ARAB' S INTERVIEW STIRS NEWS DEBATE

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00552R000100010004-7
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: June 18, 2010
• Sequence Number: 4
• Publication Date: May 7, 1986
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/06/18: CIA-RDP90-00552R000100010004-7
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ARAB'S INTERVIEW
STIRS NEWS DEBATE
By PETER J. BOYER
An agreement made by NBC News to
keep secret the whereabouts of a ter-
rorist suspect in exchange for an inter-
view i
has stirred a debate within the
press and Government over the propri-
ety of the arrangement.
A State Department official, Robert
B. Oakley, said yesterday that the deal
made NBC an accomplice to terrorism.
On Monday night, the "NBC Nightly
News" broadcast a three-and-a-half-
minute interview with Mohammed
Abbas, who is under indictment in the
United States as the mastermind of a
hijacking in which Leon Klinghoffer,
an American, was killed last October.
He is also being sought by Italian au-
thorities.
Mr. Klinghoffer was a passenger
aboard the Italian cruise ship Achille
Lauro when it was hijacked in an
operation for which American authori-
ties say Mr. Abbas was responsible.
The State Department is offering a
$250,000 reward for information lead-
ing to the arrest and prosecution of Mr.
Abbas, who is also known as Abul
Abbas.
Location Not Disclosed
In the NBC interview, conducted by a
London-based correspondent, Henry
Champ, at an undisclosed location and
repeated yesterday on the NBC News
program "Today," Mr. Abbas threat-
ened actions against Americans within
United States borders and called Presi-
dent Reagan "enemy No. 1."
"Terrorism thrives on this kind of
publicity," a State Department spokes-
man, Charles E. Redman, said at a
briefing yesterday in Washington. He
added that such publicity "encourages
the terrorist activities we're all seek-
ing to deter."
But the harshest criticism against
NBC was not over the interview itself,
but over the deal for silence that NBC
made with Mr. Abbas.
In Tokyo, Mr. Oakley, head of the
State Department's counterterrorism
unit, said in an interview with Cable
News Network that when news organi-
zations make such arrangements, they
are saying, "We've become his accom-
plices in order to give him publicity."
'Pledge of Silence and Complicity'
"They take the pledge of silence and
complicity, which we think is rather
strange and unacceptable," Mr. Oak-
ley added.
Lawrence K. Grossman, president'of
NBC News, defended the interview and
said he was "dismayed" by the State
Department criticism. "I don't know
how State on the one hand criticizes the
Soviet Union for failing to report the
news they don't like about the nuclear
accident at Chernobyl and on the other
hand suggests that we refrain from
broadcasting news that we don't like,"
he said.
"Abbas is a newsmaker, and we went
after him hammer. and tong," Mr.
Grossman added. "Everybody went
after him. We'd like to interview all
leaders. I think it's important for the.
American.people to understand and, be
informed and to make their own judge-
ments."
There was disagreement in the press
over the propriety of NBC's arrange-
ment. Neither CBS nor ABC would
comment on the matter, although one
ABC executive said that network's
guidelines would have prevented such
an agreement.
But Charles Osgood, a CBS commen-
tator, strongly criticized NBC's report
in a radio broadcast yesterday morn-
ing. "The news media must be inde-
pendent, must not be government con-
trolled," Mr. Osgood said, "but per-
haps we should not let Abul Abbas and
his kind call the shots, either."
'Some Competitive Envy'
Timothy J. Russert, a vice president
of NBC News, said of such criticism, "I
do sense some competitive envy at
work here."
Mr. Russert said that "everybody
was attempting to get an interview
with Abbas, print and electronic jour-
nalists."
But Warren Hoge, foreign editor of
The New York Times, said The Times
had a recent opportunity to publish an
interview with Mr. Abbas, with similar
conditions attached and turned it down.
"Our feeling was that this was a man
who was being sought for murder and
that we simply would not go along with
an arrangement whereby we would not
disclose where he, was if we knew,
where he was," Mr. Hoge said. "Also,
the most important news was his
whereabouts. Not being able to say
where he was was just unacceptable."
George Cotliar, managing, editor of
The Los Angeles Times, said newspa-
per might agree not to disclose an indi-
vidual's Whereabouts under some cir-
cumstances, "but not in the case of
Abbas; I think that's a little much."
But Ed "Turner, executive vice presi-
dent of Cable News Network, defended
the NBC report. "If NBC can find him
and get his views, that's part of news-
gathering," Mr. Turner said. "We're
not in the business of reporting cham-
ber of commerce' handouts. I wish we
had him."
STAT
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/06/18: CIA-RDP90-00552R000100010004-7