Posted on 04/01/2003 7:12:22 AM PST by Leroy S. Mort
NEW YORK (AP) - The Pentagon said Tuesday it is asking Fox News Channel to remove Geraldo Rivera from a posting with U.S. troops in Iraq where he was accused of disclosing unauthorized information.
``We have asked that he be removed and we are working with them to make that happen,'' Lt. Col. Dave Lapan said. He said the network had agreed.
Fox News Channel executives did not immediately return calls seeking comment Tuesday.
Earlier, Rivera had dismissed reports that he had been ejected from Iraq for revealing tactical information about the 101st Airborne Division.
Also Tuesday, a British tabloid said it has hired Peter Arnett, who was dismissed by NBC on Monday for giving an unauthorized interview to Iraqi state television in which he said the American-led war effort initially failed because of Iraq's resistance.
``Fired by America for telling the truth,'' the Daily Mirror said in a Page 1 headline.
Lapan said Rivera reported details of troop operations by drawing a line in the sand showing where his unit was and where it was going next. Reporters who are ``embedded'' with U.S. troops are not supposed to disclose details that could help Iraqis figure out their location and plans.
Rivera, Lapan said, was put with his unit as a ``short-term embed,'' meaning the military agreed he could go for a couple of days.
Fox's rivals, CNN and MSNBC, both reported Monday that Rivera had been kicked out of the country.
Shortly thereafter, Rivera delivered a report via satellite phone saying he was 60 miles from Baghdad. Rivera labeled reports of his ouster ``a pack of lies'' spread by his former colleagues at NBC, or as he put it, ``some rats at my former network.''
``The war among the press is about as intense as the war in Iraq,'' Fox prime-time host Bill O'Reilly said in a telephone interview.
Arnett apologized Monday for his ``misjudgment'' in talking to Iraqi TV. But he added: ``I said over the weekend what we all know about this war.''
Arnett, who won a Pulitzer Prize reporting in Vietnam for The Associated Press, gained much of his prominence from covering the 1991 Gulf War for CNN. One of the few American television reporters left in Baghdad, his reports were frequently aired on NBC and its cable sisters, MSNBC and CNBC.
NBC was angered because Arnett gave the interview Sunday without permission and presented opinion as fact. The network initially backed him, but reversed field after watching a tape of his appearance. The network said it got ``thousands'' of e-mails and phone calls protesting Arnett's remarks.
In the interview, shown by Iraq's satellite television, Arnett said the United States was reappraising the battlefield and delaying the war, maybe for a week, ``and rewriting the war plan. The first war plan has failed because of Iraqi resistance. Now they are trying to write another war plan.''
Arnett said it was clear that, within the United States, opposition to the war was growing, along with a challenge to President Bush about the war's conduct.
The London newspaper that hired him, the Mirror, is vehemently opposed to the war. ``I am still in shock and awe at being fired,'' Arnett wrote for the newspaper.
Before the announcement of his new job, Arnett had said he planned to leave Baghdad, and joked that he'd try to swim to ``a small island in the South Pacific.''
Arnett also departed CNN under a cloud. He was the on-air reporter of a retracted 1998 CNN report that accused American forces of using sarin nerve gas in Laos in 1970. He was reprimanded and later left the network.
Earlier, the first Bush administration was unhappy with Arnett's reporting on the Gulf War in 1991 for CNN, suggesting he had become a conveyor of propaganda.
Arnett went to Iraq this year not as an NBC News reporter but as an employee of the MSNBC show ``National Geographic Explorer.'' When other NBC reporters left Baghdad for safety reasons, the network began airing Arnett's reports. Arnett was also relieved of his duties Monday at ``National Geographic Explorer.''
Yesterday, he blamed it on old "friends" in older networks who were trying to do damage control with the Peter Arnett story......striving for some kind of equivalency so the heat didn't come back onto the socialistic, anti-american broadcast news outlets.
No, they were not. They backed him until their mail boxes filled up.
Caught a few minutes of Fox this a.m. Geraldo was on air. This story was mentioned several times yesterday on Fox - they did not say Geraldo was leaving, tho.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.