Audition (61 page)

“Why should I be? I will not be taken one minute before God wants it,” he replied. Four years later, as a result of this quest for peace, he would be assassinated.

What some American people didn’t understand then, and may still not, was the significance of Egypt’s place in the Middle East, and why Sadat’s unilateral quest for peace with Israel had drawn such condemnation from the other Arab leaders, including King Hussein of Jordan. The answer was in the numbers—Egypt had two-thirds of the Arab population in the Middle East, counting the Sudan, and by far the greatest military capability. What Egypt did greatly affected all the other Arab countries in the region.

“Is it true that there cannot be war or peace in the Arab world without Egypt?” I asked Sadat.

“This is a fact,” he replied. “War or peace is decided in Egypt because we are forty million people.”

I was very proud of this interview. It made headlines around the world the next day—and started a firestorm at CBS.

As soon as my interview with Begin and Sadat ended, Justin grabbed the tape cassettes and rushed to the Israeli Television Broadcast Center to edit the conversation and satellite it to New York. The word quickly spread, prompting an Israeli driver for CBS to run to his producers and say: “ABC has Sadat and Begin!” And the chase was on.

CBS staffers frantically tracked down the two leaders and pleaded with them to do another interview, this time with Walter Cronkite. CBS News was so determined to beat the upstart, third-place ABC News, not to mention the possibility that I might personally upstage the much more authoritative Cronkite, that they instantly transmitted Cronkite’s entire unedited interview back to New York and directly onto
60 Minutes
. That turned out to be a mistake. Not only did ABC get my interview on the air seconds before CBS ran Cronkite’s, but at the end of his interview Cronkite is clearly heard saying: “Did Barbara get anything I didn’t get?”

I returned to New York, having slept the entire way home in a “nest” the El Al steward made for me on the floor, to find my status greatly improved in the news division. The back-to-back interviews with Castro and Arafat, followed by the interview with Sadat and Begin, had put me back on the map as a serious journalist. It didn’t hurt that I’d gone head-to-head with Chancellor and Cronkite, the top men in broadcast journalism at the time, and, you should excuse the expression, beaten the pants off them. From that time on I was more or less accepted as a member of the old boys’ club.

But I had unfinished business. I had a major plan in mind. At the end of my interview with Begin and Sadat, I had asked them if their respective ambassadors in Washington “could at least now meet and talk, which they’ve never done before?” Sadat thought for a minute and then replied, “Why not? I say, today we are ready.” Begin then also agreed. “I hope that starting from tomorrow the ambassadors of Egypt and Israel all over the world will give common interviews and meet with journalists and express their opinions.”

I immediately phoned Simcha Dinitz, the Israeli ambassador to the United States, and his Egyptian counterpart, Ambassador Ghorbal, to invite them to do a joint interview with me on
Issues and Answers
when I returned home. Dinitz agreed but Ghorbal refused. He didn’t want their first exchange to take place publicly on television. So instead I invited them to an off-the-record dinner party, which they both accepted. This was, believe me, a major event. Even today the Egyptian and Israeli ambassadors are rarely at the same dinner.

I hosted the dinner, a coming-out party of sorts, at the Madison Hotel in Washington just a few weeks after I’d returned from Israel. Though both diplomats were assigned to the United States and both lived in Washington, they had never met. They couldn’t, for Egypt and Israel were still technically at war and had been, actively at times, since 1948.

What a euphoric time it was for all of us. I carefully planned the party. Among the guests were Katharine Graham, Ben Bradlee, and Sally Quinn; the humorist Art Buchwald; President Carter’s close adviser Hamilton Jordan; Carter’s press secretary, Jody Powell; Carter’s national security advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski; the outgoing secretary of state, Henry Kissinger; and my old friend Bill Safire, by then a columnist at the
New York Times.
I also asked Sam Donaldson, our incomparable White House correspondent, Peter Jennings, and about thirty others.

All eyes were on the two ambassadors, who stood and chatted for the first time during predinner cocktails. They later recalled that their first exchanges were meaningless pleasantries. “We even discussed the weather,” Ambassador Dinitz said. “But then we talked more substance, and it was a good feeling.”

