‘Palestinian Network’: A Full Report?

Anatomy of a highly questionable news story. . . .

It was the lead segment on Saturday’s installment of “West 57th,” the low-rated but usually respectable CBS News magazine series.

The reporter was Karen Burnes, an experienced, award-winning correspondent with an impressive record in investigative journalism. The producer was Kathy McManus.

The segment’s title was “The Palestinians: Dirty Business.”

The premise was that a “network” of Palestinians--most of whose leaders are related and come from the same area in the Israeli-occupied West Bank--is committing crimes in the United States to fund political action and terror in the Middle East.

“It (the report) was well documented,” Burnes said later from New York.

“I worked on the story for more than a year,” McManus said from New York. “I’m absolutely convinced what we said is correct. I wouldn’t change a word of it.”

“I think they did an excellent job,” executive producer Andrew Lack said from New York.

Here’s a different opinion:

The point is not whether “West 57th” may have been right about the alleged network, but how it went about trying to show it. The segment was less a story than largely unsupported or loosely attributed allegations reported in a confusing and misleading time warp.

The tiny West Bank community of Deir Dibwan was identified by Burnes as the source of the alleged network. “U.S. and Canadian law enforcement officials consider this town at the center of radical political activity and organized crime” that is “carried on by a network of Palestinians who travel a circuit from the West Bank to the United States,” she said.

Burnes cited Palestinians engaging in such scams as insurance and other frauds to fund “what the FBI calls political and terrorist activities.”

No FBI representative appeared on the program to corroborate that. The FBI “wouldn’t be interviewed” on camera, Burnes said afterward by phone.

However, FBI spokesman Charles Steinmetz--whom McManus suggested I call for elaboration--said that “West 57th” never requested an on-camera interview.

“I think they were in a hurry,” Steinmetz said from Washington, D.C. “They (he said McManus was the only representative from the show he spoke to) called here just a few days before that (the segment) aired.”

What’s more, Steinmetz said that he told McManus only that “a number of scams were going on throughout the United States, and that money was being funneled back to several of the Palestinian organizations. Where it goes from there, we don’t know.”

Hence, Steinmetz said, Burnes was “stretching it” in reporting the FBI as saying “terrorist activities” are financed from Palestinian-run scams.

“I didn’t talk to anybody about terrorist groups,” he said. “They (‘West 57th’) would like to think it was terrorists. I could see where the story was going.”

(After our initial phone interview, Lack called back Wednesday morning to say that McManus had since spoken to Steinmetz and that Steinmetz “confirms absolutely everything we said in the broadcast.” Lack added that Steinmetz told McManus that “he stands behind us completely, that indeed everything we said was accurate and appropriate.”

(Steinmetz refuted Lack’s account when I read it to him on the phone. How could he be “standing behind” the report when he hadn’t even seen it, he asked.

(I read him my quotes from our previous conversation, and he did not dispute them. However, Steinmetz, who said the information he gave “West 57th” came from Bob Ricks, deputy assistant director of the FBI’s criminal investigative division, said now that he did not want me to use the quotes he earlier had given me. However, no arrangement had been made that that earlier interview would be off the record.)

The alleged link to terrorist activities was never adequately substantiated in the program.

Burnes sought to establish the link in an interview with Florida police detective Don Cannon, whom she said had headed a task force probing a “pattern of Palestinian criminal activity in Florida.”

Burnes asked Cannon if the Palestinians in question were “an organized network of people motivated by political purpose, or are they just common crooks?”

Cannon: “We see the money leaving, but we don’t see that much coming back in. . . . So it’s going to fund something else.” In “the Middle East?” Burnes asked. Yes, replied Cannon, attributing his information to “raw intelligence.”

Burnes: “So does that leave you believing they might be funding terrorist activities?”

Again citing “raw intelligence,” Cannon said that money is “being sent back to fund the PLO or the PFLP (the terrorist popular front for the liberation of Palestine) or the intifida (the Arabic word for the Palestinian uprising on the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip).”

Burnes did not ask Cannon to define “raw intelligence.” Reached in Sunrise, Fla., where he is on the police force, Cannon said that “raw intelligence” is information “we may have gotten from several sources, but we consider it raw until we can verify it from several more sources and get more etched-in-stone information.”

