The executive, Eason Jordan, said the plot was uncovered by Kurdish police, who arrested two men who identified themselves as Iraqi intelligence agents.

CNN has obtained and broadcast videotaped confessions in which the men said their superiors in Baghdad asked them to blow up a hotel in Erbil, Iraq, where CNN staff were staying.

The agents planned to attacks journalists with explosives, but they were arrested before they could carry out the plan, according to Jordan.

In their confessions, the men said they had been told that US Central Intelligence Agency operatives and Israeli agents were working out of the hotel, using CNN as a cover.

Jordan said he met last December with Iraqi Information Minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf to ask permission for the network to send journalists into areas of northern Iraq.

"He bristled, and he said, 'Mr. Jordan, if you send a CNN team there, the severest possible consequences will come to them,'" Jordan said.

SPACE.WIRE