December 29, 2006

State Dept. Covered For Arafat

The State Department has had proof for decades that Yasser Arafat personally approved and ordered the murder of two U.S. diplomats in 1973, and sat on the evidence until it was declassified recently. Bizzyblog has the story, but credits Scott Johnson of Power Line for his research into the case three years ago, (also here and here) and more recently, in a June 2006 post.

What is new here is not the suspicion or even the knowledge that Arafat was involved in the kidnap murders of Cleo Noel and George Curtis Moore of the United States in Kharthoum in 1973. But even twenty years ago, State had not supplied to the Justice Department the evidence they did have, causing Justice to decide against indicting Arafat at the time. The only new information appears to be the release of the document itself. Also "newsworthy" of course, is the major media's utter indifference to reporting on the story at all.

I realize that the job of the State Department is making nice, and that confronting the world with proof of Arafat's responsibility for the murders of two U.S. diplomats in cold blood would doubtless have made the task of propping up this thug as a partner for Israeli-Palestinian peace a lot more difficult. It might have even cost Arafat the 1994 Nobel Peace Prize, which has so cheapened and delegitimized the award ever since.

It would be interesting to hear what good reasons State had for sitting on the evidence all these years. But as Johnson's June post points out, thirty years later, department officials were still in CYA mode, denying the existence of proof of Arafat's connection to the murders. As Ed Morrissey points out, you'd think the murder of their own department colleagues would have moved State officials to seek justice for the man who ordered their deaths. Wrong.

Related:

Daled Amos

Ed Morrissey

Posted by dan at December 29, 2006 6:37 PM