom of information, before you even get to a war.

The second thing is there was a massive news blackout imposed.

In the last Gulf war, where I was one of the pool correspondents with the British Army. We effectively had very, very light touch when it came to any kind of censorship.

We were told that anything which was going to endanger troops lives which we understood we shouldn't broadcast. But other than that, we were relatively free.

Unlike our American colleagues, who immediately left their pool, after about 48 hours, having just had enough of it.

And this time the Americans are: a) Asking journalists who go with them, whether they are... have feelings against the war. And therefore if you have views that are skeptical, then you are not to be acceptable.

Secondly, they are intending to take control of the Americans technical equipment ...those uplinks and satellite phones I was talking about. And control access to the airwaves.

And then on top of everything else, there is now a blackout (which was imposed, during the last war, at the beginning of the war), ...ordered by one Mr. Dick Cheney, who is in charge of this.

I am enormously pessimistic of the chance of decent on-the-spot reporting, as the war occurs. You will get it later.



------------------------------------

More refs inc description of interview

 http://buzz.weblogs.com/2003/03/17

Pentagon to Press: Shut Up or Else
Monday, March 17, 2003

Pentagon to Press: Shut Up or Else

Today Salon has a profile of journalist Arthur Kent, NBC's so-called Scud Stud during the Gulf War. The brass liked the gals Kent pulled to the national newscasts, but also had problems with the guy, apparently. "NBC bosses were less thrilled about his tenacity in following controversial stories, such as the Pentagon's tight control of media coverage during the Gulf War. When fighting began, Kent and most other reporters were hundreds of miles from the front line in Kuwait. (CNN, then an upstart cable network, hadn't evacuated its camera crew and reporters from Baghdad, so they were able to broadcast the U.S. attack on the ancient city.)

"When Kent confronted military officials about censorship, he incurred his bosses' wrath. In his book, he says that Steve Friedman, then the executive producer of Nightly News, warned him, 'I think we should stop whining about this censorship thing.' "  http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2003/03/17/scud_stud/index.html

This time around, I think we should start whining about the censorship thing immediately. Supposedly the Pentagon plans to deal with any independent reporting by destroying news-related telephone and TV satellite communications. (I have not confirmed this claim with the Pentagon. I'm being a pundit here, not an actual news hound.) And various sites have suggested the Pentagon is perfectly happy to kill a few journalists in the process. Yikes!

British journalist Kate Adie broke the news on an Irish radio program, according to Gavin Sheridan, who posted a partial transcript and audio file on his blog at  http://www.gavinsblog.com/2003/03/14.html#a154. You can also read about the exchange and download the entire "Sunday Show" at  http://www.ccmep.org/2003_articles/Iraq/031003_pentagaon_threatens_to_kill_inde.htm. The war introduction begins at 45.50. The section on whether people can trust journalists' coverage of war begin at 47.30, and it's worth listening to how suspicious the Irish folks interviewed are about various news sources. Kate Adie starts speaking at 51:50 roughly. (And she's not the only journalist on the program who warns about impending censorship of war coverage, just the most dramatic.)

"The Americans, and I've been talking to the Pentagon, take the attitude which is entirely hostile to the free spread of information. I was told by a senior officer in the Pentagon, that if uplinks - that is the television signals out of Baghdad, for example - were detected by any planes, electronic media--mediums of the military above Baghdad, they'd be fired down on. Even if they were journalists...."

I'm guessing this new, improved hostility toward the press means that Richard Cheney and Pentagon officers are still pissed. According to the Constitutional Rights Foundation, during the Gulf war in 1990, "a few reporters, called 'unilaterals,' broke away from the military's press pools and struck out on their own. Using cellular phones, they filed uncensored reports. These reports were not necessarily more critical of the military than pool reports. But they often seemed more realistic, because independent journalists usually reached battle scenes before pool reporters. Sometimes unilaterals were arrested, detained, and sent back to Dhahran by military authorities. But many managed to elude discovery, often with the help of American soldiers and officers.

"When the ground war started, Secretary of Defense Richard Cheney ordered a blackout of battlefield news. 'We cannot permit the Iraqi forces to know anything about what we're doing,' Cheney warned. But the blackout failed to hold as hundreds of reporters in Dhahran broke for the desert. An ABC News team even took its own satellite dish to broadcast directly from the battlefield. This gross violation of Pentagon press rules did not seem to matter because the United Nations' forces rolled to a dramatic victory in a ground war that lasted barely 100 hours."  http://www.crf-usa.org/terror/FreePress.htm

Squashing Saddam might take more than 100 hours. So note to ABC News: practice duck-and-cover routine before breaking out the satellite dish this time around. Thanks to Irish journalist Karlin Lillington ( http://radio.weblogs.com/0103966) for her link to Sheridan's blog, which is depressing if not surprising. Speaking of unsurprising facts, the Butcher of Bagdad isn't particularly friendly toward the press either, as you can imagine. Romenesko ( http://www.poynter.org/column.asp?id=45) links to a story on a Boston Globe reporter booted out of Iraq after he had the gall to file a story outside of the press center's business hours.  http://www.editorandpublisher.com/editorandpublisher/headlines/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1838545 He got off easy; maybe Saddam didn't want to scare any human shields still in the neighborhood.

To recap: Thus far the press has done a pretty shitty job of covering the US conflict with Iraq (see  http://buzz.weblogs.com/2003/03/06). When actual war is launched against Iraq despite the wishes of many Americans and many other human beings on this planet, the press will be hampered even more. The blatent censorship, from both sides, will be part of it. It must be nearly impossible to cover a war with any kind of perspective, even when reporters have some freedom of movement. Because war *is* hell. It's dangerous and nasty. And there won't be any freedom of movement in Iraq; who will want to leave the official press hotel to cover battles in which neither side will be especially sorry if you get shot?

On this otherwise fine day, happy St. Patrick's Day to you, gentle reader, and to the lively Irish bloggers who keep us informed.

cheers, db

 branscum@aol.com

HOLD ON.
"This is a story from BEFORE war was declared."

Who declared war ?
Did I miss that bit?