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Yasser Arafat - The Forgotten Terrorist
2003-02-28 00:35:24
By Thomas W. Murphy - USA In Review
He is one of the Worlds most notorious terrorists, responsible for the deaths of thousands of men, woman, and children. He's plied his trade in Europe, Africa, and the Middle East. Bombings, hijackings, and assassination; he's mastered them all.
The United States has enough evidence to indict him for the kidnapping and brutal murder of two American diplomats. The United States knows his exact location. The United States can arrest him and bring him to justice whenever it chooses.
His name is Muhammad Abd ar-Rauf al-Qudwah al-Husayni, better known as Yasser Arafat.
In March 1973, Palestinian terrorist seized the Saudi Arabian Embassy in Khartoum, Sudan, during a diplomatic reception. U.S. Ambassador Cleo Noel and Charge d' Affairs C. Curtis Moore were among those taken hostage.
The terrorist who identified themselves as members of Black September demanded the release of Sirhan Sirhan, the murderer of Robert Kennedy. When President Nixon refused this demand, the American diplomats were taken to the embassy basement where they were brutally tortured and killed.
The National Security Agency intercepted direct communications between Yasser Arafat and his operatives in the Khartoum office of al-Fatah that indicate Arafat had both planned the attack and ordered the executions.
While Arafat publicly denied any complicity in the murders, he discussed them during a private dinner with Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu in May 1973. The dinner was also attended by General Ion Mihai Pacepa, who later defected to the U.S.
Pacepa later wrote that "Arafat excitedly bragged about his Khartoum operation" in an article published in the Wall Street Journal.
American Administrations have been reluctant to pursue murder charges against Arafat due to political considerations related to the Cold War and the Middle East.
Now that the Cold War is a distant memory, perhaps justice can finally be served. Based on the available evidence, Arafat can be indicted on charges of first-degree murder--a crime with no statue of limitations. Or will we again allow other factors to enter into this decision, making a mockery of our laws and our stated commitment to eradicate terrorism....
See full text of the original article
Review of Assassination in Khartoum
Middle East Quarterly
June 1994
Assassination in Khartoum. by David A. Korn.
Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993. 256 pp. $24.95.
Reviewed by Paul A. Jureidini
Paul A. Jureidini is vice president of Abbott Associates, Inc., a research and analysis organization specializing in political-military affairs, political violence, and the Middle East.
In a hauntingly sad analysis of the cold-blooded murder in the Sudan of two American diplomats--Cleo Allen Noel, Jr. and George Curtis Moore--plus a diplomat from the Belgian embassy, David A. Korn sheds light on a painful chapter in America's initial attempts to deal with Palestinian terrorism. By implication, he also takes up the challenge of terrorism internationally at a time when this phenomenon began to claim an ever-increasing number of innocent victims.
In the months that followed the assassination of Cleo Noel and Curt Moore, and before the case was relegated to the obscurity of sealed filing cabinets in remote storage facilities, several inquiries were held. Those involved in these inquiries found their efforts blunted by the absence of information about three main issues:
1. Was Black September an integral part of Fatah, or an independent organization secretly created by members of Fatah's intelligence arm, Jihaz ar-Rasd? Did Black September draw its membership from Fatah only, or also from other Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) factions?
2. Who authorized the planning of the Khartoum operation? Who controlled it operationally as it was executed? Most important, who actually gave the order for the execution of the three diplomats?
3. Could the U.S. government have done something to prevent the tragic outcome, or was it preordained? Was the Black September team in Khartoum prepared to negotiate? Did it have the latitude to negotiate an outcome short of its major objective?
Korn answers the first question clearly and with authority, showing that the Black September was a creation of Fatah, Yasir Arafat's faction of the PLO, and had never operated independently of it. Creation of the Black September permitted Fatah to use a brand of terrorism that included the assassination of diplomats and innocent civilians, yet maintain plausible denial.
But the author is not as emphatic and authoritative as he should be on the second point, when it comes to assigning Fatah responsibility for the murders. He names the late Salah Khalaf (Abu Iyad), the number two man in Fatah, as the head of the Black September, and he identifies four other top officials of Fatah as Black September leaders. But somehow, he leaves Yasir Arafat's role in the Black September and in the Khartoum massacre unexplained. We learn that Arafat disowned the perpetrators but refused to condemn the assassinations. But we do not learn who in the top leadership of Fatah sent the coded signal to the Black September team in the Saudi Arabian embassy in Khartoum to carry out the executions. Indeed, the culpability of the top leadership of Fatah/BSO is not established in this book except by inference, and that, perhaps, is its major flaw. Korn suggests that Abu Iyad was responsible for the whole operation as well as the fateful coded signal that led to the murder of the diplomatic hostages. Yet many find it hard to believe that Abu Iyad would act independently of Arafat in an affair with such potentially far-reaching consequences.
Korn is at his best when he deals with the third question, of what in his opinion was clearly an inadequate U.S. response. US intelligence on Fatah/BSO in 1973 was poor to non-existent. CIA attempts to enlist Ali Salamaeh, a principle Fatah/BSO member, went awry when Salamaeh balked at CIA efforts to recruit him as an agent rather than establish him as a point of contact between it and Yasir Arafat. (Only years later was the CIA finally able to reestablish contact with him.) In 1973, the U.S. intelligence community was still in the process of assessing the danger that Fatah and Black September were beginning to represent. A cabinet committee to combat terrorism had just been created, but the chairman of the working committee, Armin Meyer, was a general without an army. Henry Kissinger, the national security advisor, had adopted a policy of no negotiations, no deals, and no concessions, but without debate or study of this policy's implications. The policy had not been made public before Khartoum, and Secretary of State William Rogers had actually refused to sign on to it. The U.S. government had no anti-terrorist force in place, and U.S. embassies had not been made secure against terrorist raids of this sort.
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