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Sandy Gall's career with ITN spanned nearly 30 years, from 1963 to 1992. He was part of the original team of News at Ten- the first half-hour television news in Britain launched in 1967 and now ITN's flagship programme- and became one of its senior newscasters.
Early in 1991, Gall went to Saudi Arabia to report the Gulf War and was the first western journalist to report live from Kuwait only a few hours after the start of the allied invasion on February 24th.
In 1972 he was arrested in Uganda by Idi Amin and held for three days in the notorious Makindye military police camp. His subsequent report revealed to a mass audience for the first time the full extent of Amin's rule of terror.
He covered the Middle East Wars (1967, 1973) and was the first ITN correspondent to report from Vietnam, starting with the arrival of the Marines in 1965, and returning in 1967 and 1968, the year of the Tet Offensive. He was in Saigon when Vietnam fell to the Communists in 1975 and stayed on until he was forcibly flown out of the country by the Communist authorities.
It was in 1982, while co-presenting News at Ten, that he made his first three-month trip to Afghanistan, which he considered seriously under-reported. Despite running into a big Russian offensive in the Panjsher Valley and being heavily bombed, he produced three reports for ITN and a one-hour documentary (Afghanistan: Behind Russian Lines) for ITV. He went back in 1984 to make more news reports and a documentary (Allah Against the Gunships) and again in 1986 to make a third documentary (Agony of Nation). Both were nominated for BAFTA awards. He later covered the Russian withdrawal (1989) and the collapse of the Communist regime in Kabul (April, 1992).
He retired from ITN at the end of 1992. The second half of his memoirs, News from the Front, was published in February 1994, and his history of the bushmen, The Bushmen of Southern Africa: Slaughter of the Innocent, was published in 2000. He also presented BBC Radio 4's Breakaway in 1995.
Sandy has made a number of documentaries including a profile of Richard Leakey (the former director of Kenya's National Parks), for BBC2's Great Journeys series, a programme on Imran Khan's last test for BBC Everyman and a report on the Taliban, Veil of Fear, which was shown on Granada's World in Action in 1996.
In December 2002 Sandy fronted a special report on the Buddhas of Bamiyan for Five News and he can currently be heard on LBC 97.3FM as their World Affairs Expert.
Sandy also chairs conferences and seminars and is a highly skilled conference facilitator and after dinner speaker. He has a wealth of experience hosting events and award ceremonies, both at home and abroad.
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