NEW YORK – The editor of The New York Times says keeping quiet about the capture of one of his reporters in Afghanistan was “agonizing.”
The Times reported Saturday that David Rohde escaped by climbing over a wall of a compound where he was held captive in the North Waziristan region of Pakistan.
Rohde was abducted Nov. 10 along with an Afghan reporter and a driver south of the Afghan capital, Kabul.
In an interview on CNN Sunday, Times editor Bill Keller said suppressing the story of Rohde’s kidnapping was “an agonizing position that we revisited over and over again.”
The Times asked other news media not to report that Rohde had been captured.
Keller says the newspaper’s management and Rohde’s family believed that publicizing the kidnapping right could endanger Rohde’s safety.
