Audition (60 page)

He never arrived. I waited for hours in Paris with increasing anxiety until I received the terrible phone call. The charter flight David and Larry were on had exploded on takeoff from Amman. They had both been killed along with the two Jordanian pilots. Investigations were launched, but no explanations were ever found.

David and Larry were dead. Gone with them was most of the tape of my interview with Arafat, but that was nothing compared to the loss of their lives. I felt it was my fault. They were in Amman because of my interview. I would get the glory. They got death. I met with their families when I got back to New York. They never blamed me, but I could not help but blame myself.

I spoke about Larry’s and David’s deaths on the news. “Newsmen and women are supposed to be impersonal on the air,” I said. “It’s part of our code. But I couldn’t come back tonight without talking of my two colleagues who died Friday morning in Amman, Jordan.” Larry was “young and witty and the father of three little girls,” I told the viewers. David, too, was “young, only forty, and had four children. He was the loveliest man, the best and the brightest. It shouldn’t have happened. I know it’s the business we’re in, but I ache for their widows, their children and ourselves at ABC News.”

At the end of our interview in Beirut, Arafat had taken the black-and-white kaffiyeh off his head, written on it in Arabic the words “Revolution until victory.” He presented it to me as a gift. My plan was to put it near the small, ancient oil lamp Moshe Dayan had given me to represent the enmities in the Middle East. But when, after I got home, Icodel unpacked my suitcase, she did not see the imagery. She saw an ink-stained piece of cloth and put it in the washing machine. That took care of that souvenir. I didn’t give a damn. The symbol had been rendered meaningless by the crash.

David’s and Larry’s deaths, to me, were two more senseless losses in the morass of hatred in the Middle East. I had interviewed at least once many of the warring leaders in the region—Egypt’s Anwar Sadat, Israel’s Golda Meir, Moshe Dayan, Menachem Begin, and then the PLO’s Arafat. The more interviews I did, the more hopeless things seemed to me.

Until November 1977.

I was in Kansas City, talking with Dolly Parton for a
Barbara Walters Special
, when, during an interview with Walter Cronkite, President Sadat stunned the world by announcing that he was willing to go to Jerusalem on a peace mission. All he needed was a formal invitation from Prime Minister Begin to address the Knesset, the Israeli parliament. The invitation was quickly forthcoming from Begin after CBS News reporters corralled him in a hotel in Tel Aviv and set up an interview with him in a hotel room. Cronkite skillfully knitted the two interviews together, making it appear as if the president of Egypt and the prime minister of Israel were talking to each other—a historical first in itself—and the networks’ race to Jerusalem was on.

(Actually, earlier that same day, it was Peter Jennings, ABC’s chief foreign correspondent, whom Sadat had first told off-camera about his willingness to go to Jerusalem for peace. It would have been Peter’s historic story if he’d had a camera crew with him, but he didn’t. So he lost the breaking news to CBS and Cronkite.)

Peter took another blow when Roone designated me ABC’s lead reporter on Sadat’s journey to Jerusalem. Peter’s objection was valid—he had covered the Middle East for a long time. Roone did it, he later said, because of my strong relationship with both Sadat and Begin. Peter held this against me for years. I didn’t blame him, but I didn’t turn down the assignment. Sadat’s sudden announcement that he was going to Jerusalem on November 19, just five days after Begin extended his invitation, set us all scrambling.

I flew to Tel Aviv on November 18 on the same flight as NBC’s anchor, John Chancellor, both of us wondering where Cronkite was. I learned the answer late that night, after interviewing Moshe Dayan on the prospect of peace with his former and formidable enemy. Exhausted after the long flight and the interview, I was sound asleep in my hotel room when the phone rang. “Cronkite’s in Cairo,” Roone announced from New York. “He’s got a seat on Sadat’s plane tomorrow to Tel Aviv. Chancellor may be on that plane, too. Get on that plane.”

Right. I couldn’t call the Egyptians I knew in Cairo because there was no direct line between Egypt and Israel, the country that didn’t exist for them. So I got out my phone book and called Egypt’s ambassador to the United States, Ashraf Ghorbal, at his home in Washington. God knows what time it was, but I had to get a seat on Sadat’s plane. I pleaded with the ambassador, and he said he would try but could give me no guarantees. Two hours later he came through. “You will be welcome on President Sadat’s plane,” he said.

