Looking back on 1977, I can remember the expectation of change that was in the air. Jimmy Carter, the former governor of Georgia, with virtually no experience on the world stage, had been elected president. But almost as if to prove journalists wrong, Carter set out early to give emphasis to foreign affairs, and in particular to human rights abroad. In advance of taking office, he named Cyrus R. Vance, a prominent New York lawyer, who had served as deputy defense secretary to Robert S. McNamara in the 1960s and who had made special diplomatic missions at other times. Carter named Zbigniew Brzezinski, a Columbia University professor, who was an active commentator on foreign affairs. [Zbig died in May 2017].
I knew “Zbig” which was the name by which he was known everywhere from his days as a graduate student at Harvard. He was a section man in the widely attended Government I course, which was supposed to cover the nuts and bolts of foreign policy and theory. My roommate, Edward Abramson, had Zbig as his section man and delighted in telling how when the course turned to the study of Communism, Zbig would act as a Polish commissar and persuade people on the virtues of Communism.
Meanwhile, in the first weeks of the new administration, I was struck by how at the regular State Department news conferences, the Soviet Union was beginning to be regularly criticized for the treatment of one dissident after the other. Carter was also determined to try and work out an early agreement on limiting offensive nuclear missiles. And at the end of March, 1977, Carter sent Vance to Moscow with a set of proposals. Unfortunately for Vance, Carter more or less revealed the contents of the proposals before Vance left Washington. As expected, the Russians rejected what Vance brought almost instantly. My lead story in The TImes on March 30, 1977, said it all: “Talks between Secretary of State Cyrus R. Vance and Leonid I. Brezhnev on a treaty to limit offensive missiles and bombers carrying nuclear warheads broke down today. The Soviet leader rejected as ‘inequitable’ both of the United States’ proposals for breaking a two-year impasse on negotiations for such a treaty.”
On that visit, it was one of the rare times when the Soviet leader met briefly with the American newsmen. He looked in poor health although he was to live another five years. Even though we thought the visit a failure, Vance remained upbeat. In any event, a few days after he returned to Washington, Ambassador Dobrynin paid a call on Vance to set up am advance meeting before the two sides were to meet again in Geneva in late May on strategic arms. These talks would continue onward until finally culminating in a summit meeting in Vienna between Carter and Brezhnev in June 1979,
Carter did push forward the negotiations with Panama about the Panama Canal, which ended with a treaty ceding ownership of the Canal to Panama, Negotiations had begun in the Johnson administration after riots in Panama had led to bloodshed and a suspension of diplomatic relations. Credit for the successful conclusion of the talks went to veteran diplomat Ellsworth Bunker and former IBM executive Sol Linowitz.
From his first days in office, Carter indicated he wanted to go further in the Middle East than Kissinger had done. He began inviting all the important heads of state in the region to Washington for talks. In a press conference in May 1977 while Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was in Washington, Carter talked about “the right of the Palestinians to have a homeland to be compensated for losses that they have suffered.” He said that included “the withdrawal of Israel from occupied territories from the 1967 war and they do include an end of belligerence and a re-establishment of permanent and secure borders.” This led to a formal protest from the Israeli government. President Anwar el-Sadat of Egypt and King Hussein of Jordan followed Rabin to Washington. Carter himself flew to Geneva to meet Hafez al-Assad of Syria. Carter’s continued emphasis on restoring Palestinian rights caused him serious problems with organized Jewish groups. In the spring of 1977, Menachem Begin, whose right-wing Likud Party had had no part in Israel government, was elected to rule the country, shocking the Washington establishment because it feared an end to diplomacy.
Vance continued to make trips to the region, but negotiations were going nowhere. Then suddenly, in early November 1977, Sadat announced that he wanted to go to Israel and speak to the Israeli Knesset in Jerusalem and lay out the Arab views on Middle East peace. His startling proposal was condemned by many Arab states and he could get no Arab leader to volunteer to accompany him. Even though this was a repudiation of the Carter administration’s push for another Geneva conference, the administration backed Sadat’s initiative.
The trip was so controversial that Sadat’s foreign minister and his first replacement both resigned in protest. Begin, under some U.S. pressure, invited Sadat for a three-day visit, more than the one visit that Sadat had proposed, I wrote that American officials were still hoping to turn this into another Geneva conference.
The impasse continued, however. A foreign ministers meeting in Jerusalem collapsed when Begin lashed out at Egyptian Foreign Minister Kamel. Nothing really happened until July 1978 when the United States was able to persuade Egypt and Israel to send their foreign ministers to Britain for talks in July 1978, but these talks also did not produce any results. We went back to the Middle East again in early August, On the flight home, Vance told us that on Carter’s behalf he had invited Sadat and Begin to come to Camp David in early September for talks aimed at resolving their problems.
