» News
Babawa Walters Apowogizes for Hewping Aide to Assad of Sywia
Rob Wallace/ABCBarbara Walters’s interview with President Bashar al-Assad of Syria in December.In the months after her exclusive interview last year with President Bashar al-Assad of Syria, Barbara Walters tried to intercede to get a television position for a former aide of his, who Ms. Walters acknowledged helped arrange the interview.
Ms. Walters, the longtime ABC News correspondent, issued a statement Tuesday apologizing for reaching out to contacts to seek an internship with CNN and admission at Columbia University for Sheherazad Jaafari, who had been a media adviser for Mr. Assad. Ms. Jaafari, 22, is the daughter of the Syrian ambassador to the United Nations.
“I did offer to mention her to contacts at another media organization and in academia, though she didn’t get a job or into school,” Ms. Walters said in the statement. “In retrospect, I realize that this created a conflict and I regret that.”
Her statement was included in an article published by The Telegraph in London, which cited a series of e-mails that outlined the connection between Ms. Walters and Ms. Jaafari.
The e-mails were collected by a Syrian opposition group, which has intercepted confidential government communications of the Assad regime.
As reported by The Telegraph, Ms. Walters and Ms. Jaafari stayed in friendly contact after the ABC interview with Mr. Assad in December.
Ms. Walters turned down a request to intercede on behalf of Ms. Jaafari to secure a job at ABC News, saying that to do so would represent a conflict of interest. But Ms. Walters wrote in another e-mail that she had reached out to contacts at CNN’s “Piers Morgan Tonight” to have Ms. Jaafari hired as an intern, and to Richard Wald, a former ABC News colleague, to help her gain admission to Columbia. Mr. Wald, who is now a professor at the Columbia School of Journalism, had once been the second-ranked executive at ABC News.
The approach to the Piers Morgan show went both to Mr. Morgan and his producer, Jonathan Wald, who is Mr. Wald’s son.
Nunya
June 6th, 2012
ROFL!
Sorry I can’t even read the article: giggling too hard at yet another brilliant thread title! 
fxdwg
June 6th, 2012
Crunt “regrets” the “conflict”, not the fact that she did it. Liberals have no integrity and really could not care less about rules as long as they get what they want.
Two Legged Blue Eyed Cracker
June 6th, 2012
Why are our Hebrew friends generally such libtards in the US and generally the opposite in Israel?
“BaBaWaWa here on the Kibbutz – I now need an awwsault wifle as my qwestions are not well weceived”
Corona
June 6th, 2012
West and wewaxation at wast!
Tim
June 6th, 2012
As much as I despise Bobwa Wahwah, I assumed this kind of behavior was SOP.
Team America
June 6th, 2012
wawa wooshbag
Tracy
June 6th, 2012
I read the title a few times and every time I heard it in her voice
I think it was sometime in the 80′s that she interviewed Fidel Castro in Cuba, and man was she smitten with that scum bag.
Barbara Walters is amazing in the sense that for such a piss poor judge of character she’s had
Donna Rice’s much covered affair with married Presidential Candidate Gary Hart, rose her to notoriety. Barbara Walters, post interview remarked, “You know what, I believe her”.
NObama 2012!
Noelegy
June 6th, 2012
I seem to recall that Anna Wintour’s VOGUE Magazine did a glowing article on Assad’s wife some years ago.