'no comment' and 'we have nothing to say at this time' and 'the events in question are being analysed', all of which were evasive statements of confirmation.
What had started the furore was a maximum-classified inter-division memorandum under the letterhead of the Department of State. It had surfaced, unsigned, from buried files and was presumably leaked by an employee or employees who felt a great injustice had been done to a man under the unreasonable strictures of national security, paranoid fear of terrorist reprisals undoubtedly heading the list. Copies of the memorandum had been sent out in concert to the newspapers, wire services and TV networks, all arriving between 5:00 and 6:00 am, Eastern Daylight time. Accompanying each memorandum were three different photographs of the congressman in Masqat. Deniabihty denied.
It was planned, thought Evan. The timing was chosen to startle the nation as it woke up across the country, bulletins mandatory throughout the day.
Why?
What was remarkable were the facts revealed—as remarkable for what they omitted as for those they paraded. They were astonishingly accurate, down to such points as his having been flown to Oman under deep cover and spirited out of the airport in Masqat by intelligence agents who had provided him with Arab garments and even the skin-darkening gel that made his features compatible with the 'area of operations'. Christ! Area of operations!
There were sketchy, often hypothesized details of contacts he made with men he had known in the past, the names scissored out—black spaces in the memorandum for obvious reasons. There was a paragraph dealing with his voluntary internment in a terrorist compound where he nearly lost his life, but where he learned the names he had to know in order to trace the men behind the Palestinian fanatics at the embassy, specifically one name—name scissored out, a black space in the copy. He had tracked down that man—scissored out, a black space—and forced him to dismantle the terrorist cadre occupying the embassy in Masqat. That pivotal man was shot—details scissored out, a black paragraph— and Evan Kendrick, representative from the ninth district of Colorado, was returned under protective cover to the United States.
Experts had been summoned to examine the photographs. Each print was subjected to spectrographic analysis for authenticity with respect to the age of the negative and the possibility of laboratory alterations. Everything was confirmed, even down to the day and the date extracted from 20 X magnification of a newspaper carried by a pedestrian in the streets of Masqat. The more responsible papers noted the lack of alternative sources that might or might not lend credibility to the facts as they were sketchily presented, but none could question the photographs or the identity of the man in them. And that man, Congressman Evan Kendrick, was nowhere to be found to confirm or deny the incredible story. The New York Times and the Washington Post unearthed what few friends and neighbours they could find in the capital as well as in Virginia and Colorado. None could recall having seen or heard from the congressman during the period in question fourteen months ago—not that they would necessarily have expected to, which in itself meant that they probably would have remembered if he had been in touch with them.
The Los Angeles Times went further and, without revealing its sources, ran a telephone check on Mr. Kendrick. Apart from calls to various local shops and a certain James Olsen, a gardener, only five possibly relevant calls were made from the congressman's residence in Virginia over a four-week period. Three were to the Arabian Studies departments at Georgetown and Princeton universities, one to a diplomat from the Arab Emirate of Dubai, who had returned home seven months before, and the fifth to an attorney in Washington, who refused to talk to the press. Relevance be damned, the bird dogs were pointing even though the quarry had disappeared.
The less responsible papers, which meant most of those without the resources to finance extensive investigations, and all of the tabloids, which did not care a whit about verification, if they could spell it, had a pseudo-journalistic field day. They took the exposed maximum-classified memorandum and used it as a springboard for the wild waters of heroic speculation, knowing their issues would be grabbed by their unsceptical readership. Words in print are more often than not words of truth to the uninformed—a patronizing judgment, to be sure, but all too true.
What was missing in every one of the stones, however, were truths, deep truths, that went beyond the astonishingly accurate revelations. There was no mention of a brave young sultan of Oman, who had risked his life and lineage to help him. Or of the Omanis who had guarded him both at the airport and in the back streets of Masqat. Or of a strange and strikingly professional woman who had rescued him in a congested concourse of another airport in Bahrain after he had been nearly killed, who had found him sanctuary and a doctor who ministered to his wounds. Above all, there was not a word about the Israeli unit, led by a Mossad officer, who had saved him from a death that still made him shiver in horror. Or even of another American, an elderly architect from the Bronx, without whom
