Speaking With the Enemy

By Mark Ames, AlterNet. Posted August 11, 2005.

"Freedom of speech is never an issue when a popular person expresses an acceptable point of view. It is of real value only because it guarantees us access to the unpopular, espousing the unacceptable. Then, we can reject or accept it, condemn it or embrace it. No one should have the authority to make that decision for us. Not our government, and certainly not somebody else's." -- Ted Koppel, ending the Nightline interview with Shamil Basayev, July 28, 2005

"[I]f I'm running a war and I've got representatives of ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, MSNBC, Al Jazeera, and the BBC, and they're out there with my troops and they've got the technical capacity to feed back what is happening live, so that the folks who are sitting in Baghdad have only to turn on their set to CNN and they can see what's happening on the front lines from the American vantage point -- I'm saying it would be criminal to permit that." -- Ted Koppel, Media Law Resource Center 2nd Annual Dinner Celebration, November 13, 2002

Russia's hysterical protest against the Nightline interview with Shamil Basayev offered up a rare opportunity for Americans on the left and right to unite and celebrate our deepest cultural virtues. The story was almost too perfect. A villain -- the Kremlin -- who needs no complicated explanation beyond a "Soviet" or "authoritarian" modifier to drudge up the old archetype. The hero -- America's religious commitment to free speech -- is immediately understood by all. The object of the Kremlin-American clash -- Shamil Basayev, the Chechen warlord/terrorist who masterminded several spectacular terror attacks in Russia, including the one in Beslan last year that left nearly 350 people, mostly children, dead -- a mere backdrop to this tale. After all, Basayev doesn't threaten America, and he even seems to like us. It's the Kremlin that's the real villain.

Flying monkeys

To recap: On July 28th, Nightline ran an interview with Basayev conducted by Radio Liberty reporter and Russian dissident Andrei Babitsky. The Russian government officially protested the broadcast, first by appealing to the U.S. government to pressure ABC not to run the interview, and afterwards, lashing out publicly and through diplomatic channels. Within days, Russia's Defense Ministry declared a boycott of ABC, and on August 2, the government announced that it would not be renewing ABC's accreditation in Moscow, effectively shutting down their operations.

The White House's response was morally unassailable. State Department spokesman Sean McCormack told reporters, "The U.S. Government has no authority to prevent ABC from exercising its constitutional right to broadcast the interview." A few days later, Tom Casey, acting spokesman for the State Department, added, "[W]e believe that ABC as well as all other members of the media should have the opportunity for freedom of expression and have the right to report as they see fit."

A strange thing happened right after Casey said that -- dozens of winged primates burst out of his ass, flew around the briefing room screeching and tearing at people's hair, then escaped through an open window. Not a single American reporter saw it happen. They were too busy preparing yet another story about Russia's return to the bad old days, like this New York Times lead published August 2: "Russia announced Tuesday that it was barring journalists from ABC News from working here, effectively expelling a foreign news organization for the first time since the collapse of the Soviet Union." [italics mine]

The Washington Post agreed, darkly warning, in an August 7 editorial hysterically titled, "Russia to ABC: Drop Dead," that the Kremlin reaction was "in keeping with the Putin government's increasing intolerance for dissent, especially where Russia's brutal, decade-long war in Chechnya is concerned. When this government is faced with any critical message, its instinctive reaction is to bully and intimidate the messenger."

Imagine that! In our day and age!

The only people who spotted those Foggy Bottom flying ass-monkeys were Russia's state-controlled media personalities, some of the oiliest sycophants to ever appear on any television screen. It's a sad day when these creeps are the only ones who see through the bullshit: They cried hypocrisy, juxtaposing the Bush administration's official piety against its darker actions.

Double standard? What double standard?

It may seem strange that Russians have a better memory about recent American government interference in the media, so just in case you're one of those who suffers from selective amnesia, here is what the Russian media barked about in the days following the Nightline interview. A long, long time ago -- October, 2001 to be exact -- Condoleeza Rice, then-head of the National Security Council, telephoned the heads of the major American television news organizations and warned them not to broadcast a fresh video recording announcement by Osama bin Laden.

The White House's reasoning? As Ari Fleisher put it in a press conference, "At best Osama bin Laden's message is propaganda, calling on people to kill Americans. At worst he could be issuing orders to his followers to initiate such attacks." (For comparison, the Russian Foreign Ministry accused the Nightline interview with Basayev of "supporting the propaganda of terrorism" and containing "direct vocal calls for violence against Russian citizens.")

Mark Ames is editor of the Moscow English alt weekly, The eXile and author of the forthcoming book Going Postal: Rage, Murder, and Rebellion: From Reagan's Workplaces to Clinton's Columbine and Beyond.

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