Newsweek Washington Bureau Chief Daniel Klaidman on Allegations of Guantanamo Koran Desecration: "We Are Neutral on Whether Any of This Ever Happened"

The following are excerpts from an interview with the “Newsweek” Washington bureau chief Daniel Klaidman, which aired on Al-Jazeera TV on May 19, 2005.

Klaidman: Well, first of all, marhaba to you, Hafez. I’m glad to have the opportunity to talk to you and to your audience. We have said on many occasions now, since we published this story more than two weeks ago - we made a mistake. We made an error in this short item, and the error was that we reported a specific act of Koran desecration and furthermore, we reported that this was confirmed by the SouthCom investigators, the US military investigators. We were relying on a source who we had relied on before. He provided us accurate information - a very senior government official - and it turned out that he was wrong, and that he remembered it differently, and so, we did not have the information we needed to put that aspect of the story. We did a lot of research after we realized we might have a problem and we concluded that we made a mistake, and we did what you do in those instances: We came back, we said we made a mistake, we tried to be as transparent as possible, to explain how it happened for our readers and for the public, and so that we learn the lessons from what happened and in the future, we won’t make these kinds of mistakes.

It’s important for me to say that we don’t talk in any great detail about our sources. That is something that is an important part of the reporting process. We have to protect the anonymity of our source because we made an agreement of confidentiality with this person, but when we realized there might be problems with this story, and when the Pentagon raised questions about it, we went back to our source, and we asked could this person be sure of what he told us in the first instance and he said he couldn’t. There were elements of what he had said to us that he could not be sure about: where he read it, if it was in this Southern Command report or in any other investigative documents that were related, whether it had been confirmed, or if it was an allegation. And so, based on the fact that he could not be as precise as he was when we first talked to him and that he could not be sure about some of the information he provided us, and also the denials from the Defense Department, which, of course, we factored in, we concluded that we did not have the information that we needed to make the assertion that we did in this item – that this had happened.

Host: But there is no proof that it did not happen either...

Klaidman: We are neutral on whether any form of Koran desecration took place. There are allegations out there, but the allegations have not been subjected to the kind of scrutiny or legal processes that normally are… you need before you can establish whether they are true and we certainly know that the military has not confirmed any of these allegations, and so what we are saying is we did not have the information we needed to go forward with this story and we are also saying that this specific act of Koran desecration was not confirmed by the US military investigators, and that is what we reported. As to whether these things happened or not, we are, like the rest of the people out there and news organizations - we don’t know. We have heard the allegations, we continue to report, and the US military and other entities are investigating, and as I said, we are neutral on whether any of this ever happened.