BEIRUT HOSTAGE CRISIS

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00552R000303570056-4
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: July 26, 2010
• Sequence Number: 56
• Publication Date: June 30, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/07/26: CIA-RDP90-00552R000303570056-4 STAT
NBC -- MEET THE PRESS
3 i 7i k / 9!',S'
Correspondents: Marvin Kalb, Garrick Utley.
u ject--Wel ut Hostage Crisis
Guest: Jeane Kirkpatrick
Kalb: What would be the likely Israeli reaction?
Kirkpatrick: The Israeli government will be enormously relieved that the
hostages are in fact released and safely out of Beirut and their captors'
hands.... The Israeli government is confronted with an interesting question
-- how to prevent the hijacking from changing the course they had already
decided on....
Utley: How would you describe the state of relations between the U. S.
and Israel?
Kirkpatrick: I think the state of relations is excellent. I don't think that
the misun erstanding has really existed between the two governments.
Kalb: (How do you feel) about a good will gesture for the Israeli
government?
Kirkpatrick: (This crisis) was an unprovoked act and nobody ought to
provide any sort of good will gestures to anyone who has been involved in
that kidnapping and hijacking. That is not an appropriate basis for good
will gestures. I think the Israeli government can perfectly appropriately
release those prisoners as they always intended to do.
Utley: What do you think about retaliation?
Kirkpatrick: I do not think that's an appropriate subject for discussion at
this point.
Utley: What should be the proper course of action in the future?
Kirkpatrick: The appropriate course of action is to take a good many
determine preventive actions to make as sure as we humanly can that
Americans will not be hijacked and American carriers will be safe, and to
make that compulsory, really, and also to make very clear to everyone in
the world that the United States does not submit to blackmail and does not
accept mistreatment of American citizens lightly. We cannot and we do
not, as the President has made clear.
Guests: Senator Patrick Leahy and Samuel Lewis.
Kalb: Is there a need for emergency legislation to provide the funding to
protect U. S. embassies and installations all over the world?
Leahy: I think there is a need to protect the installations, and especially
in some of the obvious critical places. I think there's even a greater
need, though, to improve our intelligence and to be able to alert ourselves
to when these terrorist attacks are going to happen and to be able to try
to stop them before they happen.
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/07/26: CIA-RDP90-00552R000303570056-4
 Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/07/26: CIA-RDP90-00552R000303570056-4
Monday, July 1, 1985 -- B-14
MEET THE PRESS (continued)
Utley: How good is our intelligence in the Middle East?
111 Leahy: I think it is getting better. It is still behind where it should be
but it is improving.
Utley: This whole hostage affair has now been resolved within about two
weeks. Was this perhaps unusual?
Lewis: ... Certainly the fact that the Israeli government had long planned
trelease these detainees as soon as the situation in South Lebanon calmed
down, and they'd brought no charges against any of them, and had
announced it publicly, made it manageable in a way that other such crises
have not been.
Kalb : What is really going on?
Lewis: ... Certainly, there are tacit understandings between good and
close se friendly governments like Israel and the U. S. which don't lend
themselves to being announced as agreements, and there are a lot of
informal channels that governments can talk to each other through at high
levels without it becoming a formal, public exchange.
Kalb: Can we get (the seven other Americans) back?
Leahy: ... President Assad could if he wanted to expend the political
cape at 1, or whatever, bring enough pressure to release them, and the
question is whether he will.
Lewis: I think there's a complicated problem for Assad because of his
relationship with Iran and the lack of direct control over the precise
captors of these people, but the area they're in certainly is under the
control of Syrian forces. It's risky to try to get them out by military
means for him; they could be killed in the process. But I believe that if
Assad expends enough political pressure on the Hezbollah, he'll get them.
Utley: What are the real dangers that this terrorism could come into the
United States and happen here?
Leahy: The danger's almost overwhelming that it will come to the United
t~ ates and will happen here.... And we have to take steps. We have to
improve the counter-terrorism abilities of the FBI... because as we bring
pressure in the Middle East -- and we have to bring pressure against
these terrorists -- we have to be able to strike at them before they strike
at us. But as we do that, they're going to increase their efforts to
export it to the United States, we're going to face it, and we've got to be
a lot better prepared than we are today.
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/07/26: CIA-RDP90-00552R000303570056-4