Death of Anwar Sadat (1918-1981) - 9 October 1981

Of course nothing since the assassination attempt on the Pope has brought such a shockwave of disbelief to Americans and to most other peoples, as last Tuesday's news from Cairo. I say disbelief advisedly because sadly we are by now inured to outrage. In a bad year we recall, with no desire to dwell on them the attack on President Reagan, on the Pope, the momentary scare of the pistol loaded with blanks which was pointed at Queen Elizabeth. Not to mention the almost routine spate of murders in Iran.

We used to take for granted that political assassinations were a speciality of Central and Eastern Europe. Long after Franklin Roosevelt had the closest call. Two months before he became President. John and Bobby Kennedy changed all that. But until the attempt on President Reagan last March, we needed to be reminded that Gerald Ford came within a hair's breadth of assassination twice. From people who are now put away.

Most of us I suppose have theories about this wave of political murder but I doubt that any of them do much more than provide us with ammunition for a prejudice long rooted. Such as that a breakdown in middle-class values has made guns available everywhere. That the dissolution of strong empires has encouraged the rise of splinter protest groups. And hence of fanatics. That television offers the cue to maniacs anywhere to gain instant and worldwide notoriety.

The sociologists went into this phenomenon no later than 1968. Which was a black year in America. And came up with the reassuring theory that these waves of violence were cyclical. Had no deep historical reason and would come and go two or three times in a century. What I think is harder for us to take in and deal with, and by us I mean heads of Government, Secret Services, Interpol, the United Nations, is the undoubted fact that we are in a new age of internationally organised terrorism. It's difficult for those of us who are not wedded to the James Bond stories to believe that a gun used in Ireland or Baghdad or Berlin may have come from Russia or America or France and been handled by local terrorists trained, for instance, in Libya.

The first hint of a sort of Terrorists International came to us, I believe, when the notorious siege of Balcombe Street, London was broken. When a hit list of prominent people of several countries was found and was alleged to have been drawn up in Paris by a secret meeting of terrorists from several far flung nations. Who shared not only sources of supply, by way of guns, hand grenades and so on, but also pooled their ideas about the most effective tactics. It used to be straightforward attempts at assassination and then the bombing of civilian communities. And then fashionable restaurants. And then churches. And then the planting of time bombs under the motorcars of prominent politicians. And then the seizure of hostages.

As for the television argument, there's surely no doubt that apart from dedicated terrorist groups, some lonely maniac sitting in front of the TV in Prague, or Amsterdam, or Paris, or Paris, Texas. And watching such an event as happened in St. Peter's Square. Or Dallas. Or Cairo. Sees an irresistible opportunity to seize a moment of worldwide notoriety. Considering this new form of universal exposure and the probability that international terrorism is as organised as they say, I suggest that we may have to revise our habits of national ceremonials. I mean the unbroken tradition in all countries of public processions, by way of coronations, funerals, political campaigns. And now, it seems, of military reviews.

There was well suppressed anxiety in many countries about the preparations for the Royal Wedding last July. And during the first half hour or so of the event itself a lot of edgy apprehension on the part of Foreign Offices, police forces and the military. The decision to proceed in open carriages was given much thought. I believe that in any other self-governing country the decision would have gone the other way. And as we find now with all street journeys of the President of the United States, the automobile that carries him is closed, has bullet-proof windows and moves very fast. But, by the grace of God, the Royal Wedding turned out to be a risky triumph of defiance against the new vulnerability of crowned and uncrowned heads.

Still, the question's now being asked and debated among heads of protocol in many governments, and this week inside the White House itself, whether Heads of State and/or Heads of Government can any longer trust to fate, no matter how elaborate and seemingly foolproof the security arrangements? The frightening remark - frightening in retrospect - of John Kennedy was recalled this week. A remark he made the night before he was assassinated. In his hotel in Fort Worth, a mere hop, skip and a jump by air from the following day's appearance, in an open car through the streets of Dallas, the nagging topic came up among a handful of his closest aides. Kennedy cut it off by saying, "Well, I'm going to bed! With all the security preparations in the world, if someone wants to do it, he's going to do it".

