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#2071: CBS News Sunday Morning (fwd)
From:Sicla@aol.com
The Washington Post
The Reliable Source
By Lloyd Grove
With Beth Berselli
Thursday, January 27, 2000; Page C03
She's Braver Than Us
* CBS correspondent Rita Braver, wife of Clinton family lawyer Robert
Bennett, wanted to know if Haiti was any better off after five years and $2
billion of President Clinton's military occupation policy. Last Thursday,
while doing some on-camera narration in Port-au-Prince for "CBS News Sunday
Morning," she got a sharper answer than she bargained for.
"I was scared," Braver told us yesterday, recounting an incident in which
"two thugs" interrupted her stand-up, emerging from a crowd of angry
slum-dwellers and confiscating two videocassettes after threatening producer
James Houtrides, photographer Mario DeCarvalho and sound technician Manny
Garcia with a chrome-plated Colt .45. "The U.S. permanent support mission in
Haiti is coming to an end next Monday, so we decided to find out how the
country was doing. People are very angry at Americans. They were shouting at
us to go home. It's so poor and the conditions are so depressing. They
thought the U.S. presence would mean their lives would really change."
But it turns out that the country is "in a shambles," with a powerless police
force and no sitting parliament, said the just-returned Braver. She said
DeCarvalho shut off his camera and gave them the tapes after the
tough-looking guys flashed the gun. Later that day, an expedition back to the
slum to retrieve the tapes failed, but Braver & Co. returned with enough for
her Sunday report. As for her husband, Braver said: "From his reaction, I'm
glad I didn't tell him about this until after I got back."
© Copyright 2000 The Washington Post Company