THE GULF WAR
I owed my liberation from editing to Saddam Hussein.
I had left Washington in 1988 for another editing job in New York. Though I had wanted to return to writing, editors had more status and were paid better than even veteran reporters. While Joe Lelyveld was trying to create a career path for reporters that would ensure them comparable status and pay, he had not succeeded yet.
By 1990, I had spent two years in New York as deputy editor of a new Media section that covered publishing, journalism, and other sectors of the news business. Then Saddam invaded Kuwait.
I learned of the invasion from Jason Epstein, the man I would eventually marry. I had slept late that morning at his home in Sag Harbor, Long Island, on Friday, August 3, 1990. He had already read the papers.
“Does it matter that Iraq has invaded Kuwait?” he asked me.
He had to be mistaken, I told him, pouring myself some coffee. I hadn’t heard anything about trouble on the Iraq-Kuwait border when I left my office earlier that week.
No, he corrected me, barely glancing up from the crossword puzzle. Iraq had definitely invaded and occupied the tiny oil-rich emirate.
It mattered hugely, I told him as I reached for the phone. If the Iraqi dictator annexed Kuwait, he would control a fifth of the world’s oil reserves. If Saddam could not be persuaded to withdraw, America would probably be drawn into a war.
“How soon?” he asked, still absorbed in his puzzle.
The White House would need at least six months to mobilize and deploy forces, I estimated.
Jason despises war, but Alberto Vitale, who was then the head of Random House, sensed a publishing opportunity for an “instant” book on the Iraq crisis. Jason, who had been the company’s editorial director, proposed me as the writer. I knew Iraq and the Middle East well, he told Alberto, and was accustomed to working on deadline. Vitale asked me to produce a seventy-five-thousand-word book in six weeks for Steve Wasserman, the editor of Times Books, then a Random House imprint.
Wasserman showed me an article that Laurie Mylroie, the Iraq specialist, had written for the Wall Street Journal, arguing that Saddam’s motive for invading Kuwait was primarily financial. His eight-year war against Iran had bankrupted his regime. Iraq was $90 billion in debt and needed Kuwaiti oil. Laurie agreed to write the book with me.
With a month’s leave of absence and my year’s vacation time, I cloistered myself in my New York apartment and threw myself into the project.
Saddam Hussein and the Crisis in the Gulf was published on time in October 1990 to favorable reviews. The paperback sold respectably—about thirty thousand copies a month—until December, when President George H. W. Bush doubled the number of American troops to be deployed in the Gulf. By the time American soldiers invaded Kuwait in January, our paperback had become a number one bestseller.
I was not around to enjoy the publishing triumph. When the Times began ramping up its prewar coverage in earnest, Joe Lelyveld, who had succeeded Max Frankel as executive editor, freed me from editing and sent me to the Middle East. He had named me a senior writer, one of those supercorrespondent jobs he had finally created, and called me the special Gulf correspondent, a vague enough title to let me roam and report freely on the Arab reaction to the impending war against Iraq. I wanted to explore why so many Arabs opposed, or were ambivalent about, a war to liberate Kuwait. Polls and interviews showed that poorer Arabs detested and envied the Kuwaitis’ wealth, indolence, and arrogance, and admired Saddam’s pugnacity.
As America edged toward war, I had exclusive interviews with many of the key Middle Eastern players in the conflict—starting in Jordan with King Hussein, who opposed the war and, like me, was chain-smoking again. Jordan imported roughly 90 percent of its energy requirements from Baghdad at heavily subsidized rates. And for reasons that only a psychiatrist could fathom, the king had a strong personal attachment to Saddam. Interviews with Yemen’s president, Morocco’s king, and Hosni Mubarak of Egypt followed.
Exhilarated but exhausted, I returned home for Thanksgiving to meet Jason. I looked forward to seeing him after two months on the road. I consoled myself when the weekend ended without a marriage proposal: perhaps Jason’s reticence was for the best. I was hardly marriage material. The “story” would always come first, as my constant travel for the Times suggested. I went back to the Middle East, but not before I had persuaded him to join me at Christmas for a farewell cruise up the Nile planned by Frank Wisner, our ambassador in Cairo, who was assuming a new post in Manila, the Philippines.
