As Congress busies itself holding a high-profile preening session to investigate whether or not overpaid entertainers used performance-enhancing drugs, and the media focuses on L’Affaires Jackson, Peterson, Blake and Vazquez, matters of slightly more gravitas are taking a backseat.
As Howard Kurtz reports today, the Defense Department is so far declining to investigate a forged Defense Intelligence Agency cable sent to the Washington Times alleging that journalist and NBC military analyst William Arkin acted as a spy for Saddam Hussein in the late 1990s.
As Kurtz reports, the cable says that “CIA exploitation of Source 8230 from Office of President SH confirms Arkin traveled to Baghdad February 1998 and November 1998 to provide information about UNSCOM plans and to discuss Desert Fox targeting,” a reference to the 1998 U.S. bombing of Iraq.
The cable goes on to claim that Arkin was on Saddam’s payroll from 1994 to 1998 “to report on quote United Nations Special Commission activities unquote.”
Arkin says he did not visit Iraq in 1998, and while he did in fact investigate the U.N.’s UNSCOM program, he did so in his role as a consultant to U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan.
Arkin only found out about the bogus cable when Times national security reporter Bill Gertz called him to ask about the allegation, after which Arkin voiced his outrage in a letter to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld:
“I am extremely concerned that someone familiar with Defense Department classified reporting has forged this document and given it to the press in the hope that it would be reported as genuine. Such an action raises deeply troubling questions about the integrity of the department’s processes and raises the possibility of an organized effort to intimidate me as a journalist.”
Defense Department spokesman Larry DiRita appears uninterested in finding out who is forging documents to smear the name and reputation of a high-profile journalist, stating that “It is probably not possible to determine the source of such a matter, and I am unaware of any involvement in it by someone inside the department that would warrant a further look.”
There are several issues involved here which should be noted. The first is that Arkin recently wrote a book called Code Names: Deciphering U.S. Military Plans, Programs and Operations in the 9/11 World, where he outs some 3,000 military code names and many of the operations behind them (which surely made him few friends in the military.) The second is his recent history with Bill Gertz, the reporter who received the forged cable.
Last month, Gertz co-wrote a story for the Washington Times claiming that General Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was investigating whether Arkin’s book had compromised national security. Arkin refuted the claim, and Myers’ spokesman backed him up, saying, “There is no investigation that General Myers initiated on the Joint Staff that I can find or that I even know about, prompted by him or by anybody else.”
It’s curious, to say the least, that the forged cable was leaked to Gertz, given the recent false allegations he lodged against Arkin. It is also disappointing that the Defense Department has seemingly thrown its hands up and decided that it wouldn’t be able to find the culprit even if it wanted to. With all the subpoenas flying around trying to force reporters to give up their sources, we’re loathe to call for another one, but if a government official or private citizen is trying to intimidate a reporter, then they should be exposed and held accountable. Meantime, anyone who wants to find out who tried to ruin Arkin’s career shouldn’t look to our public servants for help. They’re too busy asking beefed-up baseball players who snorted what in 1997.
— Paul McLeary
Paul McLeary is a former CJR staff writer. Since 2008, he has covered the Pentagon for Foreign Policy, Defense News, Breaking Defense, and other outlets. He is currently a defense reporter for Politico.