Algerian Diary: Frank Kearns and the “Impossible Assignment” for CBS News

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Frank Kearns used to be the go-to guy at CBS News for danger- ous stories in Africa and the Middle East in the 1950s, ‘60s, and early ‘70s. By his own account, he used to be nearly killed 114 times. He took stories that no one else wanted to cover and used to be challenged to get them on the air when no one cared about this a part of the world. But his stories were warning shots for conflicts that play out in the headlines today.

In 1957, Senator John Kennedy described The united states’s view of the Algerian war for independence as the Eisenhower Administration’s “head in the sand policy.” So CBS News determined to find out what used to be in reality happening there and to resolve where Algeria’s war for independence fit into the game plan for the Cold War. They sent Frank Kearns to find out.

Kearns took with him cameraman Yousef (“Joe”) Masraff and 400 pounds of gear, some of which they shed, and they hiked with FLN escorts from Tunisia, across a wide “no-man’s land,” and into the Aures Mountains of eastern Algeria, where the war used to be bloodiest. They carried no passports or visas. They dressed as Algerians. They refused to bear weapons. And they knew that if captured, they would be executed and left in unmarked graves. But their job as journalists used to be to are looking for the truth no matter what it might change into.

This is Frank Kearns’s diary. 

 

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