Anchorman Buildup Continues in Mideast

“Good evening. I’m Ted Koppel reporting directly from Baghdad.”

Those nine words Wednesday night not only accompanied the first Western television pictures from Iraq since its Aug. 2 invasion of Kuwait, but were also missiles exploding in the faces of CBS, NBC and CNN, calling attention to an epic journalistic coup by ABC.

It’s true that CBS Pentagon correspondent David Martin earlier had broken the story about President Bush’s decision to send forces to Saudi Arabia to counter Iraq. However, the other networks were on the air with the same information within minutes.

The “Nightline”-gets-to-Iraq chapter has been the journalistic beat of the coverage, though, allowing ABC, temporarily at least, to do to CBS, NBC and CNN what Iraq did to Kuwait.

Underline temporarily , for as of Thursday morning, Koppel was back in Amman, Jordan, and it was CBS News anchorman Dan Rather who was in Baghdad. More about that shortly.

When host Koppel, correspondent Forrest Sawyer and eight others from “Nightline” flew to Baghdad from Amman on Tuesday, however, they became the first Western journalists allowed into Iraq since the start of the present Persian Gulf turmoil.

For almost 24 hours--while ABC’s competition could do little more than watch helplessly--the “Nightline” crew was the West’s only eyes and ears in Iraq.

It was Koppel, speaking by phone from the United States Embassy on “World News Tonight” and later on “Nightline,” who reported that Iraq was now referring to Americans brought there from Kuwait as “restrictees.”

It was Koppel who Wednesday managed to visit and report the status of those Americans being held virtually as hostages in a luxury Baghdad hotel. Koppel said on the air that he and his colleagues had talked their way into the hotel and found some of the Americans in the swimming-pool area.

It was “Nightline” that gave the United States its first video from Iraq: Koppel’s introduction and his 45-minute interview with Iraq’s foreign minister, Tarik Aziz. An excerpt led Wednesday’s “World News Tonight,” with the entire interview airing on that evening’s expanded “Nightline.”

And it was Koppel who Thursday morning reacted from Amman to Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s return volley in an angry verbal shoot-out with Bush.

Why now from Amman?

“The details are sketchy, but we couldn’t get the access we wanted and we were worried about getting feeds out of there because we didn’t know what the government would and wouldn’t allow,” “Nightline” spokeswoman Laura Wessner said Thursday. “However, we did bring back some footage from Baghdad. . . .”

Will “Nightline” be originating from Baghdad in the near future? “We’re playing it by ear,” said Wessner, adding that Sawyer and producer Terry Wrong had remained behind in Baghdad.

However, future TV transmissions from Iraq were in doubt late Thursday. Reporting on the air by phone, Sawyer said that the Iraqis were tightening press restrictions and had “pulled the plug” on ABC, saying satellite transmissions would no longer be allowed. “And we’ve been told to be on the next plane out of here,” Sawyer said. “I think they are tiring of us.”

Rather and correspondent Allen Pizzey were in a “CBS Evening News” party allowed into Iraq Wednesday, and that afternoon Rather filed his first phone report and later reported by phone on that evening’s newscast. Using Iraqi TV facilities as ABC has done, CBS got its first video out Thursday morning, with Rather reporting on “CBS This Morning.” Yet Rather’s initial reports were relatively vague and almost generic compared with Koppel’s, and it was clear that CBS was in a catch-up mode.

Even worse, NBC and CNN were in no mode at all when it came to Iraq.

“Once again, we were not issued visas by the Iraqi embassy in Amman,” Peggy Hubble, director of press information for NBC News, said Thursday. On Tuesday, NBC had predicted that it would have someone, probably Garrick Utley, in Iraq within 24 hours.

“It’s no longer bureaucratic confusion, because there now seems to be a clear, conscious decision not to allow NBC, CNN and others in,” Hubble said.

The irony here is CNN, which, Koppel reported on ABC, has been the Iraqi foreign ministry’s prime source of news about the United States during the Persian Gulf conflict.

“I rather think we’re going to get in tomorrow,” CNN executive vice president Ed Turner said Wednesday. But at press time Thursday, CNN hadn’t gotten in.

“I’m sitting here with my worry beads,” Turner said. “We’ve applied for visas everywhere, from the Iraq embassy in Tokyo to London, because you never know what fluke in the bureaucracy gets you a ‘yes.’ We’ve had the Iraqi ambassador to the U.S. on CNN four times in four days, so it’s not as if they are boycotting us.”

ABC and Koppel “deserve credit for working their contacts” to get into Iraq first, Hubble said.

Although ABC did not seem certain itself why it gained preferential treatment, Koppel said on the air that Jordan’s King Hussein had been “very helpful.” Hussein has been publicly sympathetic to Iraq during the Persian Gulf strife.

“Ted did have a private meeting with the king on Sunday night,” said Bob Murphy, director of news coverage for ABC. “Although we had visas prior to the meeting with the king, we were getting the typical runaround, so there was no way to get into the country and no guarantee that we would get into the country. That went on for about 36 hours. Then the king went off the next day for his own meeting with Saddam Hussein and, shortly after that, all the parts seemed to come together for us.”

Although ABC getting into Iraq was itself a news story, competitive pressures intervened, and the story was not noted on NBC or CBS. The latter reported Thursday that Iraqi foreign minister Aziz had promised to look into securing the release of a woman and her two small children who were among the Americans incarcerated in the hotel. What CBS didn’t mention was that Aziz had made the promise to Koppel on “Nightline.”

Meanwhile, the travel spotlight was creeping toward Saudi Arabia, which until recently had been closed to Western journalists in conjunction with the arrival of U.S. forces there. CBS correspondent Bob Simon and ABC’s “PrimeTime Live” co-host Sam Donaldson arrived Wednesday, with Donaldson making a brief appearance at the end of Wednesday’s “Nightline.”

On Thursday, NBC said “Nightly News” anchorman Tom Brokaw had arrived in Saudi Arabia after being based in New York during the Gulf story. Hubble said that this was “not a knee-jerk reaction to Donaldson” and that NBC began talking on Monday of sending Brokaw to Saudi Arabia.

Mideast intrigues and media chess.