Luckily Bill Safire took notes that evening, because I never would have remembered exactly what their toasts were to each other during the dinner. Ambassador Dinitz praised Ambassador Ghorbal “for his ability and professionalism—and sometimes I wasn’t too happy about that,” and then went on to recall the smiling faces of the children he had watched on television welcoming President Sadat to Israel. “It is incumbent on us to give them a reason for their smile,” he said.

Ambassador Ghorbal responded in kind. “For the first time, Ambassador Dinitz has spoken for both Israel and Egypt,” he said, and went on to pledge his government’s commitment to a full, comprehensive settlement “and not leave it to the next generation.” He then raised his glass to the prospect of peace, to the ambassador of Israel, and to President Carter.

The party was a great success. As Henry Kissinger said in his brief and amusing remarks, “I have not addressed such a distinguished audience since dining alone in the Hall of Mirrors,” referring to the hall in the Palace of Versailles outside Paris, where the treaty was signed ending World War I.

Everything at the party was supposed to be off-the-record, but the next day, to my horror, I read an item in the gossip column in the
Washington Star
about the incomprehensible behavior of Hamilton Jordan at the party. The president’s soon-to-be chief of staff had evidently had too much to drink and insulted his dinner partner, Amal Ghorbal, the Egyptian ambassador’s wife, by staring down the front of her décolletage and announcing, “I’ve always wanted to see the pyramids.”

I nearly fainted when I read it. Sam Donaldson was at the table and was asked if it happened. He wouldn’t admit it publicly, but he told me privately it had. I had been so busy being a hostess that, perhaps luckily, I didn’t see or hear any of this. But the sorry story made the rounds of the newspapers, including the
Washington Post
and the
New York Times
, leading Bill Safire to feel free to write about the more gracious part of the evening in his
New York Times
column. He titled it “Barbara’s Dinner Party,” and it was a very nice piece that mercifully left out the Hamilton Jordan story. Even more mercifully, Ambassador Ghorbal did not seem upset.

For all the hopes for peace at the time and the feelings of goodwill between the Israelis and the Egyptians in 1977, the peace talks didn’t progress until Jimmy Carter essentially locked up Begin, Sadat, and their respective delegations from Israel and Egypt at Camp David in September 1978. I was assigned to cover this. A news blackout was imposed on the press, leaving us hanging around the outside of the presidential retreat (we weren’t allowed inside), waiting for any news droppings and chasing down rumors. One of the most persistent was that Jordan’s King Hussein was about to fly to Washington from London to join the talks. I can’t tell you how many times I was told, “Jordan’s coming in.” The rumor was so persistent that several people began reporting it as the truth. I had King Hussein’s private phone number in London where he was staying, and when I, alone, got him on the phone, he denied categorically that he was heading to the United States. (Hussein in fact was dead set against Sadat making a separate peace with Israel.) Further, he told me that no one from the White House had even been in touch with him. So I went on the air and reported that, quoting King Hussein, and the next day someone else would again report that he was coming to Camp David.

It made me very uneasy. I’d spoken to the only person who knew whether or not he was coming to Washington—the king himself—and I believed him. Yet something inside me wondered whether the print reporters knew something I didn’t. I was struck once again by the power of the printed word. It reminded me of my own mother believing the lies the papers printed about me when I started at ABC. But Hussein, as he had told me, did not come to Camp David. My reporting was correct. Sadat himself almost left, frustrated with his supposed partners for peace. Jimmy Carter had to keep intervening between the two delegations until finally, after thirteen days (and setting aside the thorny issue of Jerusalem), they reached an agreement. On September 17, 1978, Sadat and Begin, shepherded by Jimmy Carter, signed the Camp David Peace Accords at the White House.

This again was a huge story, and I hoped to have another joint interview with the two leaders. Begin said yes, but Sadat said no. His representatives would not say why. Therefore the next day I interviewed each in his respective embassy. I remember the interviews clearly, mostly because many of the questions I asked them were deliberately identical. One was about the status of Jerusalem, to which Begin replied that 99 percent of Jews worldwide considered Jerusalem the capital of Israel, while Sadat said that seven hundred million Muslims and Arabs would disagree. Another question was about Israeli settlements in what the Palestinians considered their land in Gaza and the West Bank. Begin said he considered the settlements essential to the security of Israel, while Sadat insisted that Israel had no claim of sovereignty over either.

