Regime accused reporters of working for CIA, Israel

[theking]

"ATLANTA, Georgia (CNN) -- Iraqi intelligence agents planned to attack CNN journalists working in Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq in March, three months after Iraq's information minister warned of the "severest possible consequences" if CNN were to send reporters to the region, said CNN's chief news executive, Eason Jordan.

The plot was uncovered by Kurdish police, who arrested two men who identified themselves as Iraqi intelligence agents. CNN has obtained videotaped confessions in which the men said their superiors in Baghdad, Iraq, asked them to blow up a hotel in Erbil where CNN staff were staying.

The men planned to use nearly a ton of explosives in the attack, but they were arrested before they could carry out the plan. In their confessions, the men said they had been told that CIA and Israeli agents were working out of the hotel, using CNN as a cover."

http://www.cnn.com/2003/US/04/11/spr...lot/index.html