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Menard and the Murder of Cameraman Jose Couso - Reporters without shame

BY JEAN-GUY ALLARD Special for Granma International

“PEACE is boring” was the title of an article in German Der Spiegel, published in May 2003 when the U.S. troops thought they had taken Baghdad. And the apologist “hero” of the piece penned by reporter Klaus Brinkbäumer on that conquest was Lieutenant Colonel Philip de Camp of the U.S. Army. One month before, De Camp ordered the criminal bombardment of the Palestine Hotel in the Iraqi capital and would become the central witness of the trumped up report by Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) on the death of Spanish cameraman José Couso.
“ If you’re on your feet, war isn’t a lot of fun. It’s a lot more fun in a tank,” commented De Camp who, according to Brinkbäumer, spent the invasion inside an M1A1 Abrams tank worth $4.3 million.

How many Iraqis did you hit, Sir? asked the reporter, using the U.S. Army’s standard “sir” for a subordinate addressing a superior. “I don’t care,” replied the officer.
“ I don’t care!” replied the official.

De Camp was born in Fort Benning, Georgia into a military family. His father, a general, named his son Alexander-Philip “after Alexander the Great and Philip after himself.
De Camp lived in West Point, New Orleans, Washington and Vilseck in Germany.
He took part in the first Gulf War unleashed by George Bush Sr.

The interview took place in the residence of the former Iraqi president’s son. Amongst many other anecdotes, De Camp, sipping on a Coca-Cola, recalled how he had found bottles of Don Perignon champagne (1985 vintage) and had taken them to Fort Stewart, his home base in the United States.

Shortly before this, the media-friendly Lieutenant Colonel agreed to give another interview, this time to David Zucchino from The Los Angeles Times, always with the same imperial arrogance. In this instance, he toured the presidential palace.

De Camp recommended that the palace should become the home of the new transition government, explained the reporter. And so it was.

Who benefits from the deception?
These anecdotes would not carry much importance if it were not for the fact that it was De Camp himself who, on April 8, 2003, ordered his troops to fire on Baghdad’s Palestine Hotel, where hundreds of foreign journalists were staying, causing the deaths of Spanish cameraman José Couso and his Ukrainian colleague Taras Protsyuk.

And neither would it be significant if Jean-Paul Mari, a journalist from the French weekly Le Nouvel Observateur and author of the Reporters sans frontières report into this criminal act, was not a close personal friend of the U.S. Army officer.

“ The report’s conclusions exonerate the material and acknowledged authors of the Palestine Hotel on the basis of the dubious impartiality of the embedded journalists and the testimonies of the authors and those responsible for the shooting themselves, transferring responsibility for the attack onto unidentified individuals,” stated José Couso’s relatives in a statement that categorically rejects the conclusions reached by the RSF.

The family demonstrated that the document is based on the eyewitness accounts of journalists “embedded” within the U.S. military forces such as Chris Tomlinson, an Associated Press representative who was with the U.S. intelligence services for seven years.

“ It seems to us, moreover, that the very “humane” biography of those who murdered José Couso and Taras Protsyuk is completely lacking in tact, culminating as it does with the insult of thanking those U.S. military personnel for their cooperation in producing the report,” reads the statement released last January 16.

However, this expression of gratitude confirms the committed relationship between “left-winger” Ménard and the United States, and further guarantees and consolidates financial support from institutions such as USAID, USIA, and NED for his organization’s work against Cuba and other countries out of favor with the United States such as Venezuela and China.

Menard is not paid to defend just causes but to organize campaigns against Cuba and Venezuela from every place where RSF has an office, to conceal the truth in cases such as Couso’s when U.S. interests are at stake, and to finance pseudo “independent Cuban journalists” in their work as informants for the U.S. intelligence services.

The facts surrounding the bombing of the Palestine Hotel are well known. And Mari could have easily found them in the lawsuit that Couso’s relatives filed before the Spanish courts.
That report clearly exposed how his good friend De Camp was the one who gave the criminal order to the personnel inside one of his M1A1 Abrams tanks – the tank he praised in his interview with Der Spiegel one month later – to open fire on the hotel that he knew was full of reporters. Here is an excerpt from the family’s text.

The killers from Company “A”
“ (…) At 10.46 hours on April 8, tanks from the 4th Battalion of the 64th Armored Regiment, attached to the 3rd Infantry Division of the U.S. Army, were situated at one end of the Jumhuriya bridge, one and a half kilometers from the Palestine Hotel. Almost 300 special envoys from the international press were staying at the Palestine Hotel, a fact that was known by both the Anglo-American coalition and the Iraqis.