Wisner’s cruise from Luxor to Aswan was magical. Jason was enthralled by Upper Egypt’s beauty, the gentleness of our guides, and their vast knowledge of the Pharaonic sites we visited. Frank and Jason also liked each other, a great relief, since Frank was still among Les Aspin’s closest friends.
After Egypt, we went to Jordan to visit Petra, the ancient trading city that the Nabateans had built three hundred years before Jesus was born. Set deep within a mountainous fold at the edge of the Great Rift Valley, the terrain resembles Arizona at the approaches to the Grand Canyon. The young Arab director of antiquities at Petra drove us in his jeep later that night through the narrow, winding mountain passageway into the famed ancient “rose-red city half as old as time.” With war so imminent, there were few tourists. We were virtually alone in one of the world’s most breathtaking ruins. Around a small campfire near the entrance to the cave in which he was born, the young Jordanian archeologist recounted how his government had sent him on scholarship to study archeology at the University of Michigan. Homesick for Jordan and his family, he returned early and began working in Petra’s antiquities ministry. He owed everything to King Hussein, he confided.
* * *
I did not cover the war. Johnny Apple, who was coordinating the paper’s war coverage from Dhahran, did not invite me to join his team. So I worked alone, concentrating on how the war was affecting Saudi Arabia.
The thousands of American forces on sacred Islamic soil had turned this puritanical society topsy-turvy. Though I had reported from the kingdom many times, I had never really gotten to know the Saudis. Visas were rare, one’s time in the kingdom limited, and a reporter’s contacts intensely monitored. The Saudis were suspicious of foreigners—especially journalists. But war had forced King Fahd to open up. More than 1,500 reporters were covering the war that involved 700,000 troops from thirty-seven countries.
Fearing Saddam’s revenge, prosperous Saudi men had sent their wives, mothers, and children to Mecca and other safe places they thought Iraq would not target. With their families away and business at a virtual standstill, Saudi men could now spend hours visiting one another, particularly at night, debating the war and the kingdom’s future in the Bedouin-style tents that so many had pitched next to their houses in the Riyadh suburbs. Goat herders would have been stunned by these modern-day Bedouin fantasies lit by crystal chandeliers and decorated with Oriental carpets, outdoor stoves for brewing hot, sweet tea, and tiny refrigerators to chill ice for such haram refreshments as vodka and the unofficial Saudi favorite, Chivas Regal.
To avoid insulting foreign soldiers, journalists, and other infidel “guests,” the king had temporarily grounded the dreaded mutawa—the religious police—old, salaried conservatives and young, fanatical volunteers who patrolled the streets, hotels, and shopping malls, telling women to cover their faces and young men to pray. Now young Saudis could suddenly entertain women, even reporters, and speak freely as never before. The war provided an exhilarating window into one of the Arab world’s most insular societies, temporarily on holiday.
Throughout the war, Saudis, for the first time, passionately, publicly debated their future without fear of being stigmatized as kafir, nonbeliever, or worse, as heretic. Many Westernized Saudis were demanding more freedom and participation in decision-making, and greater accountability, if not Western-style democracy. They were also asking to hear more from their reclusive king and for an end to the widespread c
orruption he tolerated.
They faced powerful opposition from the religious establishment. The conservative, xenophobic Wahhabists were demanding a return to the old order; they wanted their suspended powers back. In their view, the war, foreign troops, and even worse, Western journalists, had defiled sacred Islamic soil. Though I was homesick, I regretted leaving Arabia that spring of 1991 after three months in the kingdom, knowing that an intense political battle would surely erupt baad al azimah, or “after the crisis”—the words I heard so often. Determined to write what I had seen and heard, including complaints about the corruption among members of the royal family that so infuriated the middle class, I knew that getting another visa would be unlikely once Saudi gratitude to America had dissipated.
What would the ruling family do next: open Saudi society still further, or crack down? King Fahd did both, striking a balance between liberals and conservatives. To satisfy the young technocrats, he created a majlis al shura, or consultative council, a baby step toward greater public participation and accountability, but hugely important in a country that had tolerated neither. Many Saudis still credit the Gulf War with having introduced “modern” politics in the kingdom.
