Elizabeth A. Callan, 57; 'NewsHour' Producer ( Horrid death dealt to Contra covering PBS producer)

[Judi Lynn]

Source: Washington Post

Elizabeth A. Callan, 57; 'NewsHour' Producer

By Yvonne Shinhoster Lamb
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, August 23, 2007; Page B07

Elizabeth Anne Callan, 57, an award-winning producer for PBS's "The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer" for more 20 years, died Aug. 17 at Washington Hospital Center of burns from a kitchen fire in her home in July. She was a Washington resident.

As a producer, Ms. Callan was known for being fearless and passionate. At the height of the U.S.-backed contra war against the Sandinista government of Nicaragua in the 1980s, she produced a series of "NewsHour" reports from El Salvador, Honduras, Chile and Nicaragua. One of the most dangerous reporting missions involved a trip with the contras into Nicaragua that began from a secret U.S. base in Honduras.

She and her colleagues were taken by helicopter from the base to interview a contra commander and spent the better part of a day with a small guerrilla unit in Nicaragua. She wasn't fazed by the danger, said Robert E. Flynn, "NewsHour" vice president of communications and marketing.

"She was very intrepid and aggressive about following the story," Flynn said. "For Liz, the story was what mattered. If it was compelling and interesting and contributed something to the public's awareness of an issue or an event, that was enough for her."




Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/22/AR2007082202733.html

[kstewart33]

1. Thanks for posting. eom

[leftyladyfrommo]

2. Oh, that is too bad.

I always worry about kitchen fires because I am just an awful cook. So to reduce my rish of hurting myself I just eat out.

[hang a left]

3. Is that 4 news producers in the last month or so?? nt

[alcibiades_mystery]

4. The contras were a pack of terrorists

They liked to attack schools and hospitals especially.

Fucking murderers.

[EFerrari]

5. They were. One their favored recruiting methods was to round up

your family and hold them hostage so you'd have to pick up that gun. Nice guys, trained by the best America had to offer Nicaragua.

[knitter4democracy]

11. Drug dealers, too.

That's what I was told by a family I stayed with in Nicaragua in 1994 anyway.

[Judi Lynn]

6. Thought provoking remarks from this link:

"The United States," said Ronald Reagan, "is engaged in a war on terrorism, a war for freedom"
In his 'secret war' against Central America what is striking is the relentless lying.
A department of lying was set up under Reagan with the coy name, 'office of public diplomacy'.
Its purpose was to dispense 'white' and 'black' propaganda — lies — and to smear journalists who told the truth.
Almost everything Reagan himself said on the subject was false.
(snip)

