Footage From BU Program May Break Law

CBS may have violated federal law in its use of film footage of the war in Afghanistan, which it obtained from a member of the Afghan resistance who had trained through a controversial Boston University (BU) program, U.S. officials said yesterday.

Lawyers at the United States Information Agency (USIA), which funded the media training program run by the BU College of Communications, believe that CBS's use of the footage may have violated a 1948 law that prohibits the systematic distribution in the U.S. of material produced by the USIA or groups funded by it, according to agency spokesman Lesley Vossen.

The approximately 15 seconds of battle footage was obtained by CBS news from freelance cameraman Michael Hoover and broadcast in a story about the Afghan civil war early this summer.

The footage was actually shot by an Afghan resistor trained through Boston University's Afghan Media Resource Center [AMRC], said Donald S. Goldman, associate dean of the BU College of Communications. Hoover apparently obtained the footage when the Afghan resistor came to the United States, Goldman added.

The goal of the program is to train Afghan rebels in the use of media technology because the Soviets have prohibited foreign journalists from entering the country.

Thomas Goodman of CBS news said the footage was originally part of a tape obtained from Hoover that was made up mainly of his own footage of Afghani subjects.

The network did not know that the now-controversial footage was shot by an AMRC-trained resistor, he said. The legality of the footage came into question because the training project was funded entirely by the USIA.

Because the 1948 law requires that distribution of USIA-funded material must be "systematic" in order to be illegal, it is unclear whether a one-time showing of footage on one network would break the law.

Goldman said he thought CBS's use of the video clip could not have violated the law because there was no systematic distribution of the material.

The situation is further complicated by the fact that the AMRC project, according to Goldman, was funded by a USIA grant and was not an official agency project. Because the program was funded by a grant, Goldman said, the law does not apply.

But Vossen said the agency thought the broadcasting of the footage did violate the law.

"Because of the funding we gave to the project, [we] thought that this dissemination of material came under the domain of the act," she said.

Vossen said, however, that even if the use of the footage was illegal, the USIA will probably not be able to do anything about the apparent violation.

"There is nothing in the [law] to mandate our policing our grantees. This means that there is nothing further that can be done," Vossen said.

The allegations of illegal distribution of footage come in the wake of a controversy involving the AMRC in which the dean of BU's College of Communications resigned because he thought the AMRC program was flawed by faulty execution and questionable ethics.

Before resigning his post, Redmont cosigned a letter to John Silber, president of BU, with nine other BU faculty members calling into question the integrity of the media project.

And in yet another controversy that has engulfed the project, one of the prime supporters of the AMRC was alleged yesterday to have been unduly influenced by a close associate of Lieutenant Col. Oliver North.

In yesterday's edition, the Boston Globe alleged that the idea for the media project had been largely formulated by Walter Raymond Jr., known in the Iran-Contra hearings as one of North's close colleagues. Previously, the conception of the project had been attributed to Sen. Gordon Humphrey (R-N.H).

But a spokesman for Sen. Humphrey, William Anthony, denied that Raymond had had undue influence in the conception of the project.

"At some time we probably did talk to Raymond," Anthony said, but he added that Sen. Humphrey was the one who was the moving force behind the project.