Iraq Allows Jesse Jackson to Visit as a ‘TV Journalist’

The Rev. Jesse Jackson today said that Iraq has granted him permission to visit as a television journalist.

“We have received a communique making the visit possible,” Jackson said.

He said Iraq’s Foreign Ministry had granted the request from his new media company, “The Jesse Jackson Show.”

“We have not yet determined precisely the time, but just as other news organizations have pursued the story, and interviews and sources to get ground-level, first-hand information, we intend to pursue that,” Jackson said.

Jackson said the State Department had not given him any special guidance, nor had it discouraged him from the trip.

“The unclassified information that is available to all journalists is available to us as well.”

Jackson has stressed that he would be making the trip as a journalist for his new television talk show, not as a diplomat. Jackson traveled to Syria in 1984 to negotiate the release of a Navy pilot shot down over that country.

But Jackson said earlier this week that journalistic communications could encourage a diplomatic solution to the Persian Gulf crisis.

“The Jesse Jackson Show” is scheduled to begin next month, syndicated by Time-Warner Inc., which Jackson said would help underwrite the trip.