When I returned to Washington I immediately filed my story but it did not appear in print because the New York pressmen’s union went on strike that night, a strike that lasted until early November, some 88 days.The Times laid off all its other workers. I was hoping the Washington bureau could be exempt and allow us to file through the news service. But New York ruled that out. I was quickly hired by my old paper, the Washington Star, to help cover the diplomacy. Abe Rosenthal, the Times’ editor, originally objected, but eventually gave his permission. The Star had changed since I left in 1968. It had been sold first to a local TV station, but now was owned by Time Magazine. And during the Camp David talks, I drove out to Thurmont, Md. where Camp David is located. But the press were kept confined to American Legion Post 168 which served as the press center. But we learned nothing from the briefings
Finally, on September 17, a very rainy Sunday, we were told the talks were over and announcements would be made at the White House that night. Sure enough, there were two broad accords. One was an outline Egyptian-Israeili peace treaty which returned to Egypt all the lands captured by Israel in 1967. The other was a framework agreement for the future of Palestinians living on the West Bank and Gaza Strip. I wrote for The Star an analysis saying it was in effect a sell-out by Sadat of the Palestinians. I wrote that Sadat, “under President Carter’s prodding, decided to do just what his critics had warned ever since the Jerusalem mission [in November 1977] that he would do and he had denied he would do.”
“He has agreed, in effect, to a separate peace treaty with Israel, which regains for Egypt all of the Sinai lost to Israel in the 1967 war but which guarantees nothing for Jordan or Syria which also lost territory to Israel in that war.” I wrote that “the mood of Arab journalistsi at the White House last night was one of disbelief that Sadat would go back on Egypt’s demands and apparently extracts so little from Israel.”
Reading over this now, it is remarkable how little has changed politically in the Middle East since 1977. Despite years of diplomatic efforts, there still is no Palestinian “state,” the Syrian borders have now been torn asunder by a violent civil war, but Israel still controls the Golan Heights. And Jordan no longer has any control over the West Bank of the Jordan River, or of East Jerusalem.
The peace treaty was supposed to be signed within three months but by November, it was still unsigned. In early December, Vance flew back to the region. He secured an agreement by Sadat to remaining points but when he got to Israel, he ran into a brick wall with Begin. The next thing we journalists were told was that we were all going back to Washington without further ado. It made no sense to any of us journalists. We only learned why he was ordered back after we landed in Washington. Carter wanted him there when he announced that Brzezinski, on a secret trip to China had worked out formal diplomatic ties beginning January 1, 1979.
Finally in early March 1979, Carter decided to go to the region himself and work out the deal. It was my first trip on Air Force One since I was part of Lyndon Johnson’s pool during his trip to Australia when I was working for The Star. All I can say is that it was quite boring and uncomfortable. The press pool were seated on benches in the rear. I was seated next to Leslie Stahl, then a reporter for CBS, and now a regular member of the 60 Minutes show. When we got to Egypt, Sadat took Carter on an open car train ride all the way to Alexandria, and finally agreed to the deal proposed by Carter.
It would be much tougher to sell it in Israel. And as the trip was nearing an end, the Carter team decided it was hopeless and made plans to leave the next day. I was to write the story for The Times. The main briefing for American correspondents was held in the early evening and Hedrick Smith represented The Times. Hamilton Jordan, I believe, did the briefing, or perhaps Jody Powell. But it was very negative. All the evening news shows led with the “failure” of the talks. As I was preparing to write my news story, around midnight Israeli time, I was approached by an Israeli I knew from the press office who asked what I was going to write. When I explained about the negative vibes from the American side, the Israeli cautioned me and informed me that Foreign Minister Moshe Dayan and Vance were meeting just then to work out a last minute compromise. The actual agreement was only approved by both sides when Carter arrived in Cairo on its way home and Begin by phone consented,
I was given the privilege of writing the historic lede story on March 26, 1979 for the March 27th paper.
“WASHINGTON, March 26—After confronting each other for nearly 31 years as hostile neighbors, Egypt and Israel signed a formal treaty at the White House today to establish peave and ‘normal and friendly relations.’
“On this chilly early spring day, about 1,500 invited guests and millions more watching television saw President Anwar el-Sadat or Egypt and Prime Minister Menachem Begin put their signatures on the Arabic, Hebrew and English versions of the first peace treaty between Israel and an Arab country.
“President Carter, who was credited by both leaders for having made the agreement possible, signed, as a witness, for the United States. In a somber speech, he said, ‘Peace has come.'”
Needless to say that framed front page is one of my proudest moments, but of course the hopes that were spawned with that peace treaty never were put into life. To this day, except for a subsequent peace treaty with Jordan, Israel still has no other peace treaties with Arab countries and is still trying to work out a deal with the Palestinians,
During the Camp David talks in September 1978, the other foreign news that attracted much attention were wire stories about “riots” in Iran against the Shah’s regime. We noticed the stories, nut at that time, we did not take them too seriously. That was to change by January. when the Shah left the country for Egypt. It set off a string of events that still affect U.S.-Iranian relations to this day.