It is stunning to review those questions today and realize that although Israel has given up its settlements in Gaza, there is still no resolution on the West Bank or Jerusalem. At the time of Camp David, however, it truly seemed as if Israel and Egypt were going to work out their differences and achieve a lasting peace in the Middle East acceptable to the Palestinians and the other Arab countries. Thirty years later peace remains elusive.

In the historic spirit of the moment, I did something I’d never done before and haven’t since. At the end of my respective interviews, I asked both Begin and Sadat to autograph my copy of the questions I’d put to them. “To Barbara, with admiration,” Begin wrote. “Best wishes,” Sadat wrote, followed by something in Arabic, then the word “Peace.” I had the questions framed and they hang still on that long wall in my apartment. (Yes, it is a very long wall.) They are dated September 18, 1978. I finally remembered to keep something.

For all the celebration, the Camp David Peace Accords were not a final peace treaty. They were merely the framework for one. Egypt and Israel were supposed to work out the remaining issues within these guidelines by the end of 1978. Of course they didn’t.

I’m going to fast-forward now to March 1979, when I made another seminal trip to the Middle East. Because the Egyptians and the Israelis had failed to resolve the differences between them, Jimmy Carter decided to intervene again by commuting between Sadat in Egypt and Begin in Israel to try to bring the peace process to closure. A large press corps, including me, went with him.

We started in Cairo, where Carter was negotiating privately with Sadat. Once again we were in a news blackout. Nothing is more frustrating to a reporter—and there was a huge contingent of us, 194 journalists and technicians—angling for the smallest scrap of information. ABC alone sent 13 correspondents, 14 producers, 24 technicians, 2 editors, 2 unit managers, and almost seven thousand pounds of equipment to cover the peace agreement—if it ever happened.

I interviewed Jehan Sadat. She wouldn’t comment on the talks. I interviewed Jody Powell, who said, “Nothing is happening.” It was a disappointing stalemate. I worked the phones, which is an often insurmountable challenge in Egypt. I was scheduled to make several on-air live reports a day on the most important news story in the world, and all I could report was that I had nothing to report. But nobody else did either, although I worried constantly about Cronkite and Chancellor.

After three no-news days in Cairo and a side trip to Alexandria, we all flew to Jerusalem where Carter was to meet with Begin in the King David Hotel. We were jammed behind security guards at the hotel entrance, when I saw the arrival of another Israeli friend, Defense Minister Ezer Weizman. “Mr. Minister,” I yelled at him. “Nobody will say anything. Please give me two minutes!”

Ezer walked toward me, and I thought I was finally going to get something to report, but no. “Two minutes I will gladly give you, but like this, without words,” he said, giving me a big hug. Thanks but no thanks.

To lift our collective spirits, several of us decided to give Sam Donaldson, my very good pal, a surprise forty-fifth-birthday party. Sam loves to tell the story of how I lured him to the party by inviting him to my room—alone. Whether or not he really means it, Sam insists that he thought I was inviting him to a tryst and went into a schoolboy tizzy of picking just the right red tie. (He always wears a red tie.) Fifty people gathered in my room, including Cronkite, Dan Rather, Chancellor, and Jody Powell. When Sam knocked on the door, we all screamed, “Surprise!” No tryst, but Sam had a very good time anyway, especially when the belly dancer arrived.

Sam’s surprise party was the highlight of the no-news peace offensive that week. Many of the White House press corps returned to Washington, calling Carter’s peace mission a complete failure. Cronkite stayed behind, as did Chancellor. So did I, because I had lined up an interview with Prime Minister Begin. I was going to ask him why the mission had fallen apart, whose fault it was, and so on. I then planned to go to Cairo to ask the same questions of Sadat.

This is where it finally became interesting.

My interview with Begin was scheduled for 4:00 p.m. at his home in Jerusalem. We were there and ready to go, but there was a complication. Carter had unexpectedly returned to Cairo the day before to talk further with Sadat—and twenty-four hours later they were still talking. Nothing seemed to be conclusive, but we didn’t want to do our postmortem with Begin until Carter officially gave up and was on his way home.