With this in mind and after a long discussion of the security forces available in Cairo, and along the route, President Reagan bowed to the decision that his presence at President Sadat's funeral would be altogether too risky. I recall, as you might, an impossible dream, the funeral of President Kennedy. When General De Gaulle, Prince Philip, almost every known Head of a Government from the Communist, the Third, and what we called the Free World, walked side by side to Arlington National Cemetery through packed and silent crowds.

Well, as it is it was decided that neither President Reagan nor Vice President Bush would go to Cairo and that the United States should be represented by the Secretary of State, Mr. Haig, the Secretary of Defence, Mr. Weinberger and by the three living ex-Presidents. Jimmy Carter. Gerald Ford. And Richard Nixon. In one way, the State Department at least is learning to cope with terrorism, if only with intense suspicion which, in a single human being, would border on paranoia. Throughout Tuesday morning, the radio and television networks were stabbing at the truth through a maze of rumour and official and semi-official announcements. President Sadat had been shot. Had been killed. Had been only lightly wounded. Was in long surgery. Was going into surgery. Was on his way to recovery.

This was not the familiar routine of hysteria. Which overtakes reporters frustratingly close to a scene but not in it. By 11 in the morning, New York time, we had the word from Reuters, from United Press International, from the Associated Press, in single, stark flashes. Sadat dead. Then somebody close to the White House understood that President Sadat had telephoned somebody in or close to the Egyptian Embassy in Washington with the reassurance that he was alright. Two hours later, it was reported that Cairo radio and hospital sources had confirmed his death. But still, every Press and television and radio reporter, who checked with the State Department, could only report that it was not confirming any report. One way or the other.

So there was much muttered irritation with the State Department for the seeming muddle of its communications system or for its mulish stubbornness in not putting out an official statement. I have to say that I, for one, entirely sympathised with this extreme caution. When I said that we were learning to cope with terrorism in a way bordering on paranoia, I was thinking the way I'm sure many people on the Middle Eastern and European desks of the State Department were thinking. In the past two decades, from Havana, to Teheran and Kabul, the first thing that a rebel faction tries to do is to seize the radio station in the national capital. If King Juan of Spain had not been on the alert within the hour and made a radio talk, the coup of the Spanish colonels who got to the radio first might have already been an accomplished fact.

But how about hospital sources? Surely they are incontrovertible authorities? Not at all. Outside the pages of Ian Fleming and John Le Carré terrorist groups have included in their early plans the training of nurses and hospital workers. And planting them. Months ahead of an intended coup. Today, before we can believe a hospital authority we have to see him or her and be sure of the identity. In the confused hours of Tuesday morning, the State Department, from Secretary Hague down, was haunted by the thought of announcing President Sadat's death, so playing into the hands of a possible rebel group and then finding too late that the final word had come not from the Egyptian government but from its enemies. President Reagan and Secretary Hague waited until the call came from Vice President Mubarak himself.

And if all this sounds absurdly far fetched, think back to the false notes of triumph that this government trumpeted, about what was in fact the disaster, from the first moments, of the Cuban Bay of Pigs. Think back to the false reports about the assassination of Trujillo, before it finally happened. Think back to the official report of Hitler's Reichstag fire. And think again!

As for the political outlook in the Middle East, I'll leave it to others to speculate and there is a legion of others. We've been reminded here by Egyptian diplomats and Middle Eastern experts that the Egyptian tradition of self rule is too short for us to be sure that one strong man creates in his deputy another strong man. That for many years Sadat was known as Nasser's poodle. That, as the Libyans and the PLO are joyfully proclaiming, no agreement between two men can ever carry over into an agreement between two governments.

On one thing only is there general agreement or I should say general anxiety, that the months ahead could be fearful ones for Israel.

In the meantime, we must say, as the pioneers in America, in Australia, in East Africa used to say, the women especially, after some shattering tragedy, "We have to move on".

And so we must.

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