Fox News reported that U.N. Deputy Secretary-General Mark Malloch Brown was quoted in a British newspaper — the Financial Times — and printed this sentence “according to a transcript of an interview”: “It’s not helpful to couch this war in the language of international terrorism. Hezbollah employs terrorist tactics; it is an organization, however, whose roots historically are completely separate and different from Al Qaeda.” Fox reported State Department spokesman Sean McCormack: “We believe Hezbollah is a terrorist organization. And in terms of Mr. Malloch Brown’s comments regarding Hezbollah, clearly, we disagree.” Fox also quoted him on U.S. and UK “baggage” in the Middle East.
The New York Post, 4 August 2006, quoted the same FT lines in an opinion column. NPR, 10 August 2006, interviewed him on a Lebanon ceasefire draft; the posted transcript has him saying Hezbollah “has a political mind, whatever its nasty terrorist military tactics.” This page quotes the outlets that published the remarks. It does not invent a longer transcript. It does not treat a comment as a crime.