REPORTER: John Hosking
The manipulation of truth that paved the path to war in Iraq didn't just flow through politicians' speeches. It flowed far more effectively through major media outlets.
And this man was one of their key sources.
When Adnan Ihsan Saeed al Haideri fled Iraq in 2001 he had quite a story to tell. He was an engineer he claimed, used by Saddam to build specialised bunkers and other facilities for chemical, biological and nuclear weapons research.
ADNAN IHSAN SAEED AL HAIDERI, ENGINEER: Inside of these buildings, I did the finishing off that they needed for clean area, antibacterial resistance to bacteria and this just for chemicals.
He brought out documents too, plans specifications, locations and contracts.
Al Haideri told his debriefers he'd helped build or had seen hundreds of sites throughout Iraq.
ADNAN IHSAN SAEED AL HAIDERI: This place is not normal place, not for normal chemicals. The exhausting is not normal.
Although al Haideri's claim would be widely circulated the man himself was not made available to the media in general. His story was given to just two outlets.
Handpicked by the American backed exiled Iraqi opposition movement, the Iraqi National Congress or INC. The print story was given to 'New York Times' reporter Judith Miller.
She's now been criticised after revelations that most of her stories about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, a topic upon which she built a reputation as a specialist, came from one source, the leader of the IMC, Ahmed Chalabi.
The chosen television outlet was ABC TV in Australia through freelance cameraman and journalist Paul Moran. Moran was later killed in Iraq while working for the ABC.
Now it has been revealed that Moran worked extensively for the INC and for a company working for the American intelligence employed to spread anti-Saddam propaganda and al Haideri's story certainly hit that mark.
After his debut on ABC Television and in the 'New York Times' al Haideri went into hiding reportedly given protection by the CIA. His claims were reprinted and produced by dozens of media outlets throughout world. Greatly influencing both public and government opinion.
But coalition forces have yet to find any sign of the numerous facilities detailed by al Haideri. This story is about how al Haideri's claims were manipulated into the mainstream media.
SCOTT RITTER, FORMER US ARMS INSPECTOR: I've always said the media is as culpable as the government is in this build-up to the war. Allegations about me being a spy are ridiculous.
Former weapons inspector Scott Ritter has been embroiled in controversy since weapons inspectors were expelled from Iraq in 1998.
Ritter's ties to some Iraqis and his outspoken opposition to the rationale for war antagonised the Bush Administration, to the extent that some leading figures branded him a traitor.
But it wasn't just the government that Ritter attacked. Throughout the lead-up to the war, he consistently claimed that the media were being played in the hands of Iraqi exiles and the American government.
SCOTT RITTER: The media wanted a sexy headline, a sexy story. Here's a man telling a sexy story. Suddenly he's featured on Australian newscasts, American newscasts.
The man who helped orchestrate publicity for al-Haideri was Zaab Sethna, media spokesman for the INC. Sethna spent more than a decade working in and around Iraq. Much of it with his Australian mate Paul Moran.
After the INC helped al Haideri escape from Iraq, it was Paul Moran who was called in to do the one television interview that would go around the world.
ZAAB SETHNA, INC SPOKESMAN: We got him out and it turned out that he was probably the single most significant defector who came out of Iraq in terms of his knowledge of the Iraqi weapons program. It was a huge worldwide scoop for Paul. And it was very significant bit of information.
15 months after Moran broke the al-Haideri story, he was killed here at Sulymania in Iraq, just near the Iranian border.
After his death, key information was revealed about some of his connections.
His funeral in Adelaide 10 days later was a major event. Condolences, political figures, friends, work mates and relatives arriving in the southern capital from all over the world.
Among the faces in the Adelaide crowd that day, was a shadowy figure called John Rendon. One of Washington's most powerful and influential spin doctors engaged by the Pentagon and the CIA to disseminate anti-Saddam propaganda. He'd found time at the height of the Iraqi campaign to attend a funeral half a world away.
ZAAB SETHNA: I think that on both personal and professional level Paul was deeply admired and loved by the people at the Rendon group.
John Rendon's Washington DC-based Rendon group boasts an extensive international client list. Including several governments, and connections that go to the very seat of the Bush Administration's power. Many of the group's contracts are classified, its public relations and media campaigns in 80 countries are both overt and covert.
Rendon's work for the Pentagon and the CIA is estimated to have earned the company close to $200 million in US government contracts over the last decade.
