former Special Forces soldier – and convicted criminal – manage to use a h

[EC]

Tin Soldier

By Mariah Blake, Columbia Journalism Review. Posted January 8, 2005.


How did a former Special Forces soldier – and convicted criminal – manage to use a hungry press for profit and glory?


In April 2004, a former U.S. Special Forces soldier named Jonathan Keith Idema started shopping a sizzling story to the media. He claimed terrorists in Afghanistan planned to use bomb-laden taxicabs to kill key U.S. and Afghan officials, and that he himself intended to thwart the attack. Shortly thereafter, he headed to Afghanistan, where he spent the next two months conducting a series of raids with his team, which he called Task Force Saber 7. By late June, he claimed to have captured the plotters, and started trying to clinch a deal with television networks by offering them "direct access" to one of the terrorists who, he said, had agreed to tell all.

Idema, who was paying an Emmy Award-winning cameraman to document his activities, even distributed a sample tape of himself arresting people and interrogating hooded suspects. In one scene he is shown blocking a road and emptying passing vehicles. "Put your fucking hands up or I'll blow your fucking brains out," he screams at a group of men who have shuffled bewilderedly off a bus and are standing with their flimsy tunics whipping in the wind.

In exchange for footage and access, Idema wanted a minimum of $250,000 and prominent play. He asked that ABC send Peter Jennings or Christopher Cuomo to cover the story. Ultimately ABC turned the story down, as did CNN. A CBS spokesperson, Kelli Edwards, says the network "never seriously considered" it, although Idema was regularly e-mailing Dan Rather's office and in June the network sent two employees to Idema's Kabul headquarters to pick up the sample tape.

It appears that Idema still hadn't sold the taxicab story by July 5, when his situation took a turn for the worse. The Afghan police raided his headquarters and discovered eight prisoners, some of them tethered to chairs in a back room, which was littered with bloody cloth. The men later told reporters that they had been starved, beaten, doused with scalding water, and forced to languish for days in their own feces. Afghan authorities determined that none of the detainees had links to terrorism and set them free. Idema, on the other hand, was arrested, along with two other Americans (the cameraman and a former soldier) and four Afghans, and charged with running an unauthorized prison and torturing its inmates. After a cursory trial, he was sentenced to serve 10 years. (This case is on appeal.)

http://www.alternet.org/mediaculture/20930/

[7th_Sephiroth]

1. shoulda went straight to Faux

they'd eat it up

[DinahMoeHum]

2. Oh, brother! Just another flunky with action hero fantasies. . .

http://www.alternet.org/mediaculture/20930/

(snip)
"...He joined the Army in 1975 and qualified for the Special Forces, but his performance was often lacking. In an evaluation report dated July 7, 1977, Capt. John D. Carlson described him as "without a doubt the most unmotivated, unprofessional, immature enlisted man that I have ever known." In 1978 he transferred to a reserve unit where he served until 1981, when he was relieved of his duties, in part for his "irrationality" and "tendency toward violence." His military records indicate that he never saw combat...)
(snip)

:evilfrown:

[dustoff034]

3. Google Keith Idema

lots of fun reading