I screw up? What if I fail?" Three months later though, he changed his mind and moved to the United States. United States' youngest anchor Jennings started reporting for ABC at its New York news bureau. At the time, ABC lagged behind the more established news divisions of NBC and CBS, and the network was trying to attract younger viewers. On February 1, 1965, ABC plucked the fresh-faced Canadian from the field and placed him at the anchor desk of Peter Jennings With the News, then a 15-minute nightly newscast. He replaced Ron Cochran, a fellow Canadian. At 26, Jennings was, and remains, the youngest-ever U.S. network news anchor. "ABC was in bad shape at the time," Jennings said. "They were willing to try anything, and, to demonstrate the point, they tried me." An inexperienced Jennings had a hard time keeping up with his rivals at the other networks, and he – and the upstart ABC News – could not compete with the venerable newscasts of Walter Cronkite at CBS and Chet Huntley and David Brinkley at NBC. Some in the American audience disliked Jennings's Canadian accent. He pronounced lieutenant as "leftenant", mangled the pronunciation of "Appomattox", and misidentified the "Marines' Hymn" as "Anchors Aweigh" at Lyndon B. Johnson's presidential inauguration; his lack of in-depth knowledge of American affairs and culture led critics to deride Jennings as a "glamorcaster". "It was a little ridiculous when you think about it," he later reflected. "A 26-year-old trying to compete with Cronkite, Huntley and Brinkley. I was simply unqualified." After three rocky years at the anchor desk, Jennings quit to become a foreign correspondent. Foreign correspondent Jennings attempted to build his journalism credentials abroad. In 1968, he established ABC's Middle East bureau in Beirut, Lebanon, the first American television news bureau in the Arab world. The next year, he demonstrated his growing sympathies regarding Middle Eastern affairs with Palestine: New State of Mind, a half-hour documentary for ABC's Now news program. As ABC's Beirut bureau chief, Jennings favored the Arab cause in the Arab–Israeli conflict, including the rise of the Palestinian Black September Organization during the early 1970s. He conducted the first American television interview with Palestine Liberation Organization chairman Yasser Arafat. While stationed in the Lebanese capital, Jennings dated Palestinian activist Hanan Ashrawi, who was then a graduate student in literature at the American University in Beirut. In 1972, Jennings covered his