Jamil Hussein - International Man of Mystery?

A few weeks ago in this corner, I asked the question: Who is Jamil Hussein? Here is a part of the answer. Between April and November of 2006, the Associated Press cited police captain Jamil Hussein as its sole source for 61 stories. In forty of those stories, the tales credited to Jamil Hussein were uncorroborated by any other news organization. On April 24, Captain Hussein told the Associated Press that 20 Iraqis had been killed by car bombs that day. On April 29, Hussein was quoted as saying that 6 dead Iraqis had been found who appeared to have been tortured. Three days later, according to Jamil Hussein, 3 more Iraqis were found in a similar condition. On May 14, six Shiite shrines were bombed and 18 Iraqis were killed.
And so it went. The stories that Captain Jamil Hussein told generally conformed to the media template that Iraq is a country descending into total chaos. For 7 months Captain Jamil Hussein’s word was authoritative, until November 25, 2006 when the Associate Press repeated Jamil Hussein’s allegations that Shiite militiamen burned six Sunnis alive on the street under the watchful and approving gaze of Iraqi soldiers. Hussein also reported that 4 Sunni mosques were burned the same day.
But the camel’s back broke after this last story. The Iraqi Police said that, not only did the events described not happen, but that there was no such person on the Iraqi police force named Jamil Hussein. The United States military also denied the events described ever took place.
The Associated Press remained steadfast.
Bloggers got involved and created a blogstorm around the Associated Press and Jamil Hussein. Bloggers demanded that the Associated Press prove Jamil Hussein’s existence by presenting him for an interview. The Associated Press ignored this and simply disparaged the blogosphere. Bloggers also noticed that Jamil Hussein seemed to be everywhere. His reports indicated a nearly unlimited jurisdiction. The suspicion arose that Jamil Hussein was an imaginary or composite figure to whom rumors could be attributed to give them more authority.
One blogger, Eason Jordan, who was once the president of the CNN news division until he was caught up in a blogstorm for accusing the United States military of deliberately targeting journalists, expressed his own doubts about the existence of Jamil Hussein. Jordan suggested that the Associated Press follow the CBS example and appoint an independent panel to investigate.
Then, a couple of weeks ago, the Associated Press crowed that the Iraqi Interior Ministry confessed that yes, there was a captain Jamil Hussein, and then the AP cast doubt on the ministry’s honesty.
“Khalaf offered no explanation Thursday for why the ministry had initially denied Hussein's existence, other than to state that its first search of records failed to turn up his full name. He also declined to say how long the ministry had known of its error and why it had made no attempt in the past six weeks to correct the public record.”
The problem might have been that the Associated Press’s version of events is not quite accurate.
Bill Costlow, spokesman for the U.S. Civilian Police Assistance Training Team (CPATT) says that isn’t quite the truth. The man whom the Associated Press has been identifying as their source is named Jamil Hussein Gulaim. The Interior Ministry said that there is a police captain named Jamil Ghdaab Gulaim, which is one of at least three different names that the AP has given to their source since their own credibility was questioned. Jamil Ghdaab Gulaim denies ever being the AP’s source.
Incidentally the Associated Press’s values and principles statement specifically forbids the use of pseudonyms.
As of last fall, there were fewer than a dozen reporters currently embedded with the US military. Only one was from the Associated Press. And so the Associated Press, along with most other news sources, have come to rely upon “stringers” as sources. Exactly how a stringer’s reliability is verified is not clear, but it’s likely that a stringer whose reports conform to the organization’s preconceptions is judged more honest than one whose reports conflict with what the organization just knows is true.
In the meantime, Jamil Hussein has not been heard from. Since his story about the six Sunnis burned alive, the Associate Press has not cited police captain Jamil Hussein as a source.