BY RICHARD BOUCHER AND AYAD RAHIM
Monday, December 22, 2003 12:01 a.m. EST
(Editor's note: These letters are in response to Mr. Rahim's article about the Iraq Symphony Orchestra's visit to the U.S., which appeared Dec. 11.)
Richard Boucher, State Department spokesman:
Ayad Rahim writes about our failure to satisfy his demands during the historic and successful visit of the Iraq National Symphony Orchestra to Washington. I thought perhaps your readers might appreciate some facts on what we did and did not do.
We arranged for Mr. Rahim to meet members of the orchestra at a restricted briefing on Monday afternoon. We arranged for his attendance at the open dress rehearsal. We invited him to join the reception for the orchestra held after the concert. He had the opportunity to talk directly with members of the orchestra and to develop these contacts as any reporter might. We offered him access to the organizers of the concert and the trip. I admit there were hoops we did not jump through for him: We did not ask the orchestra to interrupt their rehearsal schedule to talk to Mr. Rahim or other reporters; we did not push the musicians to do any interviews they did not want to do; and we prevented Mr. Rahim from invading their private dinner and climbing aboard their bus for the evening tour of Washington.
More than 50 media outlets got the same (or less) access than Mr. Rahim and reported extensively on the visit of the orchestra. We are left wondering when Wall Street Journal readers will see a report on the orchestra.
Ayad Rahim responds:
Beginning more than a month before the Iraqi orchestra concert, I made clear, to an eventual total of 31 officials from six government agencies, my intention to write about the conditions of orchestra members and artists under Saddam and post-Saddam, and their hopes for the future. I emphasized to all my need to speak with orchestra members, for a Monday morning deadline, the concert being Tuesday. I only began to gain "access"--what little there was of it--after my deadline had passed. That happened only because my repeated, fruitless efforts had become known to this paper's editors and because their frustration had filtered back to the State Department.
The "restricted briefing" Mr. Boucher mentions was announced barely an hour before the fact, Monday afternoon, and was to last only 20 minutes. The Tuesday afternoon rehearsal I and 50 other media representatives attended had us more than 11 rows from the stage. The post-concert reception I was invited to at that time was a cocktail party. True, I was invited to speak with representatives of the U.S. government who had organized the trip, but they were not the people I had come to talk to--the Iraqi artists who had lived and worked under Saddam and who will have hopes and expectations for Iraqi arts and culture.
I simply asked to have a few minutes, here and there, to talk with one or two members of the orchestra. The result, I believe, speaks for itself.