Paul Moran was one of the company's favourite foot soldiers, completing numerous media assignments for the group in several countries over the years including Bosnia and the Middle East. The relationship began around the time of the first Gulf War.
ZAAB SETHNA: When I first met Paul we were working for the government of Kuwait. That ended after Kuwait was liberated by the Americans and then the Rendon group came back us to.
We weren't employees we were on contract. The Rendon group came back to us and said, "We now have a contract to bureaucracy, to kind of do anti-Saddam propaganda on behalf of the Iraqi opposition."
So, there was some radio, some television, there was like a travelling human rights exhibition around the world to show Saddam's human rights violations. There was sending out press releases, kind of standard public relations. What we didnt know, what the Rendon group didn't tell us, was in fact it was the CIA that had hired them to do this work so we hired on...
According to Zaab Sethna, that particular CIA contract ended a few months later. But Moran's ongoing connection with Rendon raises many questions, in particular, for the ABC.
'Dateline' put a series of questions to the ABC about whether the corporation was aware of Moran's connections with the Iraqi National Congress, the Rendon group and Rendon's links with American intelligence agencies and the Pentagon.
ABC News and current affairs director Max Uechtritz replied that the ABC knew Moran had obtained the al Haideri interview because of his contacts in the Iraqi National Congress. But did not respond to the specific questions about Moran's links with other organisations. He said they knew him only as a photojournalist who had worked for various reputable media organisations
Among al Haideri's claims, secret labs, storage sites for chemical and biological weapons in residential areas, one of them underneath a Baghdad hospital and other sites located in Saddam's Presidental compounds.
Al-Haideri says circumstances involving his family in Iraq prevent him being interviewed for this program but he's told 'Dateline' he has the evidence to substantiate his claims.
Al-Haideri is adamant he's been telling the truth and says the evidence he saw was probably moved.
SCOTT RITTER: Well gosh how do you move an underground facility? I mean I'd like to see that. Al-Haideri seems to be a very clever engineer. Maybe he could demonstrate how you move this underground facility. Could you demonstrate how you move a well. Could he demonstrate how you move a building with concrete, impregnated concrete. Hes talking about things he simply does not know about and it's the classic defence of the fabricator to say, "Well they're moving it, theyer hiding it. That was what Ahmed Chalabi always told us every time we uncovered his data to be inaccurate. He said Well they changed scenes, they're too clever for us, theyre too fast, they respond too quickly. No Ahmed, no Mr al-Haideri, you're just liars. And its time the world faced up to that, they're liars, they misled us and they have the blood of hundred of brave Americans and British service members on their hands and thousands of innocent Iraqis who perished in a war that didn't need to be fought.
In Washington, al-Haideri's claims were greeted with scepticism by many, including CIA and other intelligence analysts. But the defector's claims found their way to the top.
ZAAB SETHNA: The information that al Haideri provided went directly to President Bush, it went to Tony Blair, might even have gone to PM Howard as a member of the coalition.
The information that al Haideri provided was very very significant. In terms of proof that Iraq was building weapons of mass destruction. And then the other information al Haideri provided was targeting information for the coalition, because he knew the locations. He knew 300 different facilities that the Iraqis were using for weapons of mass destruction. He told us amazing things.
Amazing or not, the claims were precisely what the White House wanted to hear, al Haideri got top billing on this report released to back the launch of Operation Iraqi Freedom. Scott Ritter says the engineer simply couldn't have known what he claimed.
SCOTT RITTER: Well, you know, how does he know this? This is a man who apparently did everything. This was the most valuable man in Iraq.
Robert Baer is a former CIA Middle East specialist of more than 20 years standing, many of them spent in Iraq.
In 'See No Evil', his controversial book detailing his career with the CIA, he describes extensive dealings with the INC and it's head Ahmed Chalabi on behalf of the CIA.
ROBERT BAER, FORMER CIA AGENT: He would find somebody who walked out of Iraq with some sensational story and he repackaged for what we call these guys, defectors, and made sure the defector found media outlets and anybody who was off message, Chalabi didn't send on. He was running in this railroad of people out of Iraq who were talking about weapons of mass destruction.
Obviously if an officer came out, who said, "Listen all the stuff was destroyed," He didn't have to take it out of the country in order to tell the story.
SCOTT RITTER: Mr al Haideris evidence is a perfect example of the kind of garbage that was disseminated by Ahmed Chalabi.
