CBS, White House in Dispute Over Saddam Interview

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The White House criticized CBS television on Wednesday over what a spokesman said was a spurned offer to rebut comments by Iraqi President Saddam Hussein during an interview to be broadcast on Wednesday evening.

"This seems odd they wouldn't let the White House have a voice," White House spokesman Ari Fleischer told Reuters.

He said the White House had offered a representative to counter what he said would be propaganda, lies and irresponsible statements by Saddam in the rare interview, but he said CBS replied it was interested only if President Bush made the response himself.

CBS rejected the charge and said it remained open to providing a forum for a top Bush administration official to respond to Saddam on the air.

"The conversation was never President Bush or no one," CBS News spokeswoman Sandy Genelius said. The White House had initially offered to send Fleischer for brief comments, but this was not accepted, she said. Fleischer denied that the White House had suggested any names.

CBS made a new offer on Wednesday, Genelius said. "If the president, the vice president or Secretary of State (Colin) Powell would like to appear on the program tonight we would be happy to have them appear on the program," Genelius said.

CBS was to air the interview by news anchor Dan Rather at 9:00 p.m. EST on its "60 Minutes II" program.

Recorded on Monday, it is the first interview Saddam has granted an American journalist in 13 years and comes as the United Nations prepares to debate whether to authorize a war on Iraq to enforce disarmament demands.

With saturation coverage by U.S. and international media, Bush has repeatedly accused Saddam of defying U.N. demands that he dismantle weapons of mass destruction programs -- a charge the Iraqi leader denies -- and of threatening to spread chemical, biological or nuclear weapons to terrorists. He is due to give another speech on Iraq earlier on Wednesday evening.

Fleischer said he was not concerned that Saddam's interview could sway opinion. "The American people can handle an interview with Saddam Hussein, but fairness suggests that the administration have a voice."

He acknowledged the interview was a journalistic coup for CBS, for which he said the network deserved congratulations.

"But it's also important to recognize, in the name of balance and in the name of not making a moral equivalence between a dictator and a democracy, that Iraq engages in propaganda and they will continue to engage in propaganda," he said.

A Bush administration officials also raised questions over the manner in which the interview was conducted, saying such conditions would never be accepted if set by Bush. The interview was filmed by Iraqi television, which also provided a translation and pieced together videotape from three separate cameras into a single recording.

Genelius said it is customary for Iraq to do the filming for such interviews, that CBS made a separate translation and that there appeared to be no deletions of the 1 hour, 45-minute interview in the final tape given to CBS. The interview will be edited to fit the program's one-hour length.

we are known by the company we keep.

Here is Dan Rather's spiritual brother:

William Joyce - aka Lord Haw Haw:

On 26 August 1939, approximately a week before the outbreak of war, Joyce and his family fled to Berlin after a tip-off that, under the soon to be introduced emergency powers, he would be interned for the duration of the war. It was an act that would lead eventually to his death and denouncement by many, including Mosley, as a traitor. Rightly or wrongly Joyce was adamant that Britain was being led into another pointless war and Neville Chamberlain's, and subsequently Winston Churchill's, governments were betraying their people.
Friends in Germany put Joyce in contact with Dr. Erich Hetzler - Private Secretary to Germany's Foreign Minister von Ribbentrop. Two weeks after the outbreak of war he was appointed Editor and speaker for the German transmitters for Europe at Berlin's Charlottenburg. Joyce was still only 33 years old. His wartime broadcasts to England became infamous - he was nicknamed 'Lord Haw-Haw' by a Daily Express journalist because of his aristocratic nasal drawl. Unknown to the public at this time, his image was very different from the scar-faced fascist thug he was usually portrayed as.
Although it was illegal to listen to his broadcasts in Britain they became very popular with British listeners. They always began with the words "Germany calling Germany calling," which because of Joyce's broken nose sounded like: "Jarmany calling, Jarmany calling." During his heyday Joyce had almost as many listeners as the BBC - and he caused alarm with his tales of a Fifth Column in Britain and his talks on how to treat bombing wounds. He caused panic with his apparently accurate descriptions of Town Hall clocks that had stopped and how many steps there were in a particular church steeple.
After the Battle of Britain and the invasion of Russia, Joyce's broadcasts lost more and more listeners in Britain - but he still remained the number one broadcaster in Berlin and his anti-semitism never faded in its virulence - continuing to blame the war on "Jewish International Finance." For his efforts Joyce continued to live a comfortable life in Berlin and in September 1944 was awarded the Cross of War Merit 1st Class with a certificate signed by Adolf Hitler. As the war worsened he began to drink heavily and his marriage became a joke with both his wife and he having numerous affairs.
During the final stages of the war, with the Red Army approaching Berlin, Joyce moved to Hamburg. He made a final broadcast on 30 April 1945 - warning that the war would leave Britain poor and barren now that she had lost all her wealth and power in 6 years of war, leaving the Russians in control of most of Europe. He signed off with a final defiant "Heil Hitler."
Joyce was captured while going through a wood near Flensburg after the war; he received a bullet wound to the leg in the process. Joyce's fate at the gallows was then merely a formality and the British press whipped up all the hysteria they could - reminding people that he was a snarling traitor. The British Government passed the Treason Act 1945 the day before Joyce was flown back to Britain.
Although Joyce was born in the USA, brought up in Ireland and took German nationality on 26 September 1939, he was charged with treason from 3 September 1939 to 2 July 1940, the date his British passport ran out, and sentenced to death. Joyce was confined in a death cell at London's Wandsworth Prison. In the cell next door was John Amery, the son of a British lord and the man who had tried to form British expatriates and sympathetic British POW's into a Freicorp to fight on the German side. Joyce was executed five days after Amery on 3 January 1946. He was adamant and defiant to the end. He showed no emotion when confronted by news and scenes from the concentration camps, blaming the deaths on starvation and disease caused by Allied bombing of communication lines. He also scratched a swastika on the wall of his cell whilst awaiting sentence. His last public message reported by the BBC was "In death as in life, I defy the Jews who caused this last war, and I defy the powers of darkness they represent." He was not yet 40 years old when executed. He was buried in an unmarked grave in the grounds of the prison.

This brief bio omits the detail that he was smashingly drunk in his final broadcast, still championing the fallen Nazi Germany.

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