As for the “network,” cut to Washington state, where Burnes said that a “group of Palestinians doing bustouts (opening stores and quickly vanishing with merchandise bought on credit) bilked their creditors out of nearly $3.5 million before vanishing.”

Burnes ticked off other illegal activities that she said authorities attributed to Palestinians and said one of the Palestinians “left a forwarding address, Deir Dibwan.”

Cut to Burnes with a group of “elders” in Deir Dibwan. “Each of these men lived in the United States and most of them ran stores under investigation by the FBI and by local police in at least 15 states,” Burnes said.

Elderly man in Arab headdress: “I have liquor store in San Francisco five years.”

It was a classic case of implied guilt by association. Stores were said to be under investigation. This man had a store. Thus he was suspect.

Now cut to Burnes back in the United States with a woman she identified as Veronica Heath, who is “related by marriage” to Palestinian brothers. Heath: “They contributed to the PLO.”

Burnes said that “investigators consider some of the family key players in illegal and possibly radical activity.” Heath said that she attended meetings at which “everyone was posing in front of the Palestinian flag and . . . holding up guns.”

Onward now to “small stores in Miami” that Burnes said “have now become part of an investigation.” They have huge profits, she said. “Much of the money is smuggled out of the country, in one case by a Palestinian grandmother carrying the bills in her clothing.”

Who? Where? When? .

Burnes confronted a Palestinian grocery store owner: “Authorities say these Palestinians are linked by family, by friendship, by location. They all come from the same place on the West Bank.” Still, all we had was her word for that.

Cut to Burnes back in Deir Dibwan with the mayor, who seemed to be able to understand but not speak English. “How many people . . . in this community have some form of contact with America?” Burnes asked.

“There are about 2,000,” the mayor replied through an interpreter.

Burnes: “So about half of the people in this town are in America sometime or another?” But wait a minute. Her original question was about “contact” with America, not being “in” America. Did the mayor understand the subtle difference in her second question when, through the interpreter, he responded “about half,” seeming to agree with Burnes that 50% of the town had been in the United States?

Cut to Burnes back in the United States, saying: “Just last week, the FBI confirmed that some small Palestinian businesses across America use the money they generate to support the PLO.”

The next voice we heard was that of Gordon Park: “What they would do is throw a brick through their front window and say, ‘Oh, gosh, I got burglarized.’ ” Park was identified as an attorney for a California insurance company “taken in by Palestinians from the same network.” The “network” whose existance had not been proved.

The editing was misleading. Eight years separated the “they” Park referred to and the “small Palestinian businesses” that Burnes referred to, for as Park later noted in passing, his case was “back in ’81.”

Onward. “Affidavits filed in Memphis describe a Palestinian leaving for the Middle East with 20 stacks of $50 and $100 bills, each a foot high. Undercover authorities also made contact with two Palestinians who were seeking to buy firearms to ship to Jordan,” Burnes said. “The purpose: to kill Jews.”

There was no indication who filed the affidavits or when these events were supposed to have happened. Perhaps a few observant viewers were able to read the “1986” on one of the affidavits as it quickly scrolled by, which showed only when the document was filed, not when the described events occurred.

Onward. “Documents obtained by ‘West 57th’ reveal an even more sinister side to the Palestinian network,” Burnes said. Again, that’s the “network” whose existance she had not substantiated.

She told of Albuquerque police finding “photos of Al Fatah fighters living in the United States, and bomb plans drawn on Al Fatah’s letterhead. Al Fatah has been linked to terrorist activities against Americans.”

I learned later only from asking McManus that this discovery was made in 1980. “I don’t think dates are important,” she said on the phone. “This is a story about the pattern of criminal activity. We showed things from 10 years ago and things from today.” Without telling viewers which was which.

Burnes asked Heath about the brothers: “Veronica, how dedicated do you think these people are to the Palestinian cause?” And Heath replied: “Some of them would lay their life on the line.” But that proved nothing, because many people, including Americans, would lay their lives on the line for a cause they believed in.

“West 57th.” Sometimes the news business is a dirty business.