ABSTRACT
The CBS Evening News for 20 June 1985 began with the words and image of Allyn Conwell, an American held hostage in Beirut: ‘I am speaking on behalf of my fellow forty hostages, who have elected me as their spokesman to make a brief press conference to advise our families, friends, and loved ones of our welfare….’ Dan Rather then cut in to introduce the day’s events:
For the first time in a week, the first look at and word from some of the passenger hostages from TWA flight 847 in Beirut.
And in El Salvador, the bodies of six Americans gunned down by leftist rebels, a grim reminder that terrorism is not exclusive to the Middle East.
Good evening, this is the Western Edition of the CBS Evening News, Dan Rather reporting.
New assurances in Beirut today, assurances from one of the American hostages that all thirty-seven of the passengers still captive from that hijacked jetliner are still safe. This on the seventh day of the hijacking ordeal. Welcome news to the families of the hostages.
But it was news of a different, more tragic kind from El Salvador, where thirteen people, four of them U.S.Marines, two of them U.S.civilians, were killed in a guerrilla attack.
