SAM JAFFE, 55, FORMER BROADCAST JOURNALIST

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000605740062-5
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: May 3, 2012
• Sequence Number: 62
• Publication Date: February 9, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/05/03: CIA-RDP90-00965R000605740062-5
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OBITUARIES
roadeas,t Journatist
By J.Y. Smith '
Washington Post Staff Writar
Mr. Jaffe never was formally
charged with espionage. But he
contended that U.S. intelligence
agencies had conspired to deprive
him of his livelihood on the ground
that he was a security risk. With the
help of the American Civil Liberties
Union, he sought relief in the courts
under the Freedom of Information
jaffe, 55, Former
Sam Jaffe, 55, a former Moscow
and Hong Kong bureau chief ford
ABC News who won,a court ruling;
last year clearing him of allegations'
that he had spied for the Soviet
Union, died of cancer Feb. 8 at his
home in Bethesda.
In the 1950s and 1960s, Mr.
Jaffe had a brilliant run as a news-
paper and broadcast journalist. His
:assignments took him from New
Nork to Siberia to the jungles of
Southeast Asia and they gained him
a standing enjoyed by few in his
profession. .
As it turned out, those promising
;times were an incongruous prelude
to the shadows that followed him
:afterwards. For most of the past 15
vears `Mr. Jaffe had engaged in a
tenacious and ultimately successful
effort to clear his name of insub-
stantial but persistent suggestions
by the FBI. and ClA that he was
a foreign agent., he origin o es e.,
claims-many of which. are still
classified "secret"-has never been
entirely explained.
"The last nine years have been'
incredible," Mr. Jaffe said in an in-
terview with The Washington Post
in 1979. "If it weren't for a few
friends, I would be broken .... I
say I am not a Russian spy. The FBI
says, 'Yeah, you are.' Well, I want
them to prove it. I want it all out in
the open. I want my family cleared.
If I should drop dead, I don't want
them living with this stigma. The
CIA has cleared me. Now I want the
M1 to o t e same.
Earlier, Mr. Jaffe's relations with
the FBI had been' cordial. In 1976
he disclosed that for several year's
beginning in the 1950s he had re-
ported to the agency on his Russian
contacts.
WASHINGTON POST
9 February 1985
Last year, U.S. District Judge
Barrington D. Parker issued an
opinion saying that the FBI had no
grounds for questioning Mr. Jaffe's
patriotism. In the late 1970s. the
CIA said in a letter to Mr. Jaffe that
its own investigation had shown him
to be a loyal citizen.
The years of dull effort that-it.
took to reach this result were in
stark contrast to Mr. Jaffe's earlier
career. A man who wa.s as cheerful
and disarming as he was resourceful
and aggressive, he had a.happy tal-
ent for being. in the right 'place at
the right time. In 1955, as a freelancer, he coy-
ered a conference of Third World
countries at Bandung, Indonesia,
and. interviewed the late Premier
Chou En-lai of China. As a corre-
spondent for CBS from 1955 to
1961, he covered the United Na-
tions and Soviet Premier Nikita S.
Khrushchev's visit to this country in
1959.
. ' In 1960, he went to Moscow for
CBS to cover the trial of Francis
Gary Powers; 'the pilot of the U-2
spy plane that was shot down over
the Soviet Union in May of that
year-The incident led to the can-
cellation of a summit meeting be-
tween Khrushchev and President
Dwight D. Eisenhower and was one
of the most publicized incidents of
the Cold War.
Mr. Jaffe was the only western
newsman. covering the trial who
was permitted by Soviet authorities
to sit on the same level of the court-
room as Powers. .He also was quar-
tered in the same hotel as Powers'
wife, who went to Moscow for the
proceedings. In the Moscow con-
text, these circumstances gave Mr.
Jaffe a slight but nonetheless impor-
tant. advantage over his competi
tors..;. ...:,:. .
In 1961, Mr. Jaffe.joined ABC
and went to Moscow to open its
first bureau there. He covered the
Cuban missile crisis in 1962, the
signing of the atmospheric nuclear
-test ban treaty, and the thaw in the
Cold 'War. He was among the
first-some said he was the very
first-to. report the ouster of
Khrushchev from politics on the
night of Oct. 14-15, 1964.
In '1965, -he was expelled from
the Soviet capital because of a re- I
port ABC carried from Washington
'saying that another shake-up in the
Soviet leadership was imminent. i
. By. then, Mr. Jaffe already had .:'
been assigned. to take over ABC's
Hong Kong Bureau. As the war in
Vietnam' deepened, he was sent
there and for his coverage he won a
prize "from the Overses Press Club.
in 1968, he was reassigned to the'
United States and moved to Wash-
ington. The following year he re-
.signed from ABC.
In 1972 and again in 1974, he
made trips to China as a freelance
correspondent for United Press In-
ternational and the Chicago
Tribune. He had a weekly talk show
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/05/03: CIA-RDP90-00965R000605740062-5