Associated Press Confirms Identity Of Mysterious Iraqi Police Officer

WASHINGTON — A mysterious Iraqi police captain cited in more than 60 Associated Press stories has surfaced and now exists according to Iraq's Interior Ministry, the wire service says.

The matter of Captain Jamil Hussein became a heated controversy in late November after both Iraq's Interior Ministry and the American military questioned the AP source's existence after he confirmed to the wire that six Sunni civilians were burned alive by Shiite militiamen outside a mosque in Baghdad in a November 24 story. A number of American web logs, including Flopping Aces and Michelle Malkin, waged a campaign to persuade the wire service to retract the stories where Mr. Hussein was used as a source.

This week, the former chief news executive at CNN, Eason Jordan, wrote a Web column for his new website, Iraqslogger, saying, "If an Iraqi police captain by the name of Jamil Hussein exists, there is no convincing evidence of it." At the invitation of Mr. Jordan, Ms. Malkin flew out to Baghdad this week to join him in the hunt for Mr. Hussein.

Yesterday, however, in another twist, the AP is now reporting that the Interior Ministry has confirmed that Mr. Hussein not only exists but is wanted for arrest after talking to the press. "Ministry spokesman Brig. Abdul-Karim Khalaf, who had previously denied there was any such police employee as Capt. Jamil Hussein, said in an interview that Hussein is an officer assigned to the Khadra police station, as had been reported by The Associated Press," the wire wrote yesterday.

The disclosure is a victory for the wire service that had come under a steady stream of criticism for allegedly stonewalling its critics. Last November, the AP's executive editor Kathleen Carroll, stood by her reporters, insisting that the police captain had been a reliable source for the wire service.

When reached yesterday, two of the AP's board members said they were unaware of the controversy surrounding Mr. Hussein.

The editor and publisher of the Citizen Tribune in Morristown, Tenn., R. Jack Fishman yesterday said, "This has not come up on my windshield. I can assure you I don't have any emails or phone calls from the board on this. I am not in the loop on this one."

The president and publisher of the Gazette Company in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, yesterday said, "I really don't know what you're talking about," when asked about the mysterious police captain. "I am unfamiliar with this."

For some bloggers, however the controversy involving the AP is not over. The blog Confederate Yankee yesterday wrote, "So it appears Jamil Hussein may be real. Good. That means there is a real person to question regarding 61 mostly uncorroborated stories provided as exclusives by Hussein to the Associated Press."

And the controversy has extended beyond bloggers. The city editor of the Boston Herald, Jules Crittenden, published columns in the paper headlined, "Does AP stand for Al-Qaeda Propaganda?" and wrote in the Herald, "The AP is making up war crimes."