The king also tried to sever aid to militant Islamic groups that had supported Saddam inside the kingdom and abroad. Two years later, the government announced a ban on collecting money within the kingdom for Muslim causes, then estimated to total at least $1 billion a year, without an Interior Ministry permit. But individual contributions to many radical Islamic groups continued.
To placate the politically indispensable religious establishment, Fahd increased the budget of the mutawa—those guardians of moral virtue—by $18 million for “training.” The virtue police returned to public venues to uphold religious rules and strictures.
The war ended only a hundred hours after the ground campaign began, with Iraq’s expulsion from Kuwait. Despite the coalition’s swift victory and the rapid departure of most foreign forces, many Saudi conservatives remained furious at the king for letting “infidel” American forces “occupy” Saudi soil. One wealthy, young Saudi financier had persisted in using his royal access to try to withdraw the invitation to foreign forces. It was the first time I heard the name Osama bin Laden. The rich, young firebrand was known then mainly for his passionate support of militant Islamic causes, especially the Afghan rebels—some of whom the CIA had armed in America’s war against the godless Soviets. Shortly before the Gulf War, Bin Laden had marched into the offices of several princes with maps and flowcharts to demonstrate how the kingdom could defend itself without infidel forces.1 The Saudi prince who told me about young Bin Laden’s meetings had mocked his presentations.2
But Saudi intelligence was not amused. After the war, the government revoked Bin Laden’s citizenship—a rare action, since the Bin Ladens were a prominent Saudi family. Osama’s Yemeni-born father had built palaces and facilities for the king and other Saudi royals. But Saudi security was more concerned about reports that Bin Laden was financing militants intent on targeting ruling Saudis and other Arab royalty. Among his beneficiaries was Muhammad’s Army, which had attempted to kill then Prince Abdullah, who is now Jordan’s king. Expelled from Riyadh, Bin Laden was reduced to shuttling between London and Khartoum with a passport that Sudan’s radical Islamic government had issued him. Over time, his denunciations of America, his country’s “master,” and of his native Arabia as a kingdom of “heretics” would grow more vehement.
Warren Hoge, then the debonair editor of the paper’s Sunday magazine, ran my article about the war’s impact on Saudi Arabia on the cover—a totally black page, save for the golden eyes of a veiled woman shrouded in black. I was thrilled with the space he gave me and the display, and even happier when Joe Lelyveld named me, a recently minted senior writer, the magazine’s staff writer in 1992.
* * *
Though I did not know it then, the Gulf War had dramatically improved prospects for peace between Israel and its Arab neighbors. Saudis and Israelis had been targeted by Iraqi Scuds, and Israeli strategists had concluded that air power and technology were more important than territory in winning wars and ensuring security. PLO chief Yasir Arafat, whom I had interviewed many times, realized that he needed a political victory after the collapse of his chief patron, the Soviet Union, and his catastrophic decision to back Saddam in the Gulf War. After the war, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states withheld funds for his PLO and prompted a mass exodus of Palestinian refugees. The Gulf no longer wanted Palestinians who had sided with Saddam. The refugees blamed Arafat for their woes.
Unknown to us in the press, Israel’s pragmatic new prime minister, Yitzhak Rabin, had blessed a secret effort to test Arafat’s willingness to make peace by authorizing direct negotiations with his PLO. As peace talks sponsored by Secretary of State Jim Baker ground on in Madrid, Israeli and Palestinian negotiators were secretly meeting under Norwegian auspices in Oslo, bonding over meals of smoked fish and vodka. My friend Uri Savir, who worked for Shimon Peres, whom Rabin had put in charge of the secret back channel, attended many of the meetings, which began in January 1993. Though we spoke often by phone during those tense months, I had no idea what he was doing.