First of all let's take a look at the process of how this wonderful defector, whose informing was widely quoted by George W. Bush in the state of the union address and his presentation to the Security Council on September 12 2002, incorporated into Tony Blair's dossier about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.
Let's see how this information got to be, you know, portrayed so prominently.
The process that took al-Haideri's story to the White House and the international media began in Bangkok after he escaped from Iraq. Zaab Sethna says that when they approached the Australian embassy in Bangkok and immigration officials in Canberra to push his case they were told to wait in line.
They came up with a plan. An exclusive interview with the exiled engineer would suit the INC's purposes of spreading the anti-Saddam message and would boost his chances of obtaining an Australian visa.
ZAAB SETHNA: We got the idea that if we raised his profile in Australia and let people, let the Australian people and the government know how important, how significant he is and what a target of Saddam he is, that this might help his case, that they might want to give him asylum more quickly as a special case because he really was under great threat from Saddam.
So, I knew that Paul had an agreement with Australian television, he was a freelancer but he did have an agreement with ABC that he would file stories for them. So I rang him up, he was in Bahrain where he lived. I said, "Are you interested, I think I've got something that you would be interested in. I think you can sell this to ABC. I think it's an amazing story to tell, and it so happens this family is in Adelaide, your favourite city. He came along to Bangkok and filmed the only television interview with al-Haideri.
While the story may have had news value at the time, the line between propaganda and journalism is a murky one.
The CIA, the Rendon group, Paul Moran's friends, his family and most of those who worked with him now refuse to talk about his activities. But at the time of his funeral, some of them did.
They told Adelaide's 'Advertiser' newspaper that Moran had led something of a James Bond life style. How he'd trained Iraqi dissidents to covertly film military activities. That he was highly regarded in US political circles. And that he'd produced announcements for the Pentagon as part of its current Iraq campaign. And according to Zaab Sethna, Paul Moran did continue to work with both the INC and with Rendon.
ZAAB SETHNA: When the Iraq national congress had need for a television professional we would hire Paul because he has a freelance cameraman and TV producer but by that time there was no CIA or US government connection and I believe same with the Rendon group. They continued to use Paul for projects, even as boring and mundane as corporate film, you know, a company wants to make a video for its employees on some new machinery. They hire a company like the Rendon group to make the film. The Rendon group would hire Paul. He continued to work with the Rendon group over the years.
And Rendon's influence remains extensive.
ROBERT BAER: John Rendon has an enormous contract with the Pentagon until today. He's got easy access, go to the Pentagon any time he wants. He was responsible for selling this war and selling the peace if you like.
SCOTT RITTER: Their contracts with the US government classified in nature and they're not even allowed to acknowledge a relationship between their group and the US government, but I think what you're seeing is that the need for United States government to turn to commercial enterprises like the Rendon group to do the kind of lying and distortion of truth in terms of peddling disinformation to the media that the government normally can't do for itself.
ROBERT BAER: They are all over the war. Every time you talk to anybody in the government, that's had conference calls on the Iraq war, they tell me that Rendon is on the conference calls that involve all the government agencies involved in the war.
Whatever possible relationships Paul Moran had with Rendon and the American propaganda campaign, in Northern Iraq where he did much of his work Paul Moran is remembered with gratitude by the people there.
Indeed, Kurdish leader Barham Saleh says there are plans to build a statue in his honour.
BARHAM SALEM, KURDISH LEADER: Paul Moran will live on in our hearts. As a friend of the Kurdish people, as somebody who wanted to do a good job telling the story of my people, but he is also a hero because he wanted the world to know about the evil of terrorism.
Paul Moran may well have worked for a good cause. But if there was a professional conflict of interest, should he have been engaged as a journalist?
Despite the growing controversy over the way information and intelligence was used in the build up to the Iraq war, the ABC has no qualms about its relationship with the late Paul Moran.
In response to 'Dateline's questions, the corporation said: We do not believe we were used by anyone, the story was tested with an authoritative source and presented in an unvarnished manner,
Moran they added carried out his occasional ABC duties without fear or favour. There is no suggestion that there was anything wrong with the ABC buying the story or in the way it was packaged by its own journalists and presenters.
The key question that the ABC declines to respond to is whether anybody within the organisation had any knowledge of Paul Moran's contractual relationships with Rendon, the INC or any other conduits for American intelligence or military agencies. Nor will it indicate if any such internal inquiries have been made since his death.
