Sister Credits Press for Linking 2 Hostage Groups

The pressure of press coverage has made the U.S. government link the release of the 39 TWA hostages with the seven Americans kidnaped in Lebanon before the plane hijacking, the sister of one of the seven captives said today.

Peggy Say, sister of kidnaped Associated Press correspondent Terry Anderson, said she was feeling very emotional today because for the first time she had read in the newspaper “that (Secretary of State) George Shultz said, ‘They have 46 of our people and we want them back.’ ”

“When I picked up the paper this morning, I said, ‘You did it. The media did it,’ ” Say said on NBC’s “Donahue” program.

Also appearing on the program were Jeremy Levin, a Cable News Network correspondent who was abducted in Lebanon and escaped earlier this year, and relatives of TWA passengers Ralf Traugott of Lunenberg, Mass., Kurt Carlson of Rockford, Ill., and Allyn Conwell of Houston.

Say, whose brother was kidnaped March 16, said she had parted company with the government after the second or third day of the TWA hijacking, when she said she was told “by the State Department that for me to try to get Terry released, or the other six hostages, through any kind of a package deal would only complicate matters.”

She also said that in trying to get a meeting with President Reagan, “I didn’t even receive the courtesy of a reply,” and relatives of other kidnap victims “were told that Reagan was far too busy to see them in over a year’s time.”

‘Like Slap in Face’

“Then I look at television and I see President Reagan making time to meet with families from the TWA airliner. I felt like I had been slapped in the face,” she said.

Shultz’s remarks adding the seven men to the 39 TWA hijacking hostages still held in Beirut came in an address late Wednesday in San Francisco and were the first indication that freedom for both groups was being linked.

Vice President George Bush echoed the call today in Belgium, where he said, “That’s always been the (U.S.) position. Release them all. Release them all.”