The Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training Foreign Affairs
Oral History Project
AMBASSADOR RICHARD W. MURPHY
Interviewed by: Charles Stuart Kennedy Initial interview date: December 6, 2017
There were three principle players with whom I dealt at the senior level: the president, the foreign minister, Abdul-Halim Khaddam, and the Minister of National Economy Dr. Mohammad Al Imady, an English-speaking NYU graduate. He was the one most familiar with economic principles and comfortable with market economy thinking. The many strong-willed Baathi doctrinaires in the government knew Imady was there because of the president’s support but did their best to outmaneuver him.
The Syrian Foreign Minister, Abdul Halim Khaddam, visited Washington that summer. Nixon and Kissinger had toured the Middle East in June ’74 – Cairo, Israel, Jordan and Syria. It was after their meeting with Hafez al-Assad in Damascus that the public announcement was made that diplomatic relations between the United States and Syria would be restored. When the foreign minister arrived, Kissinger had me sit in on his meeting. I was supposed to interpret, given my skills in Arabic. (Laughter) Those skills were quickly shown to be rusty so Kissinger switched to French for the rest of their meeting held in the West Wing of the White House. I escorted Khaddam from the White House back to his hotel. On the way we passed a sign with a bicycle symbol saying “Begin here”. Khaddam was startled thinking the reference was to the Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin.
The foreign minister Abdul-Halim Khaddam was a feisty fellow. He had very clear blue eyes and was known around the diplomatic circuit as “Pretty-Boy Floyd”, referring to the days of Chicago gangsters. A Sunni from the coastal city of Tartous, he enjoyed jousting, always insisting on having the last word. On one occasion when we were waiting together for Kissinger’s plane I asked whether he agreed that the worst discovery of modern times was the airplane. He quickly retorted, “No. The worst discovery of our time was the United States of America.” Politics in Damascus could be a dangerous occupation. At one point he was ambushed just outside of the capital by a dissident element who fired on his convoy. My wife and I called on them in the hospital where we found them side-by-side in hospital beds, all bandaged up. Khaddam never tried to insert himself between me and the president. If I said I had a message from Kissinger, he didn’t ask to be briefed on it first – I would go straight to the president with it. I may have been given certain privileges as the American ambassador, showing the degree they hoped to develop a better relationship.
They welcomed the setting-up of the UN observation mission on the Golan and Lebanon. The first commander of the UN forces, an Austrian, was well received. The Syrian military cooperated with the UN which was seen as a helpful stabilizing element on the scene. However, when I would go to Khaddam with a request from Washington for support in the Security Council on a variety of issues, not Syrian-American ones but of general international concern, I never got anywhere. Syrians took pride in affirming they were free of US pressure and petitions and indeed of all foreign influence. I remember complaining to Assad near the end of the tour, saying “I tried repeatedly to get your support for…” and would run through a short list ending “and you never accepted any of our ideas.” He replied with his sardonic sense of humor, “That’s because you never had any good ones.” They were not cooperative on issues which might be important to others and others in New York’s UN debates. I’m not referring to ArabIsraeli issues, but other concerns of global policy.
Always useful. I felt that between our conversations with Assad and Khaddam, we had a good reading of where their policies were coming from. Did we have a particularly rich reading of their critics’ thinking? No. And we were not publicly in touch with many of the critics because that would only have raised suspicions on the regime’s part. I don’t believe that the Agency representatives contributed a great deal to Washington’s understanding of Syria. I recall being troubled when I was in Aleppo in the early 60’s by some of the reporting of the local Agency representative who shared his reports with me. I discussed this with our ambassador in Damascus who shrugged and said he’d always found the reports you didn’t have to pay for better than those you did. He represented a common view attitude of the traditionalists in the Foreign Service.
The Syrians were disdainful of Lebanese politicians. They professed to see no need for a president of Lebanon. As Khaddam put it at one point, “Just put a flag on the table; that’s enough to represent the state.” Our argument was, “The parliament is paralyzed; the military is blocked by the various militias. If there isn’t a president, there’s no-one in a position to make major political decisions and bring an end to this civil war.” His immediate question was, “Well, who’s the American candidate?” My reply that we didn’t have one didn’t convince him. It clearly was unthinkable to him that the United States would go through all this without having an idea about who should run the country. I replied that there had been at least 15 candidates, all good Maronites, respectable figures in Lebanese political life, who had visited Damascus to present their candidacy. Under the constitution, it had to be a Maronite. Khaddam came back after meeting with Hafez al-Assad to say that Syria had no objection to their being an election on the understanding there would be only one candidate. This was blatant interference. I called a recess to consult with my team. Some members advised that we should stop our efforts and go home. However, I had been working the election issue so long that I couldn’t just go home. I returned to the meeting and asked who that candidate would be. Khaddam said it was Mikhail Daher a candidate from a constituency in the Beqaa Valley near the Syrian border. I said that he was saying the Lebanese have a choice between Daher or chaos. He said no. Do not say there’s a choice because the Lebanese will choose chaos. So, counter to the advice of some of my team, I went to Beirut to present this Syrian position The election was due in September and the date was inflexible