Why a reporter is dead
by Helen Highwater, March 1, 2002

As we approach the one-year anniversary of reporter Daniel Pearl's death, the reason he was killed remains "unknown" ... and utterly obvious. —HH, 2/1/2003
There's one starkly important factor in Daniel Pearl's death which has been completely overlooked: The people who kidnapped and killed Pearl claimed he was a spy.

Reliable sources tell us that Pearl was a good reporter, and we're not interested in making posthumous insinuations about the dead. What matters, and what cost Pearl his life, is:

Someone thought Daniel Pearl was a spy.

It isn't exactly a far-fetched idea. US intelligence has a long history of using reporters as agents, and sending out agents posing as reporters. In the early 1970s, the Washington Star reported that "over 35 American journalists, some full-time, some free-lance, and some major media correspondents were on the CIA payroll." Just a few years ago, the president of the American Society of Newspaper Editors protested the practice, claiming that it could "put the lives of our foreign correspondents at serious risk."
Does that complaint have merit? Ask Danny Pearl's widow.

It's hard to imagine what could be more dangerous for reporters than to have American spies posing as journalists, in far-flung corners of the world where American spies are not exactly beloved.

But that's exactly what's happening: According to a CNN report, when Pearl's killers wanted to release a videotape of his murder, they gave it to "an undercover FBI operative they believed to be a journalist."

Was this 'FBI operative' wearing a press pass? Was he carrying a notepad and a tape recorder, identifying himself as a reporter? Why else would someone think an FBI agent was a reporter?

Since 1977, "CIA policy has barred hiring U.S. journalists except in what the agency calls "extraordinary" circumstances," we are told by the Chicago Tribune. The Washington Post reported a few years ago that the CIA still, "on 'extraordinarily rare' occasions, uses American journalists or U.S. news organizations as cover in conducting clandestine operations." Hmmm ... how rare is "extraordinarily rare"? And what about the FBI? We don't know; the CIA isn't talking, and the FBI doesn't return our calls.

As recently as December of 2001, the respected media newsletter Editor and Publisher wondered whether the CIA was "using journalistic cover in Afghanistan." E&P's article reported that a Taliban defector claimed to have been approached "two or three times" by U.S. intelligence agents posing as reporters.

The Columbia Journalism Review reports that "the CIA's use of journalists as intelligence agents is believed to have decreased since the practice was exposed by congressional inquiry in the mid-1970s. Whether it has been completely abandoned is impossible to ascertain." Now and then a haggard reporter on overseas assignment still complains that it's tiring to have everyone think you're a spy.

So — a reporter is murdered. His killers claim he was a spy. We like to believe they were mistaken, that Daniel Pearl was what he appeared to be: an honest, hardworking reporter. Yet we learn of his death when a videotape is handed to another 'reporter' — who is a spy.

When reporters are suspected or believed to be spies, it puts honest reporters at exponentially higher risk. This would seem to be an important aspect of Pearl's murder.

Perhaps an honest reporter will ask a few pointed questions, starting with why (not "whether") US intelligence agents still pretend to be reporters.

Mrs. Pearl might be interested in the answer