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Annotating the ABC Debat Jundullah Story. A striking comment by ABC's Brian Ross. NYT:
Does Ross really dismiss the importance of whether the substance of what he reported is true?ABC News has sent a producer to Pakistan as part of its second investigation into reports involving Mr. Debat. One report it is re-examining concerned a guerrilla organization called Jundullah, which, ABC reported in April, had the support of the United States and Pakistan for operations that led to the kidnapping and murder of several Iranian officials.
Pakistani officials ferociously denied the report, calling it “an absurd and sinister insinuation.” ABC announced that it was standing by its reporting and quoted Mr. Debat, saying that he had “just returned from the region.” Brian Ross, the correspondent who worked most closely with Mr. Debat, said the Jundullah story had many sources.
“We’re only worried about the things Debat supplied, not about the substance of that story,” he said.
That story represents among the most problematic of the Debat-Ross collaborations. And it's no small matter perhaps that Ross's name is on it.
My annotated version of that story suggests that the key allegations in the piece were sourced by Mr. Debat, ABC used Debat as a confirming expert analyst in the piece for dubious information he himself supplied, and that other sources cited in the piece deny the basic gist of the report. Brian Ross and Christopher Isham, "The Secret War Against Iran," ABC, April 3, 2007:
Brian Ross and Christopher Isham Report:
A Pakistani tribal militant group responsible for a series of deadly guerrilla raids inside Iran has been secretly encouraged and advised by American officials since 2005, U.S. and Pakistani intelligence sources tell ABC News. [[Annotation: This is disingenuous right from the beginning if you read through. Pakistani intelligence sources tell ABC, e.g. DEBAT. US sources tell ABC the allegation is false.]]]
The group, called Jundullah, is made up of members of the Baluchi tribe and operates out of the Baluchistan province in Pakistan, just across the border from Iran. [[Annotation: A background fact]]
It has taken responsibility for the deaths and kidnappings of more than a dozen Iranian soldiers and officials. [[Annotation: A background fact]]
Tribal sources tell ABC News that money for Jundullah is funneled to its youthful leader, Abd el Malik Regi, through Iranian exiles who have connections with European and Gulf states.[[Annotation: Information supplied by Debat from his Pakistani "tribal sources." One is right to be highly skeptical that Debat's reporting with his tribal sources is any more credible or real than his interview with Barack Obama. And unlike Barack Obama, the tribal sources do not have a spokesman who ordinary mortals who watch ABC can easily access. What's to stop a fabricator from fabricating what very few people can figure out? Also notice another little device used here. The implication is that it is US money for Jundallah that is being laundered through the exiles. Network doesn't assert it outright, but allows it to be implied.]]
Jundullah has produced its own videos showing Iranian soldiers and border guards it says it has captured and brought back to Pakistan.[[Annotation: Background fact.]]
The leader, Regi, claims to have personally executed some of the Iranians.[[Annotation: background fact.]]
"He used to fight with the Taliban. He's part drug smuggler, part Taliban, part Sunni activist," said Alexis Debat, a senior fellow on counterterrorism at the Nixon Center and an ABC News consultant who recently met with Pakistani officials and tribal members.[[[Annotation: Debat not only brought ABC the "tribal sources"' information, but is being used to comment on his own information and the context as a confirming expert source!]]]
"Regi is essentially commanding a force of several hundred guerrilla fighters that stage attacks across the border into Iran on Iranian military officers, Iranian intelligence officers, kidnapping them, executing them on camera," Debat said. [[[Annotation: More Debat commenting on his own reporting as a kind of confirming source.]]]
Most recently, Jundullah took credit for an attack in February that killed at least 11 members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard riding on a bus in the Iranian city of Zahedan. [[Annotation: Background wire type news, serves as filler for substance of report supplied primarily by Debat]]
Last month, Iranian state television broadcast what it said were confessions by those responsible for the bus attack. [[Annotation: again, wire news filler]]
They reportedly admitted to being members of Jundullah and said they had been trained for the mission at a secret location in Pakistan. [[Annotation: wire type news filler/background]]
The Iranian TV broadcast is interspersed with the logo of the CIA, which the broadcast blamed for the plot. [[Annotation: here, Iranian state television, not known for its independence or lack of paranoia about the Zionists or the Great Statan or CIA, is helping ABC bolster its allegation that the CIA is supporting the Jundullah. Not a credible source, but a good picture. Also interesting: ABC doesn't say straight out that the CIA is supporting Jundullah. But viewers see a picture even from such a highly dubious source that makes that association.]]
A CIA spokesperson said "the account of alleged CIA action is false" and reiterated that the U.S. provides no funding of the Jundullah group. [[[Annotation: this means that ABC -- not Debat, who has said his sources on this story were not US intelligence -- called a CIA spokesman who DENIED THE STORY. A small detail. But at the top of the story, the reporters have told you Pakistani and U.S. intelligence officials make the claim that the US has been advising and encouraging Jundullah since 2005. You find a reference in this piece to U.S. intelligence officials making that claim.]]]
Pakistani government sources say the secret campaign against Iran by Jundullah was on the agenda when Vice President Dick Cheney met with Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf in February.[[[Annotation: Pakistani government sources channelled or concocted by Debat. Is Debat's source with the details of the topics discussed at the meeting between Cheney and Musharraf any more real than his interview with Bill Gates, Hillary Clinton, Michael Bloomberg, Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, Alan Greenspan and Kofi Annan? Who knows? The next day, ABC CARRIES A DENUNCIATION by Pakistani officials saying this is not true.]]]
A senior U.S. government official said groups such as Jundullah have been helpful in tracking al Qaeda figures and that it was appropriate for the U.S. to deal with such groups in that context. [[[Annotation: Purely background information on the group provided by a U.S. government source that neither confirms nor denies the substance of the report, seemingly used to try to bolster a veneer of having multiply sourced this when the main substance of the report came from Debat's Pakistani "tribal sources" and his alleged Middle East intelligence operative sources]].
Some former CIA officers say the arrangement is reminiscent of how the U.S. government used proxy armies, funded by other countries including Saudi Arabia, to destabilize the government of Nicaragua in the 1980s. [[[Annotation: Getting the old timers to reminisce about the good old days. Not confirmation of "the arrangement" at all, but a device used to fluff and suggest it is.]]]
Are Debat's interviews with tribal sources -- which form the very essence of this report -- any more real than his interviews with Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Alan Greenspan, Nancy Pelosi, and Kofi Annan? The evidence says no. History shows no. Knowledgeable regional experts say no. That people who fabricate something as easily, provably deniable as an interview with Senators and presidential candidates and the UN Secretary General cannot be trusted to be telling the truth about what the Pakistani tribal sources are telling them is, of course, obvious. The capacity for an extraordinary degree of mendacity demonstrated by Debat claiming to have conducted such high profile fake interviews speaks for itself.
Notice no where in the above report does a US or other official confirm what Debat is providing and the story is asserting. And that ABC used Debat as the channeled reporter on the main substance of the piece, providing the information from the tribal sources, and then featured him as a confirming commenter/analyst in the report. It's a sleight of hand an ordinary viewer might not have noticed, but nevertheless not worthy of a serious news organization that cares about telling its viewers and readers the truth.
In other words, if you remove the information provided by Mr. Debat in this report, and his presence in the report as an expert analyst, there would be nothing there but background information on Jundullah, and U.S. officials denying the report.
See this update.