Review: 'Algerian Diary,' by Gerald Davis

In the summer of 1957, as CBS-TV news reporter Frank Kearns and cameraman Yousef (Joe) Masraff were about to enter the mountains of eastern Algeria to join rebels fighting for independence from France — without passports, visas or permission from the French government — their driver declared, "You will never return; you will die in Algeria."

Kearns and Masraff did make it back. They won two prestigious awards for their documentary, "Algeria Aflame." And Kearns went on to a distinguished career at CBS as bureau chief for Africa, covering conflicts in the Congo and Nigeria. He retired from CBS in 1971, taught journalism at West Virginia University and died of cancer in 1986.

In "Algerian Diary," Gerald Davis, the writer, director and producer of a recent TV documentary, "Frank Kearns: American Correspondent," provides an admiring portrait of Kearns (who was his teacher at WVU), focused primarily on the month he spent with the rebels — and on assessing allegations that Kearns was a CIA spy.

Kearns' diary entries and the sound-on-film scripts from "Algeria Aflame," which together make up about two-thirds of Davis' book, reveal Kearns' respect for the rebels, his conviction that they are not Communists and his dissatisfaction with the "neutrality" of the Eisenhower administration.

Despite his "natural cynicism, continual probing and interviewing tricks," Kearns writes, he has concluded that the Algerians are "the most logical and realistic of all Arabs," capable of understanding that the United States sent artillery and planes to France for use in NATO, not against them, and manifesting "an almost pathetically sincere conviction" that sooner or later the Americans will help them achieve independence.

The "biggest single impression" of his trip, Kearns maintains, in an eerily prescient conclusion, is of "a desperate faith, against all odds" in the ideals expressed by U.S. forefathers. That impression generated a growing conviction that as the "Algerian problem" became "an international problem" the faith of the young Algerians was "being murdered, day by day." And Kearns' sense was that "time [was] running out for America."

Davis doesn't know whether Kearns was a CIA agent. To the day of his death, Kearns categorically denied that he had had any contact with the agency, and threatened to sue "massively, anyone who has made or makes a false accusation in print or on the air."

But if he was a spy — and there is quite a bit of evidence that he was — "Algerian Diary" leaves you wondering what he told his handlers about the Algerian Muslims, "the occasional fanatic talk of a Jee-Had, a Holy War" and about crafting a foreign policy that would effectively address people whose reasons for fighting are "deep-rooted and ill-defined."

Glenn C. Altschuler is the Thomas and Dorothy Litwin professor of American studies at Cornell University.