The manipulation of truth that paved the path to war in Iraq didn't just flow through politicians' speeches. It flowed far more effectively through major media outlets.
And this man was one of their key sources.
When Adnan Ihsan Saeed al Haideri fled Iraq in 2001 he had quite a story to tell. He was an engineer he claimed, used by Saddam to build specialised bunkers and other facilities for chemical, biological and nuclear weapons research.
ADNAN IHSAN SAEED AL HAIDERI, ENGINEER: Inside of these buildings, I did the finishing off that they needed for clean area, antibacterial resistance to bacteria and this just for chemicals.
He brought out documents too, plans specifications, locations and contracts.
Al Haideri told his debriefers he'd helped build or had seen hundreds of sites throughout Iraq.
ADNAN IHSAN SAEED AL HAIDERI: This place is not normal place, not for normal chemicals. The exhausting is not normal.
Although al Haideri's claim would be widely circulated the man himself was not made available to the media in general. His story was given to just two outlets.
Handpicked by the American backed exiled Iraqi opposition movement, the Iraqi National Congress or INC. The print story was given to 'New York Times' reporter Judith Miller.
She's now been criticised after revelations that most of her stories about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, a topic upon which she built a reputation as a specialist, came from one source, the leader of the IMC, Ahmed Chalabi.
The chosen television outlet was ABC TV in Australia through freelance cameraman and journalist Paul Moran. Moran was later killed in Iraq while working for the ABC.
Now it has been revealed that Moran worked extensively for the INC and for a company working for the American intelligence employed to spread anti-Saddam propaganda and al Haideri's story certainly hit that mark.
After his debut on ABC Television and in the 'New York Times' al Haideri went into hiding reportedly given protection by the CIA. His claims were reprinted and produced by dozens of media outlets throughout world. Greatly influencing both public and government opinion.
But coalition forces have yet to find any sign of the numerous facilities detailed by al Haideri. This story is about how al Haideri's claims were manipulated into the mainstream media.
SCOTT RITTER, FORMER US ARMS INSPECTOR: I've always said the media is as culpable as the government is in this build-up to the war. Allegations about me being a spy are ridiculous.
Former weapons inspector Scott Ritter has been embroiled in controversy since weapons inspectors were expelled from Iraq in 1998.
Ritter's ties to some Iraqis and his outspoken opposition to the rationale for war antagonised the Bush Administration, to the extent that some leading figures branded him a traitor.
But it wasn't just the government that Ritter attacked. Throughout the lead-up to the war, he consistently claimed that the media were being played in the hands of Iraqi exiles and the American government.
SCOTT RITTER: The media wanted a sexy headline, a sexy story. Here's a man telling a sexy story. Suddenly he's featured on Australian newscasts, American newscasts.
The man who helped orchestrate publicity for al-Haideri was Zaab Sethna, media spokesman for the INC. Sethna spent more than a decade working in and around Iraq. Much of it with his Australian mate Paul Moran.
After the INC helped al Haideri escape from Iraq, it was Paul Moran who was called in to do the one television interview that would go around the world.
ZAAB SETHNA, INC SPOKESMAN: We got him out and it turned out that he was probably the single most significant defector who came out of Iraq in terms of his knowledge of the Iraqi weapons program. It was a huge worldwide scoop for Paul. And it was very significant bit of information.
15 months after Moran broke the al-Haideri story, he was killed here at Sulymania in Iraq, just near the Iranian border.
After his death, key information was revealed about some of his connections.
His funeral in Adelaide 10 days later was a major event. Condolences, political figures, friends, work mates and relatives arriving in the southern capital from all over the world.
Among the faces in the Adelaide crowd that day, was a shadowy figure called John Rendon. One of Washington's most powerful and influential spin doctors engaged by the Pentagon and the CIA to disseminate anti-Saddam propaganda. He'd found time at the height of the Iraqi campaign to attend a funeral half a world away.
ZAAB SETHNA: I think that on both personal and professional level Paul was deeply admired and loved by the people at the Rendon group.
John Rendon's Washington DC-based Rendon group boasts an extensive international client list. Including several governments, and connections that go to the very seat of the Bush Administration's power. Many of the group's contracts are classified, its public relations and media campaigns in 80 countries are both overt and covert.
Rendon's work for the Pentagon and the CIA is estimated to have earned the company close to $200 million in US government contracts over the last decade.
