http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2003/2/16/211910/416
CNN transcript is cut a bit short (Media) By llamasex Sun Feb 16th, 2003 at 11:35:05 PM EST On Friday the 14th of February CNN.com presented a "transcript" of Hans Blix's presentation to the U.N. Security Council concerning the progress of weapons inspections in Iraq. Comparison with other transcripts, notably that presented by the BBC , reveals that a substantial section of the presentation was omitted in the CNN version. The missing text includes descriptions of important instances of Iraqi government cooperation and presents a relatively favourable picture of inspectors' access to scientists. The excised text consists of 878 words, but they are words that matter. The passage begins by describing the expansion of an Iraqi commission tasked with uncovering any remaining proscribed materials within Iraq, which Blix describes as "welcome". Blix also mentions the establishment of a second commission, headed by former Oil Minister Amer Rashid, with a mandate to find any documentary evidence of attempts to conceal prohibited weapons. The passage also offers a brief assessment of the progress of UNMOVIC interviews with scientists. Here again Blix presents information that runs against the present media orthodoxy. In Blix's speech interviews are "declined" rather than forbidden, and he expresses the opinion that inspectors will be able to gather an increasing number of candid interviews in the future. These, if they materialise, will come on top of three interviews "on UNMOVIC's terms" that were conducted in early February and which proved "informative". When combined with Blix's report that legislation enacting UN weapons restrictions has been passed by an extraordinary session of the Iraqi National Assembly, this information provides a surprisingly positive impression of Iraqi cooperation with the inspection teams, and certainly suggests a vast step up from the period following UNSCOM's departure in 1998. The second half of the deleted passage concerns the inspectors' use of intelligence data from allied sources such as the United States. Blix says that such information is valuable to the inspection effort in locating undeclared items and sites. However, he also cautions against total reliance on intellience data, warning that satellite imagery and other information can be misinterpreted. He mentions that intelligence services have identified as inspection targets houses that were subsequently found to contain only conventional munitions, indicating that conventional, permissable weapons are also moving around Iraq and may be causing false reports of suspicious activity. If the missing passage could be said to favour one side of the debate or the other, then it is the anti-war side. However, the cautiousness and reserve of these paragraphs suggests that they were probably not ommitted as a result of political bias. Further evidence of an accident is provided by the seeming clumsiness of the cut, which causes the term "the site" to appear with no explanation of what site it applies to. Regardless of whether the ommission is deliberate and politically motivated or an editorial accident, readers of CNN.com are being denied important information about the actual content of Hans Blix's report to the U.N Security Council and, perhaps more importantly, about the conduct of the Iraqi government in the face of inspections. ----- You should have posted the changes. (4.40 / 5) (#30) by gr3y on Mon Feb 17th, 2003 at 02:09:15 AM EST ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) And while I was figuring out what they were, this story posted. Would that were not so. "B" denotes the BBC transcript. "C" denotes the CNN transcript. This is probably the "missing text": B: "I trust that the Iraqi side will put together a similar list of names of persons who participated in the unilateral destruction of other proscribed items, notably in the biological field. The Iraqi side also informed us that the commission, which had been appointed in the wake of our finding 12 empty chemical weapons warheads, had had its mandate expanded to look for any still existing proscribed items. This was welcomed. A second commission, we learnt, has now been appointed with the task of searching all over Iraq for more documents relevant to the elimination of proscribed items and programmes. It is headed by the former minister of oil, General Amer Rashid, and is to have very extensive powers of search in industry, administration and even private houses. The two commissions could be useful tools to come up with proscribed items to be destroyed and with new documentary evidence. A number of persons have declined to be interviewed. They evidently need to work fast and effectively to convince us, and the world, that this is a serious effort. The matter of private interviews was discussed at length during our meeting. The Iraqi side confirmed the commitment, which it made to us on 20 January, to encourage persons asked to accept such interviews, whether in or out of Iraq. So far, we have only had interviews in Baghdad. A number of persons have declined to be interviewed, unless they were allowed to have an official present or were allowed to tape the interview. Three persons that had previously refused interviews on Unmovic's terms, subsequently accepted such interviews just prior to our talks in Baghdad on 8 and 9 February. These interviews proved informative. No further interviews have since been accepted on our