The Foreign Service Journal, June 2009

J U N E 2 0 0 9 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 35 threatening their mass annihilation. The only way to avoid a blood bath was to evacuate the Palestinians by sea, and the only feasible way to ac- complish that in the time allotted was to seek Greek help on an urgent basis. First, several Greek ship owners withdrew their vessels from the high- season August island trade and dis- patched them to Beirut, where they took Palestinian troops on board and deposited themwher- ever permission had been granted. Secondly, PrimeMinis- ter Andreas Papandreou readily agreed to make available a Greekman-of-war to pick up Arafat in Beirut and carry him to safe haven. A massacre was avoided, along with poten- tially disastrous political fallout. Greek and U.S. interests were different but not incompatible in this case, and the generally poor state of relations at the time was put aside to get the job done. What does all this have to do with that tragic episode in Sudan a decade earlier? The connection be- came apparent to me only recently, when a secret that I did not know at the time was made public, giving newmeaning to the secret that I did know in 1974. Although the State Department had been content to shipme off to Khartoumwith no more than an overnight course for beginners, a friendly contact in Brussels judged that I should be better equipped. So before leaving I was shown the text of a message sent by radio from Beirut on March 2, 1973, by PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat, instructing the “KhartoumEight” to kill Cleo Noel, George Moore and Guy Eid. National Security Adviser Kissinger, if not his boss, was presumably aware that Arafat had been directly involved F O C U S The instruction given me before I left for Khartoum was, basically, to keep my mouth shut; but it did not occur to me to stop thinking.