Administration of the silent
officials. Administration of the silent
treatment was meant to punish the
Sudanese for their want of firmness
in the face of terrorism. Nixon had
just recently resigned and Henry
Kissinger, who had become Secretary
of State while remaining national security adviser, was in undisputed control of foreign policy.
Within days of my arrival, I received a cable outlining “U.S. Policy
Toward Sudan in Wake of Terrorist Release” (State 169610,
sent Aug. 2, 1974; declassified Sept. 25, 2002): “Conclusion
is that Pres. Nimeiri’s decision to release terrorists to PLO
for execution of commuted sentences is incompatible with
continuation of cooperative ties. ... In addition to substance
of decision, manner in which it was made and USG learned
of it showed scant courtesy to highest level USG. ... In dealings with GOS, Emboffs should continue correct posture,
meeting with officials at their request. ... You should respond to specific assistance requests of all types with statement that you will submit them to Washington for
consideration, but that GOS should not RPT not expect
early response.”
But there was a problem. Several months earlier, the
militant arm of the Eritrean Liberation Front had kidnapped several people, killed one and released a few. They
were still holding four, including two Americans, somewhere in the wilds of northern Ethiopia. Neither Embassy
Addis Ababa nor the Ethiopian government, which was in
its last days, had any good intelligence on the exact whereabouts of the hostages, much less any leverage on their captors. The best avenue to information about and subsequent
resolution of this terrorist incident passed through the security services of the blacklisted Sudanese government.
How to overcome this obstacle? While I sought and
weighed assurances from Eritrean interlocutors in Khartoum that the hostages were in good health, the Sudanese
security services were ever so quietly encouraged to pursue
efforts to secure an end to the episode. With their help,
the hostages emerged unscathed at the border in September and departed the next day for the United States. Khartoum’s interests and Washington’s had both been served.
occur to me to stop thinking. Not
convinced that our policies were producing positive results; concerned
that they were sowing confusion in
the Sudanese government and, via
the diplomatic corps, abroad; and
reasoning that Khartoum’s actions
paled in comparison to the murders
themselves, I undertook to draft for
country team approval our joint appreciation of the situation and recommendations for future steps (Khartoum 2100, sent Sept.
11, 1974; declassified Nov. 15, 2001).
In brief, we recounted the Sudanese political motives
for ridding themselves of the prisoners and reviewed U.S.
national interests in ending the stalemate that in combination could be said to outweigh the Sudanese action. We
suggested that the Sudanese contribution to the release of
the ELF hostages deserved some recognition and proposed
engaging our hosts openly to fully explain U.S. policy (for
the first time) and explore Sudanese willingness to take appropriate measures to overcome the impasse.
The department’s terse, unresponsive and essentially
dismissive reply — containing not a hint that our analysis
and recommendations had been read, much less considered — arrived three weeks later (State 218518, sent Oct.
3, 1974; declassified Nov. 15, 2001): “... Our policy remains
unchanged with respect to Sudan.” I realized that the sobriquet bestowed on me by a friendly colleague was on the
mark: Chargé de rien faire (that is, in charge of doing nothing).
Not until 32 years later did I learn that senior American
officials such as Under Secretary of State Joseph Sisco had
been asking the Ethiopians to release some ELF prisoners
to ease negotiations for the release of the hostages (State
171544, sent Aug. 6, 1974; declassified May 4, 2006). In
other words, we were asking others to deal with terrorists
while we maintained an uncompromising position.
treatment was meant to
punish the Sudanese for
their want of firmness in
the face of terrorism.
Modest Recommendations
The instruction given me before I left Brussels for Khartoum was, basically, to keep my mouth shut; but it did not
Fast forward to July 1982, when I arrived in Athens as
chargé d’affaires and was enlisted almost immediately in an
effort led by U.S. diplomat Philip Habib to avert a regional
disaster. The Israeli army under General Ariel Sharon had
surrounded Yasser Arafat, some 1,000 of his fighters and
many other Palestinians in the port area of Beirut, and was
