How Bob Spent His Christmas Vacation

Bob Owens from Confederate Yankee spent a good deal of time trying to track down any published corroboration for some 40 Associated Press stories that quoted Iraqi "police captain" Jamil Hussein as the source.

He couldn't find any.

No one raised questions about Hussein's accuracy or his very existence for a span of run of stories starting on April 24 until his late November unmasking as a probable specter; a remarkable run that Curt at Flopping Aces pegged at 61 stories. This run as a named source doesn't begin to account for any stories he may have contributed anonymously as "an Iraqi Police Captain" or "according to Iraqi Police" over his two-year relationship with AP.

And so it was more than a month after Hussein was compromised that I did what the Associated Press editorial process should have been doing the entire time: I began attempting to fact-check the claims made by Jamil Hussein. I took the list of 61 AP stories citing Hussein, opened my web browser to Google.com, and went to work.

In eight hours over three days last week, I tracked down online examples of the first 40 of 61 Associated Press stories citing Jamil Hussein, as replicated in news outlets and even official government press offices around the world. I then took keywords, dates, and phrases from the paragraphs citing Hussein, and attempted to find corroborating accounts from other news organizations.

I am by no means perfectly suited to do the work here that needs to be done. I lack access to LexisNexis, a powerful popular subscription-based searchable archive of periodicals such as newspapers, and I'm not about to pay for their AlaCarte service, where reading this single blog post would cost you $3. Nor do I speak any of the languages of the Middle East in which one might encounter variations of these stories, meaning I am limited to searching English-only content. That said, I did the very best I could with a limited set of skills and tools. The detailed results of my search are here. Knowing what I now know, I don't think that the editorial processes of the Associated Press even put forth that paltry effort.

Even though limited in scope as Bob admits, this review should have found at least a few of these stories covered by other media. The odds are vanishingly small that the AP could score a string of 40 exclusive scoops in a short period of time. But the stories in question have contained some of the most lurid detail to come out of the Iraq theater. As Bob Points out in an update, none other than Eason Jordan, writing over at Iraqslogger has also been completely unable to locate the "captain", any family or, indeed, anyone who has ever met the supposed source.

In statements, the AP insists Captain Hussein is real, insists he has been known to the AP and others for years, and insists the immolation episode occurred based on multiple eyewitnesses.

But efforts by two governments, several news organizations, and bloggers have failed to produce such evidence or proof that there is a Captain Jamil Hussein. The AP cannot or will not produce him or convincing evidence of his existence.

It is striking that no one has been able to find a family member, friend, or colleague of Captain Hussein. Nor has the AP told us who in the AP's ranks has actually spoken with Captain Hussein. Nor has the AP quoted Captain Hussein once since the story of the disputed episode.

Therefore, in the absence of clear and compelling evidence to corroborate the AP's exclusive story and Captain Hussein's existence, we must conclude for now that the AP's reporting in this case was flawed.

To make matters worse, Captain Jamil Hussein was a key named source in more than 60 AP stories on at least 25 supposed violent incidents over eight months.

Until this controversy is resolved, every one of those AP reports is tainted.

Apparently, the AP has taken the old idea of "ghost writing" to a whole new level. They are using real ghosts as sources! Somebody call the Ghost Busters! Never mind, Bob's already on the case.

UPDATE: Armed Liberal: It's just a scratch. Well, we have our sources, too. In fact one of our stringers from Magic 8-Ball Undercover Investigations and carwash, Inc. happened to get his hands on the official AP identification picture for captain Jamil Hussein. So there.

Other Links to this Post

1. Wake up America>Stop Linking to AP Stories — Tuesday, 2 January , 2007 @ 1:48 pm

2. Flopping Aces — Tuesday, 2 January , 2007 @ 5:27 pm