• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 970 0

an alert Jordanian army patrol managed to detain Abu Daoud, masquerading as a Saudi sheikh, but carrying out reconnaissance for a Black September attempt to hold Jordanian ministers hostage so as to effect the release of a thousand Fatah members from the kingdom’s prisons. In order to free Daoud, Black September launched an attack on the Saudi embassy in Khartoum just as the ambassador was hosting a party for the outgoing deputy chief of mission at the US embassy to Sudan. Local PLO figures made all the preparations for the attack, with a Fatah official driving the terrorists to the embassy, where they burst into a diplomatic reception. Extraordinarily, a secret US navy listening post in Cyprus had already recorded Arafat and Abu Iyad in Beirut discussing the arrival of operatives for something codenamed ‘Cold River’ (Nahr al-Bared) with the PLO’s representative in Khartoum. The National Security Agency passed this information on to the State Department, but there were then delays as the two agencies tried to decide the importance of the information. Urgent messages now arrived at the State Department from the embassy in Khartoum, about events at the Saudi reception. There, the terrorists separated out the US ambassador, Cleo Noel, and his deputy, George Moore, as well as the Belgian charge d’affaires, Guy Eid, whom they mistakenly and maliciously imagined was Jewish. It soon became clear that Egyptian mediation was pointless since the Palestinians were bent on killing someone. The orders to ‘carry out Cold River’ came from Arafat in Beirut, unaware that his conversations with the terrorists in Khartoum were being monitored by the US and Israel. A gentleman to the last, Noel apologised to his Saudi host for ruining the party. The terrorists took the three diplomats down to the basement where they were shot several times, starting from the feet and working upwards until they were dead. Arafat called half an hour afterwards saying: ‘Have you carried out Cold River yet? Why didn’t I hear about this? Why wasn’t it on the news?’9

Salameh also set in motion a plot to assassinate Golda Meir when Black September learned of her plans to visit the Holy Father in Rome. Having personally scouted her likely route from Rome’s Fiumicino airport into Vatican City, Salameh determined that his best shot would be with a Russian shoulder-launched missile as her plane landed. Cases of such rockets were moved by yacht from Dubrovnik to Bari in Apulia and then transported to Rome. Fortuitously, Mossad intercepts on the phone of a high-end Brussels call-girl used by PLO clients revealed calls from Salameh to a flat in Rome. He spoke in code about moving fourteen ‘cakes’. The Rome address was traced and searched, and the Israelis found scraps of paper relating to Russian missiles, including instructions on their use. They and the Italian police then scoured Fiumicino airport a few hours before the prime minister was scheduled to land. The Israelis soon intercepted one of two terrorist teams and managed to capture one of its members. With little time to lose, they beat him up, and extracted the information that another team lay in waiting, one of the few occasions when excessive force has directly proved of any use. By chance, another Mossad agent patrolling the airport in his car noticed a cafe-van with three strange tubes protruding from its roof. Not taking any chances, he rammed the van, which turned over, trapping the terrorists inside with their missiles akimbo even as Meir’s plane prepared to land. The plot had failed.

In April 1973 the Israelis struck at three Palestinian leaders living in neighbouring seaside apartment blocks in the a-Sir district of Beirut. They were Abu Youssef, the second in command of Fatah, Kamal Adwan, the young commander of Fatah operations inside Israel, and Kamal Nasser, the PLO’s Christian chief spokesman. Although the first two were heavily engaged in acts of terrorism, they had no discernible links with the killings in Munich, while Kamal Nasser was a propagandist rather than a fighter, a distinction some might