A Major Balks at Directive And Is Relieved of Duty; Free Speech Is at Issue

By YOCHI J. DREAZEN, Wall Street Journal May 8, 2003

MOSUL, IRAQ-The U.S. Army is-sued orders for troops to seize this city's only television station, leading an officer here to raise questions about the Army's dedication to free speech in postwar Iraq, people familiar with the situation said. The officer refused the order and was relieved of duty.The directive came from the 101st Air-borne Division's commander, Maj. Gen. David Petraeus, who has ultimate authority in Mosul and the rest of northwest Iraq, the people familiar with the matter said. They said it was aimed at blocking the station from continuing to broadcast the Arabic news channel al-Jazeera.

The order has not yet been publicized in Mosul, which has no radio station or newspaper, and Army officials here said they had no plans to do so. Late last night, it wasn't clear whether soldiers who had been on the grounds of the station, which is near the city's university, had moved into the station building itself and taken control. The incident may add fuel to suspi-cions in the Arab world about the Bush administration's promises to bring open elections and other Western-style freedoms to Iraq. The move also could fur-ther strain the already-tense relations be-tween the Pentagon and al-Jazeera, a satellite channel based in Qatar that is the most popular source of news throughout the Mideast. Pentagon officials have long accused al-Jazeera of being biased against the U.S. and criticized it for broadcasting material such as bloody im-ages of civilians killed or maimed by U.S. bombs. Al-Jazeera's Baghdad office was unintentionally shelled by the U.S. on April 8, killing one journalist.

The order to seize the station, which had been under the unofficial control of a local Iraqi militia leader, was discussed at a contentious meeting among Ameri-can officials based in a former hospital here. During the two-hour meeting last night, the head of the Army public-af-fairs office in Mosul, Maj. Charmaine Means, said she could not agree to seiz-ing the station and posting troops there. She argued that the presence of armed soldiers would intimidate the station's Arab employees into airing only program-ming produced by, or acceptable to, the American military.

Maj. Means was told to pick up a nearby telephone. On the other end, Col. Thomas Schoenback, chief of staff of the division, ordered her to go along with Gen. Petraeus's plan to take the station, accord-ing to people familiar with the matter. When she again refused, he relieved her of her duties. A short time later, she was told that she would be flown out of Mosul on an Army helicopter early this morning.

Neither Gen. Petraeus nor Col. Schoe-nback could be reached for comment. In Washington, the Pentagon could not im-mediately confirm the order to seize the station. Officers familiar with the matter said military officials were uncomfortable with the station's programming. They wanted to apply a U.S. military formula for gauging the station's accuracy, bal-ance and trustworthiness, and if the pro-gramming fell short, the station would be shut. As word of the decision filtered through the main American base in down-town Mosul, several officers condemned it. The officers said they were particu-larly incensed that the military had al-lowed the Iraqi militia leader, Meshaam Jabori, to broadcast political messages for weeks without interference, only to seize it yesterday after it occasionally showed al-Jazeera programming. The station also airs programming from other Arabic news channels, as well as from NEC. Mr. Jabori couldn't be reached for comment.