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Military Eavesdropped on Journalists & NGOs in Iraq

And finally, much of the news media is catching up on a story Democracy Now! covered five months ago. On May 13, former Military Intelligence Sergeant Adrienne Kinne appeared on the program and talked about how she was personally ordered to eavesdrop on Americans working for news organizations and NGOs in Iraq.

Adrienne Kinne: “Over the course of my time, as we slowly began to identify phone numbers and who belonged to what, one thing that gave me grave concern was that, as we identified phone numbers, we started to find more and more and more numbers that belonged not to any organizations affiliated with terrorism or with military—with militaries of Iraq or Afghanistan or elsewhere, but with humanitarian aid organizations, non-governmental organizations, who include the International Red Cross, Red Crescent, Doctors Without Borders, a whole host of humanitarian aid organizations. And it also included journalists.”

Last night, Adrienne Kinne and another military linguist appeared on this ABC News report.

Brian Ross, ABC News: “This is the first time any of the actual intercept operators, the people who listen in and record phone calls on behalf of US intelligence agencies, the first time any of them has come forward. President Bush says they only listen to Americans if it involves al-Qaeda. These two say, ‘Not true.’”

During her interview in May on Democracy Now!, Adrienne Kinne also revealed that she saw secret US military documents that listed the Palestine Hotel in Baghdad as a possible target, even though it was filled with journalists. In 2003, the US military shelled the hotel, killing two journalists: Reuters cameraman Taras Protsyuk and Jose Couso, a cameraman for the Spanish television network Telecinco. The military has maintained the shelling was accidental.

Adrienne Kinne: “One of the instances was the fact that we were listening to journalists who were staying in the Palestine Hotel. And I remember that, specifically because during the buildup to Shock and Awe, which people in my unit were really disturbingly excited about, we were given a list of potential targets in Baghdad, and the Palestine Hotel was listed as a potential target. And I remember this specifically, because, putting one and one together, that there were journalists staying at the Palestine Hotel and this hotel was listed as a potential target, I went to my officer in charge, and I told him that there are journalists staying at this hotel who think they’re safe, and yet we have this hotel listed as a potential target, and somehow the dots are not being connected here, and shouldn’t we make an effort to make sure that the right people know the situation? And unfortunately, my officer in charge, similarly to any time I raised concerns about things that we were collecting or intelligence that we were reporting, basically told me that it was not my job to analyze, it was my job to collect and pass on information, and that someone, somewhere higher up the chain, knew what they were doing.”