The List

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"Perhaps no list of reporters has commanded such attention in Washington since Richard Nixon compiled his enemies list more than thirty years ago," writes Douglas McCollam, discussing the reporters whose names and phone numbers appear in a confidential July 2002 memorandum from the Iraqi National Congress (INC). The memo lists 108 news stories that were influenced by INC-supplied defectors. "The balance of the stories," McCollam writes, "advanced almost every claim that would eventually become the backbone of the Bush administration's case for war, including Saddam Hussein's contacts with al Qaeda, his attempts to develop nuclear weapons, and his extensive chemical and bioweapons facilities - all of which are now in grave doubt." According to Helen Kennedy, one of the reporters whose name appears on the list, "The INC's agenda was to get us into a war. The really damaging stories all came from those guys, not the CIA. They did a really sophisticated job of getting it out there." After interviewed reporters whose names appear on the list, McCollam concludes that "influencing public opinion through the American and European media was always central to the INC's mission (of the 108 stories on Qanbar's list, fifty appeared in U.S. news outlets). One of the first uses for the Iraq Liberation Act funds was to hire the giant public relations firm Burson-Marsteller."