CBS Eases Stand on Israeli Army Killing of Two Aides

A CBS News executive said after meeting Prime Minister Shimon Peres on Tuesday that the Israeli army probably did not deliberately kill two CBS employees in Lebanon but that unanswered questions remain.

Ernest Leiser, CBS vice president for news, told a reporter: “I’m not satisfied, because we still are not sure we have all the facts. But I have learned enough here to realize some of the information we had before we came here was incomplete and, in a few cases, inaccurate.”

An Israeli tank shell killed the cameraman and sound technician, both Lebanese, in a raid Thursday on the Shia Muslim village of Kfar Melki. Shortly afterward, CBS charged that the killings were intentional.

After visiting the village and speaking with residents, Leiser said he is convinced that witnesses erred in telling the network the night of the deaths that the tank was only 500 yards and not 1 1/2 miles away.

“I’m certainly convinced it’s probable it was not a deliberate attack,” Leiser said. But he added, “I would like to know why a tank commander and gunner in the safety of an armored vehicle could not have checked a little more thoroughly before firing a tank gun.”

Leiser said Peres agreed to give CBS a summary of the army report and to let the network interview the commanding general of the division.

The network will not broadcast its morning news program from Israel over Easter and Passover, as planned earlier, Leiser said, because “these were going to be celebratory, upbeat programs . . . . We do not feel like celebrating.”

Tuesday night, CBS News President Edward M. Joyce issued a statement in New York saying that “although all the facts are not clear, two salient points have been clarified.” First, he said, a senior Israeli official has indicated that, contrary to earlier Israeli reports, the television crew, when attacked, “was not among a group of armed men.”

Second, Joyce repeated Leiser’s acknowledgment that the tank was probably as far as 1 1/2 miles away when it fired. “If this were the case,” he said, “it is entirely possible that the tank crew was unable to make out the camera and the press signs on the car.”

Joyce urged the Israeli military to “do all in its power to provide journalists access to the combat zones.”

The network sent Leiser to Israel after Peres refused to conduct a special investigation into the killings.

Peres instead accepted an army report stating that that when the tank fired from a distance of 1 1/2 miles, the two crewmen were standing where armed men had been seen earlier.

The network, although primarily disturbed about the deaths of its two employees, was concerned also about the army’s initial response to the incident. Leiser said an army statement referred to the “alleged wounding” of the two men when it was known that they were dead.