Telephone talk to be broadcast

Press, 17 April 1982, Page 8

Telephone talk to be broadcast

NZPA . Washington An American newspaper columnist, Jack Anderson, says he is going to broadcast tapes of conversations between President Reagan and his Secretary of State (Mr Alexander Haig) dealing with the Falkland crisis. A statement from the Mutual Broadcasting System, which carries Anderson’s daily broadcast, quoted Mr Reagan as telling Mr Haig: “If it’s helpful at all don’t hold back on making me the bad guy and insisting on restraint if that’s necessary.” The Mutual statement also quoted Mr Reagan as asking: “That submarine of theirs, do you think it’s apt to go ahead with retribution?. Would that be enough to vindicate them (the British)?”

A Mutual spokesman, Dan Ramberg, said the tape to be broadcast today did not have Mr Haig's end of the conversation. Mr Reagan appeared to have . been aboard his official aircraft, Air Force One, on his Easter vacation in the Caribbean, Mr Ramberg said. Asked what else the tape contained, Mr Ramberg said: “You've got all that we’re going to broadcast • tomorrow.” He said he did not know how Anderson obtained the tape. Radiotelephone conversations from Air Force One are not “scrambled,” or electronically transformed to make eavesdropping difficult. The plane does carry equipment to send and receive coded written messages ■ over radioteletype circuits.