WSWS on Pearl

Max Sawicky sawicky at bellatlantic.net
Tue Feb 26 08:10:50 PST 2002


Everything I have read about this case points to the likelihood that Pearl was targeted solely because he was someone whose murder would embarrass the Pakistani regime and enrage the U.S.

As I recall, the script he was forced to read was not "I am a CIA agent," but the other thing.

The crime was not the consequence of some free-floating animus against journalists who might be CIA.

I am surprised to see those remarks over your initials.

mbs


> I thought that the insinuations about Pearl himself on the WSWS looked
> pretty boilerplate and pretty nasty. But they are very close to a more
> germane point, which is that lots of people, mainly on the left, have been
> warning for quite a while that if the intelligence services continued to
> compromise the status of journalists in warzones, then they could expect
> that at some point, all journalists would be presumed to be agents of
> foreign powers and treated as such. The CIA has done more than
> anyone else to destroy the neutrality of journalists, and as a result, has
to
> bear some of the guilt for Pearl's death. This was a tragedy that anyone
could have
> seen coming a mile off. . . .



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