US State Dept. Admits Long-Held Secret: Arafat Directly Responsible For 1973 Murders of US Diplomats

It's from WND, but you can judge for yourselves:

After 33 years of secrecy, the U.S. State Department has finally declassified a document admitting it knew the late Yasser Arafat, chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization, plotted and supervised the murders of two U.S. diplomats in Sudan in 1973, a cover-up first exposed by WND in January 2001.

Yasser Arafat

The document, released earlier this year, with no fanfare, makes it clear the Khartoum operation "was planned and carried out with the full knowledge and personal approval" of Arafat, a frequent visitor to the White House throughout the 1990s who died in 2004.

In the attack March 1, 1973, eight members of the Black September terrorist organization, part of Arafat's Fatah faction of the PLO, stormed the Saudi embassy in Khartoum on Arafat's orders, taking U.S. Ambassador Cleo Noel, diplomat Charge d'Affaires George Curtis Moore and others hostage, and one day later, killing Noel, Moore and Belgian diplomat Guy Eid.

The admission comes 33 years after James J. Welsh, then the National Security Agency's Palestinian analyst, saw a communication intercepted from Arafat to his terrorist commandos in Sudan.

Within minutes, Welsh told WND, the director of the NSA was notified and the decision was made to send a rare "FLASH" message – the highest priority – to the U.S. Embassy in Khartoum via the State Department.

But the message didn't reach the embassy in time. Somewhere between the NSA and the State Department, someone decided the warning was too vague. The alert was downgraded in urgency.

The declassified document is excerpted at BizzyBlog.

Thanks to Larwyn for tipping me.

posted by Ace at 07:03 AM

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