Family Protests CNN's Use of Slain Envoy's Journal
By ADAM ENTOUS And KEACH HAGEY 9/22/2012 online.wsj.com
CNN obtained a personal journal that belonged to the slain American ambassador to Libya, Christopher Stevens, and broadcast reports based on its contents against the wishes of the Stevens family, according to relatives and State Department officials who were asked to intervene by the family.
CNN obtained the journal in Benghazi, where Mr. Stevens and three other Americans were killed in an attack by militants on the American consulate in the city on Sept. 11. It wasn't clear exactly how CNN obtained the ambassador's writings.
The episode marks a side drama in the aftermath of the consulate siege and highlights questions news organizations can encounter when they come across evidence also being sought by law enforcement or other government officials. Personal material important to surviving relatives represents an even-more delicate and unusual dilemma.
CNN said on its website that it notified the Stevens family "within hours" that it had the journal. But the Stevens family then reached out to the State Department, which arranged a telephone conference call between members of the Stevens family and CNN. In that call, the family personally appealed to the news organization to return the journal and to not publish or broadcast any of its contents, according to a Stevens family member and State Department officials.
The family told CNN during the call that it wanted to review the journal before the news media used it or alluded to it, saying the ambassador's personal writings belonged to them.
Family members said they knew Mr. Stevens kept a diary but didn't know what was in the journal obtained by CNN. The news organization initially provided the family with a transcript it prepared from the journal.
State Department officials said they then made arrangements for CNN to hand over the diary itself to an Italian diplomat in Benghazi. CNN says it handed over the journal to a third party acting on behalf of the family within a day of finding it.
The State Department enlisted the aid of the Italian envoy because U.S. diplomats evacuated the city after the Sept. 11 attack. The State Department had arranged for the Italian diplomat to safeguard the diary until it could be handed over to American officials in Tripoli. It will then be brought to the U.S., where the family will be able to take possession of it.
Family members and State Department officials said CNN agreed during the Sept. 14 conference call to hold off on using the diary until the family had a chance to review its contents.
But family members and U.S. officials were surprised when CNN anchor Anderson Cooper appeared to use the information from the journal by attributing it to a source familiar with Mr. Stevens's thinking.
In that broadcast, Mr. Cooper said the ambassador was worried about security threats in Benghazi and said he believed he was on an al Qaeda hit list.
A spokesperson for CNN said the network didn't report directly from the journal, but corroborated the information through other sources. Mr. Stevens's purported concerns about his safety came as questions were raised by the Obama administration's congressional critics and others about the adequacy of security in the area.
Mr. Cooper addressed the question of the journal and the CNN reports in his Friday evening broadcast. He disclosed the station had the journal and that some of the information he reported on Wednesday originated from Mr. Stevens's personal writings.
"Some of that information was found in a personal journal of Ambassador Stevens in his handwriting," Mr. Cooper told viewers. "We came upon the journal through our reporting and notified the family. At their request, we returned that journal to them. We reported what we found newsworthy in the ambassador's writings."
The State Department disputed the CNN account.
Asked about how CNN handled the journal, Philippe Reines, a senior adviser to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, said it took repeated prodding to get CNN to agree to return the journal.
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