Emmy Award winning television producer, Arthur Lord, dies at 60

LOS ANGELES (AP) Arthur Lord, an Emmy Award-winning television producer who covered many of the major stories of the last four decades, including the Vietnam and Persian Gulf wars, the Apollo moon landings and the Iran hostage crisis, has died. He was 60.

Lord died Sept. 25 at the University of California, Los Angeles Medical Center, his family said. He had been hospitalized for more than two months. A cause of death was not released.

A New York native, Lord began working for NBC in 1966 after a three-year stint in the Air Force as a public information officer. Hired as a news writer and producer, he wrote reports for some of the network's top anchors, including Chet Huntley, David Brinkley and Frank McGee.

In 1971, the network made him an on-air correspondent and sent him to Saigon to cover the war in Vietnam. He filed daily reports for 18 months before leaving to head the network's Houston bureau.

He returned to Asia in 1975 as Saigon bureau chief. There, he arranged the evacuation of 104 Vietnamese NBC employees and their family in the final days of the war. Along the way to the airport, nervous guards fired at their vans, and Lord bribed officials with $100 bills to get them to safety.

Lord often said the rescue, dubbed ``Operation Peacock'' after the network's longtime symbol, was his proudest accomplishment.

Lord then headed to California to head NBC News' Burbank bureau from 1979 to 1982. He closed his career at the network as a producer for special projects, coordinating coverage of papal visits and presidential trips.

Lord, who won two Emmys and a Peabody, was often a vocal critic of journalism practices. He called the media's coverage of the O.J. Simpson trial ``one of the most disgraceful periods in U.S. journalism.''

``He was a man known for his extreme integrity,'' said NBC correspondent George Lewis. ``He was very committed to honesty and in his dealings with other people he was always known as a straight shooter. He was one of a kind in this business.''

Lord was one of three NBC News staffers chosen to participate in an internal investigation of a 1993 ``Dateline NBC'' report on the safety of General Motors pickup trucks in which the producers rigged a truck explosion. NBC News President Michael Gartner resigned over the scandal, along with other employees involved in the story.

Lord, who retired from NBC in 1996, is survived by his wife, Susan; son, Michael; daughters, Sharon and Marlene; and two grandchildren. A memorial service was scheduled for Sunday in Los Angeles.

(Copyright 2002 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)