Bizzyblog reports that the U.S. State Department declassified a document earlier this year. In it there is, as T. Blumer calls it, “an admission”.
The admission is that State has known for decades that the late Yasser Arafat, chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization and the head of Fatah, plotted and supervised the 1973 murders of three diplomats: two from the United States (Cleo Noel and George Curtis), and one from Belgium (Guy Eid) who was apparently in the wrong place at the wrong time, in Khartoum, The Sudan.
A ‘summary’ of the document will be published below.
Until now, only conservative bloggers have responded on this document. Some links with quotes:
Ed Morrissey:
The State Department should have warned successive administrations from dealing with this terrorist and instead recommended that we capture him and try him for the murders of Noel and Moore. These men worked for the State Department themselves. I guess the lesson here is that State won’t lift a finger to bring assassins of diplomats to justice, a lesson that current diplomats may want to consider now.
Daniel Freedman at It Shines For All:
We’d like to know why this report was kept a secret and why the State Department kept pushing Arafat as a peacemaker? He should have been locked up in jail for the murders he was responsible for.
And, lastly, Scott Johnson at Power Line who:
wrote a column for the Minneapolis Star Tribune regarding Yasser Arafat’s responsibility for the 1973 assassination of two United States State Department officers — Ambassador Cleo Noel and charge d’affaires Curtis Moore — in Khartoum, Sudan. The column was based on accounts of the events in David Korn’s Assassination in Khartoum, Neil Livingstone and David Halevy’s Inside the PLO, and the testimony of former National Security Agency analyst Jim Welsh. Welsh has doggedly purused the story for over thirty years as a result of his personal involvement in disseminating a warning relating to the communications intercepted by the NSA in 1973.
While researching [his] column in 2002, [he] sought out a State Department spokesman for a comment. [He] sent an e-mail message with a draft of my column to State Department Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs deputy director of press affairs Gregory Sullivan. [He] wrote Sullivan:
I have been leaving messages with you and other department officers over the past day or two seeking any information about department efforts to bring to justice Yasser Arafat and others involved in the 1973 assassination of former American Ambassador to Sudan…Cleo Noel and his charge d’affaires, George Curtis Moore. Attached is the op-ed piece I have written on the subject, including criticism of the Department for its apparent inaction…regarding its own former officers. If my assertions regarding the Department’s inaction are wrong, I would like to rewrite the piece to make it accurate. I wonder if you would be willing to take a moment to review the piece and provide me with any information on behalf of the department if I am mistaken.
In response Sulllivan wrote:
I can’t say I’m impressed with your research or argumentation. You’re obviously writing a piece designed to elicit a certain reaction rather than one based on factual accounts or actual comments made by the U.S. government. I really don’t have the time to do the research for you, but I do find myself compelled to point out…Evidence clearly points to the terrorist group Black September as having committed the assassinations of Amb. Noel and George Moore, and though Black September was a part of the Fatah movement, the linkage between Arafat and this group has never been established.
On the one hand, I can agree with the ones I quoted above. On the other hand, the reality is that everybody knows that Arafat was a terrorist (leader) and that he, as such, killed people. One might say, “but we were not sure whether he was responsible for the deaths of U.S. diplomats”, which might be true, but I do not quite see how one can be completely taken aback by this news.
Clinton’s foreign policy, for instance, was based on an entirely different idea than that of George W. Bush. My guess is that – harsh as this may sound – it was quite irrelevant to him to know in 1996 whether or not Arafat was responsible for the deaths of two American diplomats in 1973. The foundation of his foreign policy would – most likely – not have been what did Arafat do in the past, it would have been “we have to deal with the situation as it is now, and Yasser Arafat is, sadly, the leader of the Palestinian people now, and if we want to establish peace in one way or another, we need him to support the plans”.
That being said, I believe that it was wrong for ‘the West’ and Israel to negotiate with Arafat, not because of what he did in 1973, but because I believe that he did not change one bit. When he died, he was still a terrorist leader, someone who could kill innocent people without regret, someone who encouraged other people to blow themselves up in the middle of a market, filled with civilians. Also because – in my opinion – peace was never something that Arafat wanted.
In short, it was utterly useless. All it did was provide him with a mask of respectability.
Cross posted at my own new blog (posts there will – normally – be limited to one, reasonably long, post per day: TMV is and will continue to be my ‘main gig’ as I believe Americans call it).
Heh. Forgot:
THE SEIZURE OF THE SAUDI ARABIAN EMBASSY IN KHARTOUM
Summary
In the early evening hours of 1 March 1973, eight Black September Organization (BSO) terrorists seized the Saudi Arabian Embassy in Khartoum as a diplomatic reception honoring the departing United States Deputy Chief of Mission (DCM) was ending. After slightly wounding the United States Ambassador and the Belgian Charge d’Affaires, the terrorists took these officials plus the United States DCM, the Saudi Arabian Ambassador and the Jordanian Charge d’Affaires hostage. In return for the freedom of the hostages, the captors demanded the release of various individuals, mostly Palestinian guerrillas, imprisoned in Jordan, Israel and the United States.
The Khartoum operation was planned and carried out with the full knowledge and personal approval of Yasir Arafat, Chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), and the head of Fatah. Fatah representatives based in Khartoum participated in the attack, using a Fatah vehicle to transport the terrorists to the Saudi Arabian Embassy.
Initially, the main objective of the attack appeared to be to secure the release of Fatah/BSO leader Muhammed Awadh (Abu Da’ud) from Jordanian captivity. Information acquired subsequently reveals that the Fatah/BSO leaders did not expect Awadh to be freed, and indicates that one of the primary goals of the operation was to strike at the United States because of its efforts to achieve a Middle East peace settlement which many Arabs believe would be inimical to Palestinian interests.
Negotiations with the BSO terrorist team were conducted primarily by the Sudanese Ministers of Interior and of Health. No effort was spared, within the capabilities of the Sudanese Government, to secure the freedom of the hostages. The terrorists extended their deadlines three times, but when they became convinced that their demands would not be met and after they reportedly had received orders from Fatah headquarters in Beirut, they killed the two United States officials and the Belgian Charge. Thirty-four hours later, upon receipt of orders from Yasir Arafat in Beirut to surrender, the terrorists released their other hostages unharmed and surrendered to Sudanese authorities.
The Khartoum operation again demonstrated the ability of the BSO to strike where least expected. The open participation of Fatah representatives in Khartoum in the attack provides further evidence of the Fatah/BSO relationship. The emergence of the United States as a primary fedayeen target indicates a serious threat of further incidents similar to that which occurred in Khartoum.
