Galley Slaves: Eason Jordan and the CIA?

Tuesday, February 15, 2005

The Law Jedi caught a claim that Eason Jordan may have leaked the names of two CIA-recruited operatives while he was in Amman.

Jay D. Homnick said...: We would all be thrilled to think the worst of CNN, but this new story has to raise our skeptical hackles.

A former CNN personality, Reese Schoenfeld, suddenly lets drop that he knows of Jordan having burned two CIA operatives some years back, possibly causing their deaths at the hands of Saddam's regime.

Why has this fellow been silent until now?

Heaven knows that in two decades as a free-lance journalist I have often received information from sources about open cases and I have honored the reportorial ethic of keeping the confidence and not alerting the authorities, although this is a practice whose legality is shaky at best. So if Schoenfeld was silent on that sort of basis, we can respect that, even if law enforcement types would not.

But what is the basis for revealing it now? Is there some special virtue of piling on when a man is down?

The more likely theory is that Schoenfeld is now passing along an old unsubstantiated rumor. In which case, we must respond: nicht schoen.; 1:49 PM

Galley Slaves