Taking pleasure from a Roman scandal, Michael Young

Opinion, July 2003, www.aljazeerah.info

Taking pleasure from a Roman scandal

Michael Young

The Daily Star, 7/24/03

With perverse pleasure I learned over the weekend that an Italian journalist named Elisabetta Burba had admitted to turning over counterfeit documents to the US Embassy in Rome last year suggesting that Iraq had sought to buy uranium from Niger. It was based on these that US President George W. Bush made faulty allegation in his 2003 State of the Union address that Iraq was seeking a nuclear weapons capability. According to wire reports, Burba, who works for the Silvio Berlusconi-owned magazine Panorama, received the documents from a source who “in the past proved to be reliable,” and whose identity Burba did not disclose.

She told the Milan daily Corriere della Sera in an interview published Saturday: “I realized that this could be a worldwide scoop, but that’s exactly why I was very worried.” Burba went on to tell the newspaper that she traveled to Niger to verify the authenticity of the documents, explaining that she “was suspicious because the documents spoke of such a large amount of uranium 500 tons and were short on details on how the uranium would be transported and arrangements for final delivery.” Upon returning from her trip, Burba declared that the documents were probably fake, and approved Panorama’s decision not to publish them. But then what did the “worried” Burba do?

Under normal circumstances she could have published a story on the forgeries, trying to find out who was behind them, and why; or she could have put the papers through a shredder. She did neither. She took the documents to the US Embassy, where they were shown to the CIA, sent to the State Department in Washington, and later manipulated by Bush’s advisers to justify a war against Iraq. Why should the story evoke personal pleasure? Because on Sept. 11, 2001, Burba was in Beirut as the attacks in New York and Washington were taking place. She later wrote a commentary in the Wall Street Journal’s Opinion Journal stating that the Lebanese had applauded the perpetrators, observing:

“The offspring of (the) great (Phoenician) civilization were celebrating a terrorist outrage. And I am not talking about destitute people. Those who were cheering belonged to the elite of the Paris of the Middle East.” In this newspaper and elsewhere I wrote that Burba’s conclusions were based on “flimsy evidence, reliance on hearsay and awe-inspiring laziness.” In two instances, key deductions didn’t come from observations at all, but from offhand remarks by social companions. One evening, for example, she heard “some loud noises” in the Christian part of Beirut and asked what these were. “Probably they are celebrating the attacks,” someone responded.

A surprised Burba asked: “You mean the Maronite Christians are also celebrating?” Came the reply: “Yes, they also feel betrayed by the Americans.” That wasn’t news, I protested, it was the chambermaid exchanging gossip with the milkman. How Burba managed to get her article into a premier international newspaper was astonishing. It was also dangerous, because those were the days when the Bush administration was hunting for enemies, and Lebanon could have paid a heavy price for being seen as a country endorsing terrorism. Now I feel a sense of vindication (but absolutely no surprise) that Burba betrayed her profession. Bluntly put, Burba handed forgeries over to the Americans, kept quiet later on when she knew the Bush administration was using them to substantiate a falsehood, and is today trying to cover the whole thing up by claiming she always doubted the Niger documents were real anyway.

That’s not shoddy journalism; that’s almost Nixonian deceptiveness. Observers will surely bring up the Berlusconi link to ask whether Panorama was doing the bidding of the Italian prime minister when it gave the US administration evidence it was happy to later exploit. Up to now there is no evidence of this. However, Burba’s behavior hardly enhances the magazine’s credibility or the impression that it is politically independent. Then again the Lebanese expected no better from someone who pilloried them with extreme prejudice two years ago. Here we were blaming Burba for being a dreadful journalist. Now we see that she’s really a dangerous imposter.

Michael Young writes a regular column for THE DAILY STAR. His weblog is www.beirutcalling.blogspot.com

Earth, a planet hungry for peace

The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers (Ran Cohen, pmc, 5/24/03).

The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers in the West Bank (Ran Cohen, pmc, 5/24/03).