The United States, said Ronald Reagan, "is engaged in a war on terrorism, a war for freedom"
How familiar it all sounds.
Merely replace Soviet Union and communism with al-Qaeda, and you are up to date.
And it was all a fantasy.
The Soviet Union had no bases in or designs on Central America; on the contrary, the Soviets were adamant in turning down appeals for their aid.
The comic strips of "missile storage depots" that American officials presented to the United Nations were precursors to the lies told by Colin Powell in his infamous promotion of Iraq’s non-existent weapons of mass destruction at the Security Council in 2003.
Whereas Powell’s lies paved the way for the invasion of Iraq and the violent death of at least 100,000 people, Reagan’s lies disguised his onslaught on Nicaragua, El Salvador and Guatemala.
By the end of his two terms, 300,000 people were dead.
In Guatemala, his proxies – armed and tutored in torture by the CIA – were described by the UN as perpetrators of genocide.
There is one major difference today.
That is the level of awareness among people everywhere of the true purpose of Bush and Blair’s "war on terror" and the scale and diversity of the popular resistance to it.
In Reagan’s day, the notion that presidents and prime ministers lied as deliberate, calculated acts was considered exotic.
(snip)

~~~~~~~~~~~
FATHER MIGUEL D'ESCOTO: First of all, let me start out by saying that, of course, Reagan is now dead.
And I, for one, would like to say only nice things about him.
I'm not insensitive to the feelings of many U.S. people mourning president Reagan, but as I pray that god in his infinite mercy and goodness forgive him for having been the butcher of my people, for having been responsible for the deaths of some 50,000 Nicaraguans, we cannot, we should not ever forget the crimes he committed in the name of what he falsely labeled freedom and democracy.
(snip/...)

http://www.thewe.cc/weplanet/news/americas/us/ronald_reagan.html

[Mabus]

9. Just change the names and locations

and you can submit it as a current article. Thanks for posting it.

[jaksavage]

7. Another Bush connection

GHWB was VP and deeply involved.
The investigation ended with the death of W Casey
the night before he was to testify b 4 congress

65 years of Bush terror

[saracat]

8. What a very great loss.Condolences to her family and the world! RIP

[pingzing58]

10. I cannot ever forgive Reagan and his Freedom Fighters and Oliver North for this.

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/06/08/1453219

"The 8 years Reagan was in office represented one of the most bloody eras in the history of the Western hemisphere, as Washington funneled money, weapons and other supplies to right wing death squads. And the death toll was staggering - more than 70,000 political killings in El Salvador, more than 100,000 in Guatemala, 30,000 killed in the contra war in Nicaragua. In Washington, the forces carrying out the violence were called "freedom fighters." This is how Ronald Reagan described the Contras in Nicaragua: "They are our brothers, these freedom fighters and we owe them our help. They are the moral equal of our founding fathers."

More atrocities commited by U.S. backed regimes: Archbishop Oscar Romero (assasinated)

On December 2, 1980 at the beginning of the civil war in El Salvador the nuns Ita Ford, Maura Clarke and Dorothy Kazel and the secular missionary Jean Donovan were raped and murdered by five members of the National Guard. All four belonged to the orders of Maryknoll Sisters and Ursulinas Sisters.

In 1984, the five Nacional Gurad members were sentenced in El Salvador to 30 years for the crime. Three of them were released four years later. The rape and murder of the nuns by hired assassins of the military forced the U.S. to suspend its military aid to the Salvadoran government… for one month.

The Committee of Lawyers for Human Rights in New York began a lawsuit in 2000 against two Salvadoran generals accused of ordering the assassination of the American nuns. The accused generals are Eugenio Vildes Casanova and Jose Guillermo Garcia. When the massacre took place, the former was head of the National Guard, and the later the Minister of Defense. Both live in Florida.

The generals were declared innocent of any responsibility in the kidnapping, rape and assassination of the nuns in a Federal Court in Florida. Two years later, in another case, they were sentenced by the same court to pay 54.6 million dollars to three victims who were tortured during the civil war in El Salvador.

Retrieved from "http://www.terrorfileonline.org/en/index.php/The_Assasination_of_the_Nuns"

Edit: google "School of the Americas". I met Honduran terrorists trained by the School while working on the Honduran - El Salvador border in 1976. I'll never forget the encounter.

[knitter4democracy]

12. I taught at Sr. Dorothy Kazel's old school for a couple of years.

No one there's forgiven or forgotten yet, either, and I will never "get over it" either.

[pingzing58]

16. You did saintly work indeed. Congrats friend.

[hedgehog]

17. But but, Alexander Haig said the nuns were smuggling weapons!

and him a nice catholic boy and all!

[RFKHumphreyObama]

13. This is an enormous tragedy....so very, very sad to hear

My deepest and sincerest thoughts, prayers, sympathies and condolences go out to Ms. Callan's family

May you rest in peace Ms Callan and thank you for your role in promoting truth, integrity and public awareness as a journalist. May your legacy live on

[Demeter]

14. A Kitchen Fire?

My credulity is overstrained.

[Judi Lynn]

15. It does seem odd, doesn't it? I've known several people who have experienced this,

including myself, and it always was easily handled in these situations, without exception. I questioned it immediately, like you.