Game On: Has Jamil Hussein Been Found?

Bob Owens has written extensively on Jamilgate and the inability to locate one Jam(a)il Hussein, who was the AP source of information on more than 60 stories. Apparently someone managed to track Hussein down, and Jamil Hussein does indeed exist. Who found him? The Iraqi Interior Ministry:

The Interior Ministry acknowledged Thursday that an Iraqi police officer whose existence had been denied by the Iraqis and the U.S. military is in fact an active member of the force, and said he now faces arrest for speaking to the media.

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 captain, whose full name is Jamil Gholaiem Hussein, was one of the sources for an AP story in late November about the burning and shooting of six people during a sectarian attack at a Sunni mosque.

The U.S. military and the Iraqi Interior Ministry raised the doubts about Hussein in questioning the veracity of the AP's initial reporting on the incident, and the Iraqi ministry suggested that many news organization were giving a distorted, exaggerated picture of the conflict in Iraq. Some Internet bloggers spread and amplified these doubts, accusing the AP of having made up Hussein's identity in order to disseminate false news about the war.

That's actually good news. There's the potential to actually question a live body on the issues he raised in more than 60 stories, and in particular the incidents that caught Curt at Flopping Aces' attention.

This is where things get interesting. The AP is going to have to go to a lineup to identify Hussein because he's currently being held by the Iraqis because he may have violated the rules:

Khalaf said Thursday that with the arrest of Hussein for breaking police regulations against talking to reporters, the AP would be called to identify him in a lineup as the source of its story.

Should the AP decline to assist in the identification, Khalaf said, the case against Hussein would be dropped. He also said there were no plans to pursue action against the AP should it decline.

If the AP fingers the person of interest as their source, we can move on to questioning him over those other stories. If the AP says that he's not the guy, the story deepens. If the AP refuses to assist in the identification, that puts the AP in a tough spot since they can't claim that they're trying to protect the identity of Hussein - he was a named source.

I've vacillated between wondering whether the guy exists and that there was someone who was going by that name pushing bogus information because they thought that is what the AP wanted to hear in its stories. Now that Hussein is known to exist, we can hopefully get some answers as to those stories.

Allah notes the following:

I speculated about a mix up due to the conventions of Arabic names back on November 30th, mainly because Khalaf himself had initially been included on Centcom’s list of suspect sources. But that got eaten up by the other (still outstanding) questions: How is it that Hussein was able to comment on attacks all over Baghdad, including some far away from his precinct? How come the AP dropped the detail about four mosques being burned when it was challenged after their first report? Why couldn’t Bob Owens find corroborating stories from other media outlets on so many incidents sourced to Hussein? And why weren’t Armed Liberal’s sources, Eason Jordan’s sources, and Michelle’s sources collectively able to find this guy? I said last week in writing about Zombie’s response to HRW re: the Israeli ambulance attack that “I’ve reached the point where, when one of these blogstorms kicks up, I half-hope the media will produce the smoking gun that proves them right, just so we can have a little faith that they’re covering sensational incidents with due diligence.” Well, here’s the smoking gun. And while I have more faith now in the AP, I have less faith in the certainty of any information I get from Iraq. It took six weeks, with multiple people checking, to confirm the mere existence of a guy whose name, rank, and location were publicly known — and the issue would still be in doubt if Khalaf hadn’t come clean.

Michelle Malkin, who's heading to Iraq to pursue some of the issues arising from Jamilgate weighs in as well.

Don Surber notes that it took six weeks to produce Hussein. Now, it's time to verify.

Curt, who broke the story initially, only wants to see the truth come out. Finding Hussein is only part of that quest.

Others blogging: Bill's Bites, Dean's World, Ed Driscoll, Patterico, Ace of Spades.

UPDATE:
Others blogging and weighing in with their opinion on the significance of the find and what it means for the rest of the issues hanging over the AP's reporting based on Jamil Hussein: Sand in the Hourglass, Powerline, Media Lies, The Anchoress, Bring It On!, The Jawa Report, and The Bullwinkle Blog offers up something on a lighter note. So does Pajamas Media, which notes that Jamil Hussein has set up a blog.

Technorati: fauxtography, jamil hussein, journalism.