CNN Chief Says He Offered to Quit Over Sarin Story

CNN chief executive Tom Johnson told colleagues Monday that he had twice submitted his resignation because of the nerve gas story that the network had to retract, but was rebuffed each time by CNN founder Ted Turner.

Johnson also told his staff in a conference call that he is taking another look at possible punishment for Peter Arnett, the Pulitzer Prize-winning correspondent on the story, according to several participants in the call. Johnson said he came close to firing Arnett but reprimanded him instead, in part because of his courage in reporting from Baghdad during the Persian Gulf War.

Arnett called in during a second conference call, declaring that “I contributed not one comma” to the story. He said he had helped build CNN’s reputation and was “not going to let my reputation go down the tubes” over the controversy. He said he was “shocked” to hear his job is on the line.

Arnett said he was reporting from Iraq during much of the eight-month investigation into allegations that U.S. troops used deadly sarin gas in Laos in 1970, targeting U.S. defectors.

Johnson told his troops that Richard Davis, who now oversees CNN’s Washington talk shows, has been named executive vice president for standards and practices, an office created in the wake of last week’s apology for the June 7 report on “NewsStand: CNN & Time.”

The intensity of the turmoil at the Atlanta-based network was reflected in the unusually personal criticism several CNN staffers made of their bosses during the first conference call with dozens of staffers from the network’s bureaus. Johnson and CNN/USA President Rick Kaplan sought to take full responsibility for the fiasco.

Both Johnson, a former Los Angeles Times publisher who once worked in President Johnson’s White House, and Kaplan, who was brought in last summer after years as a producer at ABC, reviewed the story before it aired.