Paul Moran was one of the company's favourite foot soldiers, completing numerous media assignments for the group in several countries over the years including Bosnia and the Middle East. The relationship began around the time of the first Gulf War.
ZAAB SETHNA: When I first met Paul we were working for the government of Kuwait. That ended after Kuwait was liberated by the Americans and then the Rendon group came back us to.
We weren't employees we were on contract. The Rendon group came back to us and said, "We now have a contract to bureaucracy, to kind of do anti-Saddam propaganda on behalf of the Iraqi opposition."
So, there was some radio, some television, there was like a travelling human rights exhibition around the world to show Saddam's human rights violations. There was sending out press releases, kind of standard public relations. What we didnt know, what the Rendon group didn't tell us, was in fact it was the CIA that had hired them to do this work so we hired on...
According to Zaab Sethna, that particular CIA contract ended a few months later. But Moran's ongoing connection with Rendon raises many questions, in particular, for the ABC.
'Dateline' put a series of questions to the ABC about whether the corporation was aware of Moran's connections with the Iraqi National Congress, the Rendon group and Rendon's links with American intelligence agencies and the Pentagon.
ABC News and current affairs director Max Uechtritz replied that the ABC knew Moran had obtained the al Haideri interview because of his contacts in the Iraqi National Congress. But did not respond to the specific questions about Moran's links with other organisations. He said they knew him only as a photojournalist who had worked for various reputable media organisations
Among al Haideri's claims, secret labs, storage sites for chemical and biological weapons in residential areas, one of them underneath a Baghdad hospital and other sites located in Saddam's Presidental compounds.
Al-Haideri says circumstances involving his family in Iraq prevent him being interviewed for this program but he's told 'Dateline' he has the evidence to substantiate his claims.
Al-Haideri is adamant he's been telling the truth and says the evidence he saw was probably moved.
SCOTT RITTER: Well gosh how do you move an underground facility? I mean I'd like to see that. Al-Haideri seems to be a very clever engineer. Maybe he could demonstrate how you move this underground facility. Could you demonstrate how you move a well. Could he demonstrate how you move a building with concrete, impregnated concrete. Hes talking about things he simply does not know about and it's the classic defence of the fabricator to say, "Well they're moving it, theyer hiding it. That was what Ahmed Chalabi always told us every time we uncovered his data to be inaccurate. He said Well they changed scenes, they're too clever for us, theyre too fast, they respond too quickly. No Ahmed, no Mr al-Haideri, you're just liars. And its time the world faced up to that, they're liars, they misled us and they have the blood of hundred of brave Americans and British service members on their hands and thousands of innocent Iraqis who perished in a war that didn't need to be fought.
In Washington, al-Haideri's claims were greeted with scepticism by many, including CIA and other intelligence analysts. But the defector's claims found their way to the top.
ZAAB SETHNA: The information that al Haideri provided went directly to President Bush, it went to Tony Blair, might even have gone to PM Howard as a member of the coalition.
The information that al Haideri provided was very very significant. In terms of proof that Iraq was building weapons of mass destruction. And then the other information al Haideri provided was targeting information for the coalition, because he knew the locations. He knew 300 different facilities that the Iraqis were using for weapons of mass destruction. He told us amazing things.
Amazing or not, the claims were precisely what the White House wanted to hear, al Haideri got top billing on this report released to back the launch of Operation Iraqi Freedom. Scott Ritter says the engineer simply couldn't have known what he claimed.
SCOTT RITTER: Well, you know, how does he know this? This is a man who apparently did everything. This was the most valuable man in Iraq.
Robert Baer is a former CIA Middle East specialist of more than 20 years standing, many of them spent in Iraq.
In 'See No Evil', his controversial book detailing his career with the CIA, he describes extensive dealings with the INC and it's head Ahmed Chalabi on behalf of the CIA.
ROBERT BAER, FORMER CIA AGENT: He would find somebody who walked out of Iraq with some sensational story and he repackaged for what we call these guys, defectors, and made sure the defector found media outlets and anybody who was off message, Chalabi didn't send on. He was running in this railroad of people out of Iraq who were talking about weapons of mass destruction.
Obviously if an officer came out, who said, "Listen all the stuff was destroyed," He didn't have to take it out of the country in order to tell the story.
SCOTT RITTER: Mr al Haideris evidence is a perfect example of the kind of garbage that was disseminated by Ahmed Chalabi.
