NBC journalist despairs over Mideast peace talks

Andrea Mitchell says the rising violence makes her yearn for the Cold War.

By MARY JANE PARK
© St. Petersburg Times
published March 29, 2002

ST. PETERSBURG -- The day after a Palestinian suicide bomber killed 20 people at a hotel in Israel, NBC News foreign affairs correspondent Andrea Mitchell said she has never been so despairing about peace negotiations in the Middle East.

She called the current violence "the worst tragedy and terror in many years," and said both Israel and Palestine seem intractable.

"It makes me homesick for the Cold War," she said Thursday at a symposium sponsored by the Women's Council of the St. Petersburg Area Chamber of Commerce at the Renaissance Vinoy Resort on Thursday.

She acknowledged the current spotlight on the Tampa Bay area, home to the U.S. Central Command at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa and Army Gen. Tommy R. Franks, commander of the U.S. forces in Afghanistan. She talked out the economic consequences of the tourism decline after Sept. 11.

She also relayed her personal experience of that day.

After the first plane hit the World Trade Center, she was in the NBC newsroom, speed-dialing sources and "hoping it had been an accident."

Before the second plane hit, she knew the airliners had been hijacked.

Mitchell, who is married to Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan, was on the air reporting the terrorist attacks, "doing my job with one part of my brain, I guess. On the other hand, there was rising panic" as she realized that her husband was flying into Washington Dulles International Airport, returning from a trip to Switzerland.

Greenspan's plane was still unaccounted for by nearly 3 that afternoon, when Mitchell was scheduled to broadcast a news update with NBC anchor Tom Brokaw.

Her cell phone rang, and Greenspan told her his flight had been diverted back to Zurich. The plane's passengers had not been told of the attacks, and Greenspan began asking his wife what was going on.

"In my ear I heard, "Coming to you,' " Mitchell said, referring to a cue to prepare her to go on the air. "I put the phone in my lap, and I said, "Listen up.'

"I knew I was broadcasting to the nation, but I was also telling my husband" about the attacks.

Sept. 11 hit home in another way: Mitchell's parents live just half a block from the New York fire station that sustained the most losses.

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