Al-Jazeera and the Saddam Oil Bribes

[Tigermike 3,055]

A fairly long read. If you are interested use the link.

AIM Report: Al-Jazeera and the Saddam Oil Bribes - June A

May 25, 2005

In early January, I was at Radio America's Washington, D.C. studios, about to give an interview on Mahmoud Abbas's impending election as Palestinian prime minister. Before the show, as I was chatting with host Blanquita Cullum about the issues of the day, she handed me a rather remarkable e-mail. It was a press release from the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies about an upcoming program that would expose financial links between Saddam Hussein's Ba'athist regime and a number of Arab press figures.

This exposé was to air on al-Hurra, the U.S.-funded Arabic satellite network launched in February 2004 that today reaches 120 million people in 22 countries. Walid Phares, a senior fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, served as al-Hurra's reviewing expert for the program. One intriguing detail I gleaned from the press release was that al-Hurra's show would air newly-discovered tapes of Saddam's sadistic son Uday meeting with Arab media figures who appeared to be taking bribes from the Ba'athist regime, including a managing director of the Qatar-based al-Jazeera network.

A few months earlier, I'd seen a dramatic example of how ethical lapses in the media could capture the American public's attention, as Rathergate became a household word during the 2004 election campaign. Thus, I naturally expected that financial ties between Saddam Hussein and Arab media outlets like al-Jazeera would become a similarly big story. I was, in fact, so confident in this assumption that I didn't think it was worth my time to write about the al-Hurra tapes.

http://www.aim.org/aim_report/3664_0_4_0_C/