Hostage Letter Says Reagan Cares More About Daniloff : U.S. Doubts Note Shows Real Views

Islamic Jihad today released a letter it said was written by American hostage David Jacobsen, accusing President Reagan of caring more about Nicholas Daniloff, the U.S. newsman arrested in Moscow, than about American captives in Lebanon.

The three-page handwritten letter, accompanied by a communique from the Shia Muslim group drawing a similar parallel with the Daniloff case, was in a packet left outside a Western news agency in Muslim West Beirut.

The packet also contained a Polaroid photograph of Jacobsen in pajamas.

White House spokesman Larry Speakes said in Washington that Administration officials believe Jacobsen wrote the letter but “there is good reason to question whether it was freely written and represents anything more than the views of Mr. Jacobsen’s captors.”

In Huntington Beach, Calif., Jacobsen’s son Eric said the letter, as read to him over the telephone, seemed to reflect his father’s views.

Stilted English

The fact that the letter was written in poor and often stilted English raised doubts that its author was the 55-year-old Jacobsen, who was the administrator of the American University Hospital when he was kidnaped last year.

Jacobsen is one of six Americans missing in Lebanon. Islamic Jihad says it holds three American hostages and killed a fourth.

“Why was Reagan interested minute by minute with spy journalist Daneloff but he is not interested one minute in our story?” asked the letter over Jacobsen’s signature. Daniloff’s name was misspelled.

In its separate typewritten Arabic-language statement, Islamic Jihad said the Reagan Administration had made “concessions in the Daniloff case which provoked many question marks in the hostages’ minds.”

The three captives were “comparing what the (U.S.) government did in the ‘Daniloff’ case with what it is doing for them,” the statement said.

“Are not we Americans?” asked the letter which bore Jacobsen’s name.

‘Feel Homesick’

The Islamic Jihad statement called on Americans to pressure the Reagan Administration into altering its stand of refusing negotiations and “put a happy ending to the (ordeal of the) hostages.”

The Jacobsen letter said he and fellow captives Terry A. Anderson and Thomas Sutherland “feel homesick” after their long captivity.

“Our bodies are sick and our psychological state is bad,” the letter went on. “We also fear the possible ending of our story.”

The letter appealed to three former hostages--Father Lawrence Jenco, the Rev. Benjamin Weir and Jeremy Levin--and to Anderson’s sister, Peggy Say of Batavia, N.Y., to “continue your efforts because you are our only hope and you know our suffering very much.”

Weir said today in Williamsville, N.Y., that the government is following a double standard by negotiating with the Soviets over Daniloff but refusing to bargain for the Lebanon hostages’ release.

‘More Active Role’

“I do feel that the Administration could take a more active role in this and believe that the Daniloff case provides that kind of precedent,” the Presbyterian minister said. “We don’t care if they use the word negotiate or not, but we would like to see them talking and opening up a line of communication.”

Weir said the Jacobsen letter was an important development in the long-running hostage drama.

“There should be a very considerable response to it,” he said.

U.S. News & World Report correspondent Nicholas Daniloff was arrested by the Soviets on Aug. 30 and charged with spying. He was released Friday into the custody of the U.S. Embassy in Moscow. Simultaneously, a Soviet U.N. employee charged in New York with spying was released to the custody of his ambassador.