But how to get to Cairo? There were no direct flights between Egypt and Israel, remember. I could take an Israeli plane to Cyprus and then transfer to a Cypriot flight to Egypt, but that wouldn’t get me there in time to make Sadat’s plane. Fortunately we heard about a French jet that CBS had chartered to fly in their satellite equipment from Paris to Tel Aviv. We paid the French pilots to fly me to Egypt. We would stop very briefly in Cyprus and take off again.

I grabbed our film crew and off we flew. Once in the air, I leaned my head against the window and fell asleep, having not had that luxury in close to twenty-four hours. I woke with a start to see the pyramids directly below us. I thought I was dreaming, but it turned out the Egyptians had not made us stop in Cyprus. Amazingly the pilots got permission to fly nonstop from Tel Aviv to Cairo, a matter of just over an hour. We were the first civilian plane to make this direct trip to Egypt since the creation of Israel in 1948. Historic, but at the time people had more important things to think about.

We landed in an airport that was almost empty. Security was very tight in light of Arab resistance to Sadat’s solo journey for peace. I bolted out of our plane and ran toward the main terminal. And there, with incredulous looks on their faces, were John Chancellor and Walter Cronkite. As Cronkite later recalled on the PBS program
American Masters:
“I was boarding the plane in Cairo when a little private plane landed on the field and she hopped out of it and ran across the field like a football player going into the play, holding her hand up—wait, wait, wait for me.” The two news anchors were not overjoyed to see me. “I couldn’t have been unhappier,” Walter confessed. As for me, I couldn’t have been more thrilled that I’d made the flight, and in short order we were in the air again, this time to pick up Sadat at his weekend retreat in Ismailia.

Going up against Chancellor and Cronkite was a scary prospect. But, there we were, ABC, NBC, and CBS, in one plane. (The only other American journalist on board was Wilton Wynn from
Time.
) We landed near the town of Ismailia, and there was Sadat, beaming and meticulously dressed in a navy blue suit. He walked slowly along a red carpet past an Egyptian honor guard and his major ministers. (His foreign minister and former friend Ismail Fahmy was not among them. Calling Sadat a traitor, he had resigned in protest of this visit to Israel. Sadat did not seem perturbed.) As he got close to us, I reached out with my microphone and asked, “Mr. President, what are your feelings at this moment?”

I did not get the exclusive, newsworthy sound bite I’d wanted to flash home. “Bar-ba-ra,” Sadat exclaimed in his booming voice. “So you made the plane.” I laughed, but before I could repeat my question, Sadat turned to Cronkite and asked, just as loudly, “Walter, what do you think of Bar-
ba
-ra making the plane?”

“Well, Mr. President,” Walter said dryly. “It’s not exactly what I had in mind.”

When we were airborne again Sadat invited the three of us into his private cabin for a brief interview. We drew straws en route to see who would get the first question. That seemed very important at the time, but now I can’t remember who won, so I suspect it wasn’t me. But I had an ace up my sleeve.

Before we entered the cabin, I’d written a question on a slip of paper. “Mr. President, would you agree to do an interview with me after you speak at the Knesset?” To make the request easy to answer, I’d put four boxes at the bottom of the page, reading “Yes” “No” “Alone” “With PM Begin.” As we left the cabin, I slipped the note to one of his aides.

ABC was broadcasting live President Sadat’s history-making arrival on Israeli soil and as soon as the plane landed, I ran across the tarmac to find Peter Jennings and the ABC setup at the airport. I didn’t even have time to look at the note Sadat’s aide had returned to me as we landed. I was probably still panting when I went on the air with Peter to describe the plane flight from Egypt and the interview we’d had with Sadat. Only then did I look at the note I’d stuffed in my bag: “Yes,” Sadat had checked. And “Alone.” It would have been even better if he’d agreed to be interviewed with Begin, but no matter—I’d gotten an exclusive with the man of the hour! (I lost the piece of paper, of course. I lose everything.) The only person I told was my producer, Justin Friedland, who then had to set up the secret interview without my competitors knowing about it. If the word got out, I was afraid that Sadat would have to include them.

