'WSJ' Reporter Confirms Break from Baghdad Was Planned in Advance

By: Joe Strupp Farnaz Fassihi, The Wall Street Journal reporter whose private e-mail to friends lamenting the dangers to reporters in Iraq and criticizing the Bush administration's war policy has sparked an ongoing controversy, dismissed speculation that her current vacation is some kind of response to that episode.

"The rotation schedule for every news organization in Iraq is 6-8 weeks in and 3-4 weeks out. I am not an exception," Fassihi told E&P in an e-mail Monday. "I was there 8 weeks and had long planned to take my one month out in October and bought my vacation tickets months in advance."

Fassihi, in her e-mail to E&P, said she never meant for the note, which was sent to friends, to become public. "This was a private correspondence that has been thrust into the public domain without my consent," she wrote.

Editors at the Journal have not specified if Fassihi would be barred from covering Iraq in the future, but stressed that her time off had been planned prior to the e-mail. "The decision has not made about what she will be doing" upon her return, said Journal spokesman Bob Christie. "She is the Middle East correspondent, so she can go anywhere she wants. She has been in Iran and Saudi Arabia since the war began."

Paul Steiger, managing editor of the Journal, released a statement saying "Ms. Fassihi's private opinions have in no way distorted her coverage, which has been a model of intelligent and courageous reporting, and scrupulous accuracy and fairness."