terms. I hope this will change. We feel that interviews conducted without any third party present and without tape recording would provide the greatest credibility. At the recent meeting in Baghdad, as on several earlier occasions, my colleague Dr ElBaradei and I have urged the Iraqi side to enact legislation implementing the UN prohibitions regarding weapons of mass destruction. In a letter just received two days ago, we were informed that this process was progressing well and this morning we had a message that legislation has now been adopted by the Iraqi National Assembly in an extraordinary session. This is a positive step. Mr President, I should like to make some comments on the role of intelligence in connection with inspections in Iraq. A credible inspection regime requires that Iraq provide full co-operation on "process" - granting immediate access everywhere to inspectors - and on substance, providing full declarations supported by relevant information and material. However, with the closed society in Iraq of today and the history of inspections there, other sources of information, such as defectors and government intelligence agencies are required to aid the inspection process. I remember how, in 1991, several inspections in Iraq, which were based on information received from a government, helped to disclose important parts of the nuclear weapons programme. It was realised that an international organisation authorised to perform inspections anywhere on the ground could make good use of information obtained from governments with eyes in the sky, ears in the ether, access to defectors, and both eyes and ears on the market for weapons-related material. It was understood that the information residing in the intelligence services of governments could come to very active use in the international effort to prevent proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. This remains true and we have by now a good deal of experience in the matter. Movements are not necessarily related to weapons of mass destruction. International organisations need to analyse such information critically and especially benefit when it comes from more than one source. The intelligence agencies, for their part, must protect their sources and methods. Those who provide such information must know that it will be kept in strict confidence and be known to very few people. Unmovic has achieved good working relations with intelligence agencies and the amount of information provided has been gradually increasing. However, we must recognise that there are limitations and that misinterpretations can occur. Intelligence information has been useful for Unmovic. In one case, it led us to a private home where documents mainly relating to laser enrichment of uranium were found. In other cases, intelligence has led to sites where no proscribed items were found. Even in such cases, however, inspection of these sites were useful in proving the absence of such items and in some cases the presence of other items - conventional munitions. It showed that conventional arms are being moved around the country and that movements are not necessarily related to weapons of mass destruction. The presentation of intelligence information by the US secretary of state suggested that Iraq had prepared for inspections by cleaning up sites and removing evidence of proscribed weapons programmes. I would like to comment only on one case, which we are familiar with, namely, the trucks identified by analysts as being for chemical decontamination at a munitions depot. This was a declared site, and it was certainly one of the sites Iraq would have expected us to inspect. We have noted that the two satellite images of the site were taken several weeks apart. The high degree of co-operation required of Iraq for disarmament through inspection was not forthcoming in 1991." But there were also weird transcription errors. Having done this, I can see how they might occur. What's weird is that they were both posted to the web and they don't agree in places, and the glaring discrepancies are easy to spot. For instance: B: "on 8 February." C: "on 8th and 9th of February." B: "15 IAEA inspectors, 50 aircrew" C: "50 IAEA inspectors, 15 air crew" B: "Not least against this background, a letter of 12 February from Iraq's National Monitoring Directorate may be of relevance." C: "Not least against this background, a letter of the 12th of February from Iraq's National and Monitoring Directorate may be irrelevant." B: "These developments are in line with suggestions made in a paper recently circulated by France, suggesting a further strengthening of the inspection capabilities." C: "These developments are in line with suggestions made in a non-paper recently circulated by France suggesting a further strengthening of the inspection capabilities." And the following lines were omitted from the CNN text: "In no case have we seen convincing evidence that the Iraqi side knew in advance that the inspectors were coming." "Inspections are effectively helping to bridge the gap in knowledge." "Governments have many sources of information that are not available to inspectors." There were miscellaneous other editorial errors, some of which I didn't comment on (like the BBC's tendency to use absolute dates, and CNN's tendency to use ordinals). There might be some major differences that I missed (I doubt it). I did not do a word-by-word comparison; I did a line-by-line comparison. _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
