Jordan Thanked for Aiding CNN Crew

Bernard Shaw, part of the Cable News Network team that held America spellbound with reports on the beginning of the war in the Persian Gulf, thanked King Hussein of Jordan on Friday for helping him and several colleagues make their way from Baghdad to safety in Amman, Jordan.

Shaw said Hussein called ahead to ease the situation with his customs officials and border guards at the Iraq-Jordan frontier as a convoy of several cars carrying the journalists made “a frantic and nervous race across desert highways.”

In an interview of nearly one hour on CNN from the network’s office in Amman, Shaw and colleague John Holliman spoke dramatically of the 14-hour journey.

“At one point, we froze,” said Shaw, explaining that they saw “something trailing across the sky, spewing sparks.” It turned out to be a Soviet satellite.

In Atlanta, CNN’s home base, a spokeswoman said King Hussein called the network Friday morning “to assure us they were safe after they crossed the Jordanian border.”

Holliman said they left because “the officials in Iraq would not let us do our jobs anymore.” The special phone line over which CNN sent out its remarkable reports on the initial air attacks on Baghdad was cut off Thursday. And outgoing reports now are subject to censorship.

Shaw, Holliman and three CNN crew members left Iraq in the convoy, while Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Peter Arnett and two other CNN colleagues stayed behind.

“Arnett decided he wanted to stay in Baghdad rather than get out,” Holliman said.

The convoy out of Baghdad also included four journalists of the Canadian Broadcasting Co. and one from the Associated Press, CNN said.

Shaw said at the start of the CNN interview that he would be careful and “circumspect” in his remarks because other journalists remain in Baghdad and he didn’t want to say anything to jeopardize their situation.

He said there was no way the CNN contingent could have made its way across the desert without the help of the Iraqi government.

Shaw and Holliman said that on their last night in Baghdad they spent 12 hours in their hotel bomb shelter with several hundred people because of fears of further raids against Iraq.

“The hotel people are so security conscious,” Shaw said. “Once you go down (to the shelter), they don’t let you up. . . . We were in effect locked up--for our own protection, I should say.”

Asked to describe his feelings during the tense time in Baghdad, Shaw said: “I would go back to my room and try to go to sleep, and I could not sleep. When the sirens go off during the day, I was up. I was fearful.”

He said that as he felt the shaking during the raids, “I closed my eyes and I said to myself, ‘This is thunder. This is lightning. This is hell.’ ”

Holliman added that when the eight CNN journalists decided whether to stay, Arnett told them, “This is the biggest story you’re going to see in your life.”

Shaw originally went to Baghdad in hopes of interviewing Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.

As for the war situation now, Shaw said, “Who knows how long this is going to go on?”