By Joe Berk
I could have titled this blog “The Day I Almost Met Yasir Arafat,” but more on that later. Yep, that’s him in the Caddy up above, and you can clearly see his trademark keffiyah in the lower right photo inset. Like I said, more on that murderous bastard later.
What made me reach for Ghost on Amazon was a reference to it in a Facebook group called Snub Noir, which is kind of focused on old school detectives, snub nosed revolvers, and associated armaphenalia. Someone in the Facebook group mentioned the book’s frequent references to the author’s Model 60 Smith and Wesson. I have one, so I was naturally interested in what the book had to say. As it turns out, there was very little specifically on the little S&W, but that’s okay. Ghost was an outstanding read. If I want to read more on the Model 60, I can just turn to any of our ExNotes stories on it.
Ghost is a real page turner if ever there was one. The book is not about Arafat, although he is mentioned in a couple of places. It’s about Fred Burton’s career in the U.S. State Department’s Diplomatic Security Service, an agency whose missions include assessing threats to State Department employees and U.S. citizens all over the world, providing security for visiting diplomats, protecting the U.S. Secretary of State, and preventing attacks against State Department assets. The book reads almost like a novel, and includes DSS actions before, during, and after several well known incidents (including the Achille Lauro hijacking, numerous aircraft hijackings, the Pan Am Lockerbie bombing, and many others). One of the most interesting events was when the president of Pakistan’s C-130 aircraft went down, and the true story behind who was responsible. The information released to the public held that the crash was an aircraft mechanical failure (the fear was that India had shot down the aircraft, and everyone wanted to avert an all out war between India and Pakistan, two nuclear armed opponents). Burton shared with us that nerve agents killed the pilot and co-pilot, and the Soviet Union was responsible. It’s fascinating reading.
Now, on to the Yasir Arafat incident. Back in the 1980s, I was an expert witness in an Armed Services Board of Contract Appeals lawsuit against the United States Navy. Forget what you might think about our military’s engineering functions and their competence. In many cases, they are bungling fools, and in this case, the Navy’s engineers were just about the worse I’d ever encountered (and my job was to explain that to the trial judge). The case went well, my client prevailed, and I made a ton of money experting my opinions at trial.
But the above stuff is not the story here. Nope, the story here is that I had my old film Nikon with me (a Nikon N70), and early one morning I was on a D.C sidewalk looking around for something interesting to photograph. About that time, there was a flurry of activity in front of a hotel. I didn’t know what it was about, but I was curious and I had my camera. I suppose I looked like a tourist, and in a way, I sort of was (a working tourist, to be precise). A tall , polite guy with an earpiece approached me. He asked that I move away from where I was standing. At the time, I thought he might have been a Secret Service man, and I further thought maybe I could get a photo of Bill Clinton (who was President at the time). I knew that somebody important was about to emerge from the hotel’s underground parking lot. I asked the secret agent guy who it was, and he just smiled. They can’t tell you stuff like that, I guess.
A large black SUV emerged from the hotel’s parking area, followed by a Cadillac limo. The side windows were darkened on the limo so I couldn’t see who was inside, but as it sped away, I grabbed a photo. It was only when I had the film developed later that I realized whom I had photographed. Yasir Arafat had been in the news (he was in Washington that week), and in the photo I could see his distinctive keffiyah (the checkered black and white head covering he wore). Imagine that: A photo of Yasir Arafat.
The last page in Ghost has a better photo of Burton (better, that is, than the photo on the cover you see above). I studied it for several minutes without realizing why, and then it hit me: I imagined the guy in that photo minus about 40 years. I swear Burton was the young DSS guy who asked me to move along all those years ago in Washington. I could be wrong. But I don’t think I am.