“ Shortly after 11:00 a.m. the U.S. M1A1 combat vehicle attached to Company A of the 64th regiment swung round its turret, pointed directly at the Palestine Hotel and after several minutes, fired a single round at the hotel, striking the 15th floor.

37-year-old José Couso Permuy, cameraman and reporter for Tele 5, one of Spain’s national stations, married and the father of two children aged six and three, was hit by the blast whilst filming the action from Room 1403 in Baghdad’s Palestine Hotel. He died a few hours later in the Ibn Nafis Hospital in Baghdad from the injuries he received...

“The Abrams M1A1 that fired intentionally against the Palestine Hotel, belonged to the U.S. 3rd Infantry Division, 2nd Brigade, 64th Armored Regiment, Company A.

The individual who fired the round from the Abrams M-1 was Sergeant Gibson. According to a report by Telecinco on May 8 at 8:30 p.m. he was also the soldier who claimed someone was watching them with binoculars from the hotel. In footage provided by the station, Sergeant Gibson explained: “I didn’t fire immediately. I called my chiefs and told them what I’d seen. Ten minutes later they called me and told me to fire and I did .” (Tape B, 1hr, 11’ 45’’).

“His immediate superior, Captain Philip Wolford, was the one who authorized him to fire, as he stated to Le Nouvel Observateur, when he saw that a gunner from one of his tanks had observed someone watching them with binoculars from the Hotel…

“Philip Wolford headed the Company A armored unit (also known by the nickname “the killers” or “the assassins” according to The Boston Herald), attached to the 64th Armored Regiment. He was located just behind the tank in the moments prior to the shooting.

“ The person who ordered Gibson to open fire on the Hotel Palestine was Lieutenant Colonel Philip De Camp, Captain Philip Wolford’s superior and responsible for the 64th Armored Regiment, to which Company A is attached, according to an interview in The Los Angeles Times on April 11…”

Aznar with Bush and Powell in the campaign of deception
RSF failed to introduce any new evidence in its weak report. It has simply added to the campaign of deception that has already been developed by the U.S. government and its servile ally in Madrid, José María Aznar, sowing the seeds of confusion through misinformation and lies.

“One month later,” recalls researcher James Hollander (The Death of José Couso in Baghdad, www.rebelión.com), Spanish Prime Minister José María Aznar was in Washington to reassure Bush of his fealty. At a joint press conference, a Spanish journalist had the temerity to disturb George over the issue of José Couso, and whether the US should apologize.
“’ I think war is a dangerous place, and I think that nobody would kill a journalist intentionally,’ half-mumbled the U.S. president in response.
“ Aznar then said that the United States acknowledged that there was an error which was simply false, as the United States has done no such thing. ‘That should be enough,’ Aznar stated, showing a clear willingness to sacrifice as many of his countrymen as necessary on the altar of loyalty to his imperial master.”
It should be recalled that Aznar was one of the vassals used by the United States to condition and counteract the position of many Ibero-American countries in relation to immunity for U.S. soldiers before the International Criminal Court. But the “President of the Spanish Republic” (as Jeb Bush called him) is unconcerned over the deaths of thousands of Iraqi civilians or the Spanish population’s rejection of the imperial war, so it would be naïve to think that he would be moved by the death of a journalist.

Imperial Capers
For RSF, José Couso’s death is just one more incident they are able to erase by a few capers, comfortably absolving the identified authors of the crime with the complicity of the commercial (and so-called “free”) press, casting the blame on a gigantic state machinery that has already discarded the subject.

Characteristic of Ménard’s methods: 48 hours after the deaths of Couso and Protsyuk, RSF – the NGO that fails to mention the United States even once in its latest report on press freedom – dedicates a large section of its Internet homepage to “the lack of freedom of expression” in Cuba.

Cases such as José Couso’s have highlighted the true nature of Ménard’s constant efforts to direct his organization, financed by the United States and the communications multinationals, in accordance with directions from the U.S. intelligence services.

Since the reporter’s death, José Couso’s family has started up a website – www.josecouso.info – where articles and hundreds of messages of solidarity are published, including one recently-published article entitled “Reporteros sin vergüenza” (Reporters without shame).

“ With friends like Reporters sans frontiéres,” wrote the anonymous author, “who needs enemies?”

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