CBS World News Roundup – Newsbreak – 9:00 am news – February 9, 1981 – Gordon Skene Sound Collection –
Cynthia Dwyer, the freelance American journalist being held in Iran on a purported Spying charge, was to leave Prison and head home after 281 days of captivity. But no.
Seems Cynthia Dwyer was released from Prison this day, but was not allowed to leave the country. A disclosure that took, even some Iranian officials as well as Western Diplomats, by surprise. Mrs. Dwyer was driven from prison to Tehran’s Mehrabad Airport in a limousine with windows blacked out. Reporters at the airport saw her rushed through a cargo warehouse to the boarding area. Accompanying her was a diplomat from the Swiss Embassy, which was responsible for American interests in Iran. Airport authorities blocked Cynthia Dwyer from boarding the plane, claiming that her documents were not fully in order, apparently a problem with an exit permit.
Other Iranian officials tried to help, but the Iranian Air flight from Tehran to Vienna and London had already left the airport, taxiing down the runway without her.
U.S. officials said they had no reason to believe Cynthia Dwyer was involved in anything more than a “routine hitch”, But as with all matters involving Iran, there was a caution about making firm predictions.
For the time, Cynthia Dwyer was sitting in the Tehran Airport with no timeframe as to when and if the problem was going to be worked out.
Meanwhile, the Iran-Iran War entered its 21st week with Iran claiming that its forces defending the Abadan Oil Fields refinery center had repulsed another Iraqi attempt to overrun it.
And always about The Economy. At the White House everything was about The Economy from topic A to topic Z. In-between was the Federal Budget and how to cut it to correct what President Reagan referred to as “the worst economic mess since the Depression”. Meetings were being called in an effort to work out tax cuts, but the question was who and what were getting cut – all this ahead of the deadline of February 18th when President Reagan was to release his detailed outline for what gets cut to the Congress and the American public.
And along with the constantly shifting story about Cynthia Dwyer, that’s a little of what went on, this February 9, 1981 as reported by CBS Radio News.
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