With the interview sewed up, I relaxed for a tiny moment to take in the extraordinary scene at the airport. There were hundreds of people waving Israeli and Egyptian flags. I wondered how the Israelis had managed to get so many Egyptian flags so quickly. And how the Israeli army band had gotten the music and learned the Egyptian national anthem. But most of all I remember all of Sadat’s former enemies lined up to greet him—Menachem Begin, Golda Meir, Moshe Dayan, Ariel Sharon, Yitzhak Rabin. It was almost too much to comprehend.

(It was certainly too much for the viewers back home who had tuned in to ABC to watch the Ohio State vs. Michigan football game. Instead of seeing the kickoff on their screens, the football fans saw Sadat’s dramatic arrival in Israel. They were furious and jammed the ABC telephone lines to complain. After seven minutes ABC went back to the football game, to the fans’ great relief. To hell with history.)

Justin and I drove from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. What a sight! All along the road were people cheering, small children waving Israeli and Egyptian flags. The impossible had happened. The enemy had come to Israel. We all felt optimistic. If Sadat was meeting with Begin, could peace be far behind? It was one of the most glorious days I had ever experienced.

Arriving in Jerusalem, I went directly to an interview I’d arranged with Prime Minister Begin. The prime minister’s residence was small and modest. Begin and his wife, Aliza, whom by now I knew quite well, greeted me, and the prime minister took me into his study. It was a very personal room with photos of his family all around. I had expected Begin to talk of Sadat and the triumph of this day. Instead, with great emotion, he talked of the Holocaust and the pictures of his relatives who had died in the concentration camps. Those were the thoughts uppermost in his mind after meeting Anwar Sadat.

After the interview Begin seemed energized. He had a busy schedule the next day, including following Sadat in addressing the Knesset, but he was obviously too excited to go to bed. He still hadn’t prepared his remarks to the Israeli parliament. He never wrote anything in advance, he told me. Instead he asked his faithful aide, Yehiel Kadishai, for a Bible to look up some references for the address. He was still talking long after midnight, when Kadishai said, “Mr. Prime Minister, for all our sakes, please go to bed.”

Begin left, but like a child who just wouldn’t go to bed, he popped out again. “Barbara,” he said, “I forgot to tell you something. On the ride from the airport I said to President Sadat, ‘For the sake of our good friend Barbara, would you do the interview tomorrow with me together?’ And Barbara, Sadat said yes. So we do it in the Knesset, when we’re finished speaking.”

Richard Nixon may have gotten me an interview with Prince Philip, but Begin had gotten me the most important interview of my career. “Thank you, Prime Minister,” I said. “Thank you so much.” And off he went to bed.

The next day Justin had a small room off the main chamber of the Knesset all set up for the joint interview. There was no football game that day, so ABC broadcast live Sadat’s extraordinary address to the Israeli Knesset and Begin’s speech as well. Shortly afterward the two leaders arrived at the room to meet me amidst a great commotion of Israeli security guards and Egyptian soldiers, followed by a few incredulous members of the Israeli press.

I had stayed up most of the night preparing questions for this first-ever joint interview with the leaders of Israel and Egypt. I talked with them for forty minutes—two tape cassettes’ worth in TV time—during which the difficulties on the road to a finalized peace quickly emerged. Both men expressed their admiration and even liking for each other, but the devil of an actual peace agreement was in the details. Sadat had said in his address to the Knesset that although everything was negotiable, the Arab people would not concede one inch of occupied land. And he reiterated his position when I asked him whether he would give up any of that land for peace.

“Not at all,” he said. “Not at all.”

“Well, I’m afraid I don’t understand,” I said. “If you will not give up any of the land, if none of it is negotiable, then what will you be trying?”

“We can sit together, we can talk; no one knows what will happen in the next week or so.”

I pressed on until Sadat said, “Barbara, politics can’t be conducted like this.”

“I have to keep trying,” I said to him.

I then tried a lighter question and asked President Sadat if he planned to invite Prime Minister Begin to Cairo.

“I am planning to invite him to Sinai,” Sadat replied with a mischievous smile. Sinai was, of course, still occupied by the Israelis.

“Well,” Begin shot back. “I invite you.” And they both laughed.

We covered other topics as well, including the sensitive subject of a possible Palestinian state. Begin said very firmly, “My position is no.” We also talked about Sadat’s visit earlier in the day to the Holocaust Memorial at Yad Vashem. “I was very moved,” he said. “I never thought it reached to such an extent like I saw today.” I also asked Sadat, remembering other Egyptians who considered him a traitor, if he was at all concerned for his physical safety.