I was pursuing my own post-Kuwait preoccupation: the growth of militant Islamic forces, especially Hamas, which means “zeal” in Arabic. Hamas was growing stronger in the occupied West Bank and Gaza. Created in late 1987 after the outbreak of the Palestinian uprising in the Israeli-occupied territories, Hamas was committed to the annihilation of the Jewish state in Palestine and any peace treaty with the “Zionist enemy.” It also challenged the PLO’s status as the “sole” representative of the Palestinians. Israel had come to view Hamas and other militant Islamist groups—which had begun killing Israeli civilians in terrorist attacks and suicide bombings—as more dangerous than the PLO. But in yet another bitter Middle Eastern irony, the Israelis themselves had initially encouraged the formation of such groups as Hamas to counter the PLO in its more radical phase. They quickly regretted such support.
Prime Minister Rabin became increasingly frustrated by Washington’s unwillingness to block financing from the United States for Hamas and like-minded groups. The State Department, FBI, and CIA denied the existence of such financial links, despite intelligence that Israel shared with them. Rabin, I learned, might be willing to share this information with an American journalist. An Arab American used-car salesman from Bridgeview, Illinois, Muhammad Abdel-Hamid Salah, had been arrested in Jerusalem in January and was accused of being a Hamas courier, carrying money for Hamas from US donors. Ehud Ya’ari, an Israeli reporter, had written an op-ed in the Times asserting that Hamas’s command center was in the United States and that the group had an extensive donor network in America. While I believed the Israelis, I knew that finding evidence about a Hamas presence in America would be challenging.
I had met Rabin in 1971 during my first trip to Israel when I was a student, but I did not know him well. He apparently knew my reporting from the Arab world. When he offered me an interview and exclusive access to Yaakov Perry, chief of Shin Bet, Israel’s internal security service, Clyde Haberman, our gracious Jerusalem correspondent, encouraged me to follow up in Israel. This was really an American story, we agreed. Whatever I heard in Jerusalem would have to be confirmed in Washington. After talking to Clyde, Joe Lelyveld approved my trip to Israel, though reluctantly. A turf-obsessed bureaucracy, the Times resisted reportorial big-footing. And Joe knew that Israel’s allegations, though newsworthy if true, were likely to spark controversy and greater tension between the Jewish and Muslim communities.
Rabin told me that the United States was the source of about $30 million a year in funding for Hamas and its terror attacks. Some of the money was Iranian, he said, but American banks were being used as conduits. Some of the money was simply carried in cash by messengers such as Muhammad Salah.
As I pushed for more evidence, Shin Bet chief Perry produced photocopies of checks and bank recor
ds showing money transfers from the United States to Hamas affiliates, travel vouchers, and copies of intercepted internal communications between Muhammad Salah and top Hamas figures in London and Springfield, Virginia, allegedly Hamas’s American headquarters. The evidence seemed persuasive that this forty-two-year-old used-car dealer, now in an Israeli prison, was, in fact, a senior Hamas activist who had traveled to Jerusalem, his fourth such trip to Israel, to provide money and strategic advice to the group.
Checks and bank transfer records could be forged, I told Perry; travel vouchers and telephone intercepts, fabricated. How could I know that Salah was cooperating freely with Israeli officials, as they alleged? Was he being tortured, as his lawyer had told me?
American officials, moreover, were still insisting that Hamas had no network in America. I needed more evidence. Once again, I met with Rabin. Before I could write a story, I told him, I had to see Salah myself and hear him discuss Hamas’s structure in the United States. Rabin flashed his trademark crooked smile. I was, as he had been warned, a “pushy broad,” he told me. I took it as a compliment.
Days later, I was sitting in a small room in the Governor’s Building, Israel’s highest-security prison in the occupied West Bank, next to the room in which Muhammad Salah was being interrogated. Though Salah did not know it, I was watching him on a television monitor as he spoke with his Israeli interrogator.
For the next hour, I heard Salah discuss in English and Arabic Hamas’s structure in America, his role in the group, and its operations. He said he had given Hamas agents in the occupied territories $130,000 in cash in one week, of which $110,000 was intended for arms purchases, the building of new safe houses, recruitment of members, and assistance to fugitives. His superiors had authorized him to spend up to $650,000 on this trip, and they had deposited $600,000 into various bank accounts for him to purchase weapons or whatever Hamas needed.
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