Lesley Stahl Quotes
It is actually against the law for a citizen to give money to a terrorist.
Stahl, Lesley. "The Price of Doing Business." 60 Minutes, CBS, 11 May 2008.
There are legitimate Islamic charities as well as those who are fronts for terrorist organizations. Some of the terrorist organizations such as Hamas and Hezbollah blur the distinctions by actually having a charitable and/or political role in addition to their terrorist activities. Hezbollah, for example, in addition to their terrorist activities, has won some seats in the Lebanese Parliament and finances some legitimate charitable activities. So, often donors, including American donors, think they are funding the charitable activities but the money goes into terrorist activities. Even in the case where money goes to legitimate charities, very often those charities are complicit with the terrorists in many ways ranging from allowing terrorists to use their facilities (including hospitals and mosques) for the hiding of terrorists, planning of terrorists, and in some cases the storage and hiding of weapons and explosives. In some cases, so called legitimate charities actually paid the families of suicide bombers who had deliberately killed innocent civilians including Americans.
For the last 300 years, Muslim terrorists—corsairs at sea and petty tribal leaders on land—have made a lucrative business of kidnapping people and holding them for ransom. When Thomas Jefferson went to war off the Barberry coast, the Americans were the only Western nation who did not want to appease the terrorists and pay the ransoms or pay an annual “tribute” to guarantee safe passage (protection money). The European powers at the time and since could crush the terrorists militarily but there would be an economic cost for the expedition and lives would be lost. The typical calculus was that it was cheaper to pay the ransom than to pay the cost of a military solution. Even the United States then paid the yearly tribute for a while. However, this has reinforced the hostage taking behavior over the years and it is still in force. While the United States has a policy against paying ransoms, our government maintains a blind eye to private citizens, families or private companies paying to free the hostages. The Europeans, in contrast, generally allow even the government to pay ransoms. Weddady and other Muslim leaders have and continue to urge a policy of no ransom and use of force wherever possible. Muslim nations like Algeria and Turkey have learned that this is the best way to handle kidnapping terrorists and every few years, new terrorists try again and they attack quickly. In contrast European hostages are taken by the hundreds throughout the year. Meanwhile, piracy and hostage taking for ransom has spread to some Asian cultures so the world problem is not uniquely with Muslim terrorists any longer.
Lesley Rene Stahl is an American journalist. She has spent most of her career with CBS News, where she began as a producer in 1971. Since 1991, she has reported for CBS's 60 Minutes. She is known for her news and television investigations, and award-winning foreign reporting. For her body of work she has earned various journalism awards including a Lifetime Achievement News and Documentary Emmy Award in 2003 for overall excellence in reporting. Prior to joining 60 Minutes, Stahl served as CBS News White House correspondent – the first woman to hold that job – during the Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan presidencies and part of the term of George H. W. Bush. Her reports appeared frequently on the CBS Evening News, first with Walter Cronkite, then with Dan Rather, and on other CBS News broadcasts. During much of that time, she also served as moderator of Face the Nation, CBS News' Sunday public affairs broadcast from September 1983 to May 1991. As moderator, she interviewed such various world leaders as Margaret Thatcher, Boris Yeltsin, and Yasser Arafat, among others. From 1990 to 1991, she was co-host with Charles Kuralt of "America Tonight," a daily CBS News late-night broadcast of interviews and essays.
