“Bad Reception”

by Patrick Lang (bio below)

“Bad Reception” by Art Levine in “American Prospect.”

[Kenneth] Tomlinson gives particularly high marks to Mouafac Harb, the smooth-talking, Lebanese-born news director who rules both Alhurra (“The Free One”) and Sawa, for launching the networks so quickly. …

“There is no oversight,” says Hishem Melham, the Washington bureau chief of the Lebanese daily newspaper As-Safir. “This guy [Harb] hires and fires and sets salaries on his own, and he’ll continue to do it as long as he feels protected by Norm Pattiz and Kenneth Tomlinson.”

Mamoun Fandy, a senior fellow in Middle East policy at Rice University’s Baker Institute, says that the rules governing the networks have made little difference, and that MBN is operating “runaway stations that need to be brought under control.” He also says, “Alhurra looks like the Middle Eastern states it wants to change: It’s run by a small dictator who is totally corrupt” — although he and other critics concede that they know of no criminal wrongdoing.

In certain respects Harb resembles Ahmad Chalabi, back in the days when the Iraqi buccaneer was the favorite of American officialdom. He spins the story of the Arabic services’ success to legislators and reporters, charms political patrons in both political parties, and offers a product that at least looks slick and professional to Americans who don’t understand Arabic. Like Chalabi, the broadcasting potentate lives well on U.S. largesse, although neither Tomlinson’s board nor Harb’s spokesman will disclose his taxpayer-funded salary. Sources at Alhurra say that he drives a Hummer (average price: $50,000), and according to real-estate records, he recently bought a $750,000 home in a well-to-do northern Virginia suburb.”

— Art Levine in “American Prospect.” (Emphases mine.) (Photo #1 is from the PBS Newshour in 2003. Photo #2 is from a “Justice and Terrorism” conference in September 2005 at the UK’s Chatham House.)

For the record, I know Harb. In my opinion, he is a secularized Lebanese Shia who has been an American citizen for many years. He is extremely fluent in English and plausibly glib in the extreme.

He is a great deal like Chalabi although he speaks American English a great deal better than the great doctor of mathmatics. I have been told that he likes and admires Chalabi greatlly, and hopes and expects that Chalabi will someday rule (govern) Iraq. He knows Chalabi well. This is something he has in common with his friend, the VP.

Pat Lang

See also: my story here, “Old Habits Die Hard at ‘Al-Hurra,'” on Nov. 6, 2005. More links below:
Col. Patrick W. Lang (Ret.), a highly decorated retired senior officer of U.S. Military Intelligence and U.S. Army Special Forces, served as “Defense Intelligence Officer for the Middle East, South Asia and Terrorism” for the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) and was later the first Director of the Defense Humint Service. Col. Lang was the first Professor of the Arabic Language at the United States Military Academy at West Point. For his service in the DIA, he was awarded the “Presidential Rank of Distinguished Executive.” He is a frequent commentator on television and radio, including MSNBC’s Countdown with Keith Olbermann (interview), CNN and Wolf Blitzer’s Situation Room (interview), PBS’s Newshour, NPR’s “All Things Considered,” (interview), and more .

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“Drinking the Kool-Aid,” Middle East Policy Council Journal, Vol. XI, Summer 2004, No. 2