Episode Details

In this investigative journalism episode of The MiddleGround Mic, 33-year senior CBS News and 60 Minutes Middle East producer Amjad Tadros pulls back the curtain to reveal the incredible stories viewers never saw on television. 

Amjad spent four years hunting “Curveball,” the Iraqi defector whose fabricated WMD claims became a key part of the case for the 2003 Iraq War. He located Osama bin Laden’s former bodyguard in Yemen over trips to KFC, helped expose Abu Ghraib, and survived a U.S. cruise missile strike in Baghdad before receiving a hospital visit from Saddam Hussein himself. 

He also explains why the aftermath of regime change in Iraq should serve as a warning when discussing Iran today, what Western audiences misunderstand about the Middle East, how warfare is changing through technology, and what three decades inside CBS taught him about today’s collapse in media trust. His message about modern journalism is simple: credibility is your only capital. Once you lose it, you’re done.

Amjad Tadros is the author of The Fixer: A Journalist’s Accidental Journey Through the Middle East.
📘 Get The Fixer: https://amjadtadros.com

☕ Buy me a cup of Coffee to keep powering the show: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/tmgm

CHAPTERS
0:00 Curveball: The WMD Source Behind the Iraq War
1:33 What a 60 Minutes “Fixer” Actually Does
5:53 Finding Bin Laden’s Bodyguard
9:04 The 4-Year Hunt for “Curveball”
11:16 What Americans Get Wrong About the Middle East
16:10 Putting a Human Face on Terrorism
19:25 How War Is Changing
21:14 From Engineer to War-Zone Producer
25:40 Why Yemen Matters
26:43 “Fake News” and the Media Trust Crisis
32:41 Abu Ghraib
34:43 The Fixer

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