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June 16, 2006
Foggy Bottom Blues
Lest you think that the U.S. State Department is actually looking out for the interests of Americans, The Jerusalem Post points out that they've been working for years to protect and defend the world's most murderous thugs -- including people who have killed . . . the State Department's own people.
Last week it was reported in the United States that among the secret documents that the State Department recently released after 30 years is a document demonstrating that the US was aware from the outset of the key role Arafat played in murdering those American diplomats. “The Khartoum operation was planned and carried out with the full knowledge and personal approval of Yasser Arafat,” said an official US intelligence memorandum dated June 1973. It added that representatives of Fatah, Arafat’s faction of the PLO, “participated in the attack, using a Fatah vehicle to transport the terrorists to the Saudi Arabian Embassy.”
At that time, Arafat tried to distance himself from all responsibility for the murder of the diplomats in Khartoum and the PLO, just as he tried to distance himself from the massacre of the Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics in September 1972, diverting responsibility to the Black September faction. Indeed, despite the fact that the American administration was well aware of the truth, it placed official blame for the murders on the Black September.
THE ADMINISTRATION of US president Richard Nixon was in its final decline in the wake of the Watergate affair. The attack in Khartoum appalled and outraged the world. Eight terrorists had seized the diplomats during a Saudi Arabian embassy function in Khartoum.
On March 2, 1973, the Palestinians murdered US ambassador Cleo Noel and US charg d’affaires George Curtis Moore, along with a Belgian diplomat, Guy Eid.
The secret American report from 1973 that has just been released notes that the murder was carried out only after the terrorists received orders from Fatah headquarters in Beirut: “The open participation of Fatah representatives in Khartoum in the attack provides further evidence of the Fatah/BSO relationship,” a relationship that Arafat denied.
I believe a plausible argument can be made that the State Department -- and the CIA -- are rogue agencies, beholden and subordinate to no one, pursuing their own agendas, decade upon decade, administration after administration, viewing presidents as temporary interlopers.
This is an issue that ought to enrage Americans, more so than a failure to serve lukewarm tea and stale scones to the terrorists at Gitmo.
Posted by Mike Lief at June 16, 2006 07:25 AM
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Comments
That is worrying. I googled it and got it again at Robert Spencer's site.
Since I don't know many facts, even about the incident in question, I'm reduced to speculation about the general nature of the thing. Is there room for the possibility that State had a good reason?
And even if there isn't, does it indicate that the agencies involved regard the presidents as interlopers? I don't want to start spinning conspiracy theories about Nixon and Ford, which I guess is what I'm implying, but ... what could be their motivation? A desire to make nice with Arafat? Doesn't bode well if true.
Posted by: Anwyn at June 16, 2006 05:50 PM