CNN reporters working for the CIA in Iraq

It appears that the CIA are using journalists to snoop around and collect intelligence in Iraq. I suppose we should be surprised if they were not doing this, but such actions work against the principles of openness and democracy that the US occupation forces often claim it is their desire to promote.

Giovanni di Stefano has told me what he has discovered about a reporter, apparently working for the CNN, who also operated as a CIA interrogator of Hamed Yosef Hummadi. I expect that this is the sort of thing that the CIA do all the time, but it seems a little clumsy of them to disguise their identities in such an obvious way.

Mr di Stefano has written a few notes to me explaining the background to the statement I print at the bottom of this page:

'Minister Hummadi was the Minister for Culture in Iraq during first Gulf War. He surrendered himself in 2003 and remains in Camp Cropper prison without charge. He was interrogated many times MORE on what he knew about my friend George Galloway and the oil for food programme than anything else, of which he knew nothing.

During one interrogation he recognized a CNN reporter who interrogated him, and it was a reporter whom he had given a visa to during the first Gulf War…. Now, the conclusions are that either:

(a) the said reporter was always a CIA and had a cover job

(b) that he may have left CNN and worked with the CIA

But all in all, when the reporter realized that Hummadi had recognized him, he NEVER showed up in Iraq again, and was never seen. Hummadi could not remember his name, but I got a witness statement out of him. I raised this with Ted Turner in PERSON, who is my friend, and his reply was "if I'd known an employee was working a second job I would not pay him for the first ...", which is highly amusing … you can use Hummadi and my name no problem. BEST G'

Statement of Hamed Yosef Hummadi