First of all let's take a look at the process of how this wonderful defector, whose informing was widely quoted by George W. Bush in the state of the union address and his presentation to the Security Council on September 12 2002, incorporated into Tony Blair's dossier about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.
Let's see how this information got to be, you know, portrayed so prominently.
The process that took al-Haideri's story to the White House and the international media began in Bangkok after he escaped from Iraq. Zaab Sethna says that when they approached the Australian embassy in Bangkok and immigration officials in Canberra to push his case they were told to wait in line.
They came up with a plan. An exclusive interview with the exiled engineer would suit the INC's purposes of spreading the anti-Saddam message and would boost his chances of obtaining an Australian visa.
ZAAB SETHNA: We got the idea that if we raised his profile in Australia and let people, let the Australian people and the government know how important, how significant he is and what a target of Saddam he is, that this might help his case, that they might want to give him asylum more quickly as a special case because he really was under great threat from Saddam.
So, I knew that Paul had an agreement with Australian television, he was a freelancer but he did have an agreement with ABC that he would file stories for them. So I rang him up, he was in Bahrain where he lived. I said, "Are you interested, I think I've got something that you would be interested in. I think you can sell this to ABC. I think it's an amazing story to tell, and it so happens this family is in Adelaide, your favourite city. He came along to Bangkok and filmed the only television interview with al-Haideri.
While the story may have had news value at the time, the line between propaganda and journalism is a murky one.
The CIA, the Rendon group, Paul Moran's friends, his family and most of those who worked with him now refuse to talk about his activities. But at the time of his funeral, some of them did.
They told Adelaide's 'Advertiser' newspaper that Moran had led something of a James Bond life style. How he'd trained Iraqi dissidents to covertly film military activities. That he was highly regarded in US political circles. And that he'd produced announcements for the Pentagon as part of its current Iraq campaign. And according to Zaab Sethna, Paul Moran did continue to work with both the INC and with Rendon.
ZAAB SETHNA: When the Iraq national congress had need for a television professional we would hire Paul because he has a freelance cameraman and TV producer but by that time there was no CIA or US government connection and I believe same with the Rendon group. They continued to use Paul for projects, even as boring and mundane as corporate film, you know, a company wants to make a video for its employees on some new machinery. They hire a company like the Rendon group to make the film. The Rendon group would hire Paul. He continued to work with the Rendon group over the years.
And Rendon's influence remains extensive.
ROBERT BAER: John Rendon has an enormous contract with the Pentagon until today. He's got easy access, go to the Pentagon any time he wants. He was responsible for selling this war and selling the peace if you like.
SCOTT RITTER: Their contracts with the US government classified in nature and they're not even allowed to acknowledge a relationship between their group and the US government, but I think what you're seeing is that the need for United States government to turn to commercial enterprises like the Rendon group to do the kind of lying and distortion of truth in terms of peddling disinformation to the media that the government normally can't do for itself.
ROBERT BAER: They are all over the war. Every time you talk to anybody in the government, that's had conference calls on the Iraq war, they tell me that Rendon is on the conference calls that involve all the government agencies involved in the war.
Whatever possible relationships Paul Moran had with Rendon and the American propaganda campaign, in Northern Iraq where he did much of his work Paul Moran is remembered with gratitude by the people there.
Indeed, Kurdish leader Barham Saleh says there are plans to build a statue in his honour.
BARHAM SALEM, KURDISH LEADER: Paul Moran will live on in our hearts. As a friend of the Kurdish people, as somebody who wanted to do a good job telling the story of my people, but he is also a hero because he wanted the world to know about the evil of terrorism.
Paul Moran may well have worked for a good cause. But if there was a professional conflict of interest, should he have been engaged as a journalist?
Despite the growing controversy over the way information and intelligence was used in the build up to the Iraq war, the ABC has no qualms about its relationship with the late Paul Moran.
In response to 'Dateline's questions, the corporation said: We do not believe we were used by anyone, the story was tested with an authoritative source and presented in an unvarnished manner,
Moran they added carried out his occasional ABC duties without fear or favour. There is no suggestion that there was anything wrong with the ABC buying the story or in the way it was packaged by its own journalists and presenters.
The key question that the ABC declines to respond to is whether anybody within the organisation had any knowledge of Paul Moran's contractual relationships with Rendon, the INC or any other conduits for American intelligence or military agencies. Nor will it indicate if any such internal inquiries have been made since his death.