STILL MISSING IN LEBANON

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP91-00587R000100200096-6
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: August 30, 2011
• Sequence Number: 96
• Publication Date: July 22, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/08/31: CIA-RDP91-00587R000100200096-6
ARTICLE A P Ef, NEW .YORK TIMES
WI PAG , 22,..july 1985
Still Missing in Lebanon
What is the difference between 39 and 7? Fickle
media and an indifferent public.
With no more Shiites clamoring for television
interviews and President Reagan engaged in an-
other kind of struggle, the seven Americans kid-
napped and imprisoned in Lebanon for weeks and
months have disappeared again from the nation's
consciousness.
Sure we care, if reminded. But we seem not to
know how to strike a balance between the massive
obsession with the 39 T.W.A. hostages and persist-
ent concern for the much longer suffering of the
seven.
There is tidier drama in the story of a random
group of passengers, who could be any of us,
plucked out of the air and thrust into the eye of an
alien political storm. But the still-missing Amer-
icans are, if anything, more innocent: They were
voluntarily putting themselves at risk in Lebanon to
Help its people, or to promote America's under-
standing of their condition. And they are now at
even greater risk, held by faceless captors who
seem determined to outdo all other Lebanese in
anti-Americanism.
FILE ONLY
William Buckley, a political officer at the
American Embassy in Beirut, disappeared 16
months ago. The Rev. Benjamin Weir, a Presbyte-
rian minister, was kidnapped more than 14 months
ago. The librarian at Beirut's American University,
Peter Kilburn, has been missing nearly eight
months; the director of the university's hospital,
David Jacobsen, for two months; the dean of agri-
culture, Thomas Sutherland, for five weeks. The
Rev. Lawrence Martin Jenco, a Roman Catholic
priest, was snatched more than six months ago;
Terry Anderson, the chief Middle East correspond-
ent of The Associated Press, more than four months
ago.
The State Department has been imploring Syria
and the Shiites led by Nabih Berri to work as hard
for their release as they did for the T.W.A. hostages.
And an Egyptian official hinted last week that a deal
might be possible soon.
But why was all America swept off to the alleys
of Beirut and the homes of the grieving relatives of
the 39, while hardly anyone now mentions the
seven? At least let the question haunt us for a while.
STAT
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/08/31: CIA-RDP91-00587R000100200096-6