CNN OFFICIAL DISCLOSES SILENT SEARCH FOR LEVIN

In late July of last year, a 53-second videotape was received by the Amir of Kuwait. The tape contained demands that the government of Kuwait release about one dozen Islamic terrorists imprisoned for attacking foreign embassies in that Persian Gulf nation.

Delivering the message on the tape was Jeremy Levin, the Beirut bureau chief for Cable News Network. Known as Jerry among his colleagues and viewers, Levin had been kidnaped the previous March. The tape was the first sign that Levin was alive and, given his circumstances, reasonably well.

Last week, Levin escaped his captors, lowering himself on blankets from his makeshift cell and wandering through Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley until reaching friendly Syrian troops. On Monday, Levin returned to the United States; in the meantime his apparent kidnapers had vowed to kill one of four other Americans captured.

Once Levin was safely on his way out of the Middle East, CNN Senior Vice President Ed Turner related his and CNN’s protracted 11-month effort to secure Levin’s release. Portions of the story had been told to The Times months earlier, on the condition that details not be reported while Levin was in captivity.

“If we erred, we erred on the side of caution,” Turner said in the telephone interview from Atlanta. Turner told of his own six-week trek through the Middle East in search of information about Levin and of the low-key efforts CNN made through the State Department and other unofficial channels to discover who held Levin and how to free him.

Turner’s on-the-scene efforts began just two days after Levin’s March 7 disappearance. He was delayed a day, he said, by snow at Washington’s Dulles Airport. Turner’s journey took him to clandestine meetings in Cyprus, West Beirut, Damascus and elsewhere.

There were a number of ransom demands of $250,000 and more, Turner said, but during the search there was little information about who held Levin. Until the arrival of the videotape in Kuwait, there was little indication whether Levin was alive or dead.

“We don’t know to this minute who had him,” Turner said, noting that during his efforts he dealt with 47 different religious, military and political factions of the Islamic Jihad (Islamic Holy War). “Since we didn’t know who had him, we were prepared to believe that anyone had him.”

Now, Turner believes that Levin was held by a group calling itself the Hazbullah, an especially radical militant faction that, Turner said, is thought to have been responsible for blowing up the U.S. Marine Corps barracks in West Beirut in 1983 and the U.S. Embassy there in 1984.

Turner said he does not believe he ever met directly with the kidnapers, although he was certain that he held several meetings with their representatives.

“These were fanatical religious types,” Turner said. “You couldn’t threaten them; you couldn’t bribe them.” The alternative, he said, was to maintain constant, low-level efforts to free the newsman.

In interview with The Times last fall, Turner said that CNN did not want to “create an environment that would force their (the kidnapers’) hand,” a mode of action that certainly would have hurt Levin’s chances of coming out alive, Turner believes.

Public comments on Levin were purposely held to a minimum. Even CNN owner Ted Turner, once called the “Mouth from the South” for his loud personal style, kept his tongue. He made only a few calls to the State Department and told Ed Turner (no relation) to do whatever was necessary to save Levin.

Throughout the ordeal, Ed Turner said, there were no efforts on the part of the terrorists to demand air time on CNN, although some third parties made such demands. “I was prepared to meet them,” Turner said. “With a man’s life at stake, I was prepared to do what I could.”

Significantly, he said, there was never any plan to air the tape sent to Kuwait. “It was obvious that it was for our information,” Turner said, and not intended for broadcast.