Partners in capital crime.

• Author: Berlind, Alan
• Position: Attack on the Saudi Embassy in Khartoum, Sudan

Text:

"The challenge of statesmanship is to define the components of both power and morality and strike a balance between them. This is not a one-time effort. It requires constant recalibration; it is as much an artistic and philosophical as a political enterprise. It implies a willingness to manage nuance and to live with ambiguity. The practitioners of the art must learn to put the attainable in the service of the ultimate and accept the element of compromise inherent in the endeavor." (1) It does not take an artist, a philosopher or a politician to recognize this dictum for what it is: a clever and sophisticated-sounding rationale for doing, or failing to do, anything; in other words, a celebration of successes and an excuse for failures. It could be easily dismissed were it not for the fact that its author is the man who, for all intents and purposes, dominated American foreign policy during a crucial period of recent history, i.e., 1969-1976, and who did so presumably guided by his formula.

Dr. Henry A. Kissinger, National Security Advisor and Secretary of State under Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford, presided over some major foreign policy gains for the United States, most notably with the pursuit of detente with the Soviet Union and Nixon's opening to China. His failures were not fewer, producing, for example, a brutal thirteen-year dictatorship in Chile and an ongoing thirty-eight-year-old massive foreign armed occupation of a large part of Cyprus, a member in good standing of both the United Nations and the European Union. And, his heralded role in bringing the Vietnam War to an end must be weighed against the bloody prolongation of that war in the interests of assuring Nixon's re-election in 1972.

One of the most powerful weapons against truth and accountability is the old saw that holds that old news is no news, bolstered by the rule often pronounced in high government circles that calls for looking forward, not back. But can the future be faced with hope and confidence without acknowledgement of past failures and placement of the blame where it belongs? What follows is old news no less important either for its age or the relatively small amount of blood spilled.

Theaccount belowis basedon official documents, declassified and released for public consumption, related to the murder in Khartoum, The Sudan on March 2, 1973 of United States Ambassador Cleo Noel, Deputy Chief of Mission George Curtis Moore and Belgian Charge d'Affaires Guy Eid.

The facts are these:

-- On March 1, 1973, eight terrorists of the Black September Organization (BSO), part and parcel of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) and Fatah, both headed by Yasir Arafat, invaded the Saudi Embassy in Khartoum and took prisoner the three diplomats.

-- The terrorists demanded the release of several persons being held in Jordan, Israel and the U.S.

-- Nixon announced publicly in response that the U.S. does not submit to blackmail.

-- Responding in turn, Arafatordered his terrorists to murder the three hostages on March 2, 1973, and they complied and surrendered to the Sudanese authorities.

-- Within days, one of Arafat's top aides told a U.S. official that Arafat "had put the lid on" further terrorist action against Americans as long as a dialogue could be maintained between the two sides: "Khartoum had made its point."

-- Responding to this thinly veiled threat, the U.S. submitted to blackmail and met regularly with Arafat and his top aides.

-- In June 1974, following a Sudanese court verdict of guilty, the terrorists were sent to Egypt for delivery to the PLO for punishment.

-- The United States loudly punished the Sudanese for their weak response to terrorism.

-- While the Sudanese were being punished, a senior Kissinger emissary was asking the Ethiopian Government to release captured members of an opposition movement so as to secure the freedom of two Americans being held by that movement.

-- Documentary proof of Arafat's responsibility for the Khartoum murders and Kissinger's knowledge there of surfaced only three decades later.

The Office of the Historian of the U.S. Department of State regularly declassifies and releases old documents. One, dated June 1973, emerged in 2006: an Intelligence Memorandum describing the Khartoum tragedy and assigning the blame to Arafat. Excerpts from the summary read as follows (emphasis added):

"In the early evening hours of 1 March...