Reagan Says Latest Bid to Free U.S. Hostages Didn’t Work Out

President Reagan said Friday that an avenue he had expected would be successful in winning the release of five American hostages in Lebanon “didn’t work out,” causing him “great disappointment.”

The President made the remarks to a group of out-of-town journalists in response to an appeal by the family of Father Lawrence M. Jenco, 50, of Joliet, Ill., for Reagan to take a more aggressive role in securing the freedom of the hostages.

Jenco, the director of the Catholic Relief Services in Lebanon, was kidnaped Jan. 8, 1985, by gunmen in West Beirut.

Reagan said that on several occasions he thought, “Within a few days we were going to be successful” in freeing the hostages from captivity, only to find “a dead end.”

Declines to Give Details

The President declined to give details on the contacts that held out hope for success.

“We have gone down channel after channel and many of them have brought us to the point where we believed that within a few days we were going to be successful and then would find a dead end that it didn’t work out,” Reagan said.

“But I cannot describe these efforts because that would be counterproductive,” he added.

“We’re right now in one of those moments in which we have the great disappointment,” Reagan said.

When asked what the government was doing to free the hostages, Reagan said, “We’re not sitting idle.

“And all I can tell you is that we’re going to continue, we’ve never given up for a minute in trying to get them back,” Reagan said. “We know the anguish of the families, but we know even more the distress of the men who are being held. And we’ve gone in every direction possible and followed every possible lead.”

The other hostages are:

William Buckley, 57, political officer at the U.S. Embassy in Beirut who was abducted March 18, 1984, in West Beirut; Terry A. Anderson, 38, Beirut bureau chief for the Associated Press, who was kidnaped March 16, 1985; David P. Jacobsen, 54, director of the American University Hospital in Beirut who was kidnaped on May 28, 1985, and Thomas Sutherland, 53, dean of the school of agriculture at the American University who was seized by gunmen on June 9, 1985.