No Press Cards for Spies
Date: 18 March 1996
An old debate has been needlessly revived in a report on intelligence sponsored by the Council on Foreign Relations. The report, prepared under the guidance of the project's director, Richard Haass, a former Government official, calls for reviewing "a number of legal and policy constraints" on clandestine operations dating to the 1970's. Those constraints chiefly concern the use of spies posing as reporters and the employment of bona fide reporters for intelligence missions. Both practices were all but banned then, and should be prohibited now. During the cold war, a pattern of informal collaboration developed between some journalists and the Central Intelligence Agency. Foreign correspondents and C.I.A. station chiefs sometimes swapped information. In 1976, a Senate committee headed by Frank Church learned that this practice had gotten out of hand. Fifty journalists at various times had been paid by the C.I.A., and many more were used as "unwitting sources."
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German Writer Sets Off Storm on Serbia
Date: 18 March 1996
By Stephen Kinzer
Stephen Kinzer
One of the most popular German-language writers of the postwar generation, Peter Handke, has stirred a sensation with a long essay defending Serbia against what he describes as a conspiracy of lazy and mendacious journalists who surf "from cliche to cliche." Leading intellectuals have bitterly denounced Mr. Handke's work, provoking a full-scale literary and political uproar. Nothing comparable has been seen here since a decade ago, when a handful of revisionist historians set off a storm of protest by suggesting that Germany did not bear sole guilt for World War II.
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The District Attorney And Publicity
Date: 17 March 1996
Your March 3 article ["Pirro Assailed Over News Breaks"] certainly pointed up the question of whether District Attorney Jeanine Pirro is overly aggressive in courting the media to the potential detriment of the rights of the accused in criminal cases. Another, admittedly less serious, issue concerns me as regards the District Attorney and publicity. At the time of jury deliberations in the O. J. Simpson trial, I saw Ms. Pirro during daytime hours on both CNN and WCBS-TV, and your article pointed out that she was on "Nightline" as well. It seemed to me that she was spending quite a bit of time not being Westchester D.A., rather opting for high-profile time on the air on a matter unrelated to her duties.
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JERSEY;The Spirit (Not So Blithe) of Bad News
Date: 17 March 1996
By Joe Sharkey
Joe Sharkey
THE Westfield Leader, locally owned for 106 years, was merely exercising its usual "reserve," as Carmelo Montalbano put it, in covering the recent death of its publisher and owner, Jeffrey L. Bauer. In a dignified obituary on page 9 of the March 7 issue, the weekly Leader told its 6,500 readers only that Mr. Bauer, 48, "died suddenly" three days earlier. Up the road, in the offices of The Westfield Record, The Leader's aggressive rival, the editors saw the story differently, quickly increasing the press run by 1,000 copies over the normal 4,800.
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World News Briefs;Austrian Urges Repeal Of Anti-Hapsburg Law
Date: 18 March 1996
Reuters
After the Hapsburg heir to Austria's throne defied a law barring the former imperial family from the country, President Thomas Klestil said in an interview published today that the law was anachronistic and that the aging sons of the last Emperor posed no threat to the country. The heir, Felix Hapsburg-Lothringen, crossed the border and held a news conference a week ago to demonstrate defiance of the law.
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News Analysis;Death Penalty Raises Issue Of Obligation Of Prosecutor
Date: 17 March 1996
By Jan Hoffman
Jan Hoffman
The excruciating dilemma facing Robert T. Johnson, the Bronx District Attorney, was symbolically set in motion last March with the stroke of a gold Cross pen. The pen had belonged to Sean McDonald, a police officer who had been murdered in the Bronx. Gov. George E. Pataki used it to sign New York's new death penalty law, emphasizing one circumstance under which a death sentence can be pursued: the killing of a police officer.
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World News Briefs;Girl Killed in Attack Blamed on Irish Group
Date: 17 March 1996
Reuters
A gunman fired into a Belfast house Friday night, killing a 9-year-old girl and and critically wounding a 19-year-old man in an attack thought to stem from a feud within Irish National Liberation Army. One faction of the left-wing splinter group blamed the shooting on rivals and threatened retaliation.
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World News Briefs;Peruvian Court Upholds American's Life Sentence
Date: 17 March 1996
AP
The Peruvian military's highest court has upheld the sentence of life in prison without parole for an American woman convicted of aiding leftist guerrillas. The rejection of the appeal for the woman, Lori Berenson, by the military's Supreme Council came on Friday. Her lawyer, Grimaldo Achahui, said he had not been officially notified but had heard of the decision.
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