Top U.S. Envoy Hunted through Baghdad Streets

AMERICAN IN DANGER

Cabled TIME Correspondent John Mecklin, after coming out of Baghdad last week:

IT IS the consensus among responsible American observers in Baghdad that Iraqi Communists deliberately planned--even if they did not bring off--the mob murder of U.S. Assistant Secretary of State William Rountree when he arrived last week on his fact-finding tour. It is also clear that the revolutionary government of Brigadier General Abdul Karim Kassem knew this and was unwilling, or unable, to prevent it.

In the days preceding his visit, every Baghdad newspaper attacked Rountree as "the envoy of evil and plots." A party-line newspaper cried that "the Iraqi people will not permit the American envoy to enter their country." The Communist-front Peace Partisans fervidly appealed "to our peace-loving masses to vigorously condemn this emissary of imperialism and Zionism." Since no country outside the Soviet bloc has a tighter press control than Iraq, U.S. Ambassador Waldemar Gallman formally asked the Iraq Foreign Ministry if it still wanted Rountree to visit Baghdad. The answer was yes, and the newspaper attacks were explained away on the grounds of a "free" press.

Chants and Stickers

The morning of Rountree's arrival, high school teachers dismissed classes, told their students to go out to the airport. Communist leaflets urging a "mass protest" fluttered through the city's streets. As U.S. Charge d'Affaires David Fritzlan drove to the airport in a black embassy Cadillac flying the American flag, he found that last quarter-mile of his route clogged with people chanting in English: "Rountree, go home!" At the air terminal, a milling crowd of several thousand brushed aside the ineffectual police and troops to plaster the car with go-home stickers. Mob leaders were even allowed up on the terminal roof to direct the mob.

As Envoy Rountree stepped from the Iraqi Airways Viscount that had brought him from Cairo, the only government official to meet him was a lowly Foreign Ministry protocol officer. Fritzlan bundled Rountree into his car, and with quick presence of mind ordered the Iraqi driver to leave the airport by a side gate, away from the main crowds. As the Iraqi protocol officer got into his own car to follow, he quipped nervously: "I hope the people understand I am not an American." The Cadillac exited to shouts of "Go Home, Rountree!" from Iraqi Airways mechanics around the plane.

Garbage and Mud

The mob was already redeploying. A paper bag full of garbage smashed against a side window just as Fritzlan rolled it up. Tomatoes, eggs, handfuls of mud scooped up from the gutters splashed over the car. Fritzlan told Rountree there were reports "that the price of tomatoes has gone up 20 fils [about 5-c-] in anticipation of your arrival." It was not a very good joke, but white-faced, composed Bill Rountree smiled faintly.

The Cadillac sped through back streets and made it safely to the former Royal Palace, which now houses the Sovereignty Council. As protocol demanded. Rountree signed the official visitor's book, but then both Americans made the error of lingering for a half-hour of coffee drinking and talk with junior officials. It was enough time for the mob leaders to shunt their hoodlums across town by truck. As Rountree and Fritzlan left the palace, their car was nearly overwhelmed.

A boy sat on the hood, hammering on the windshield with his shoe. A large stone cracked the glass after the boy was pulled off. Again the car sliced through the crowd, was nearly cut off by a herd of cattle but, after colliding heavily with a cow, slipped past. All along the route to the embassy it was met by a barrage of mud, stones and assorted filth. Further back waved crudely lettered signs: "Go home, little dog Rountree." "Rontry, do not step on our beloved land with your bloody feet!" Waiting at the embassy gate was a truckload of mobsters chanting, "Go home, Rountree ... Go home, Rountree!"

Next day, while the newspapers gloated about Rountree's "fleeing from the crowds which came to receive him," the State Department envoy was scheduled to call on Iraq's head of state, General Kassem. The Iraqis sent an army station wagon and a jeepload of troops and--semi-secretly and with no flag flying--the U.S. Assistant Secretary of State was smuggled off to call on the Prime Minister of a supposedly friendly country. It was the only time he left the embassy in his two days in Iraq.

Kassem was amiable but hardly contrite. Over cigarettes and coffee he explained that "the people here are free to demonstrate their feelings," insisted they had nothing against Rountree personally but were simply expressing resentment of the U.S. built up over the years of the Nuri asSaid regime, which came to a bloody ending last summer. In turn, Rountree said the U.S. wanted friendly relations with Iraq and hoped that greater mutual confidence could be created. After exchanging platitudes for 90 minutes, Rountree left. Kassem's next visitor was the Soviet ambassador, who spent 45 minutes with the general in what was also described as "an atmosphere of friendship and cordiality" in Baghdad papers next day; on orders, each visit got equal space. Rountree left for Beirut that noon, a day early, after traveling to the airport in an unmarked car.

Hunted and Humiliated

There had only been shouts, stones and vulgar slogans, and the unusual spectacle of a high U.S. representative conducted about a Middle Eastern city like a hunted criminal. Yet, if Fritzlan had followed the route from the airport that the mob had expected, the embassy car would certainly have been stopped, probably overturned and set afire, and the men inside could have been in gravest peril. If General Kassem had not wanted William Rountree humiliated or worse, he showed an inefficiency and stupidity not previously apparent in him.

U.S. officials in Baghdad swallowed their anger as best they could. They feel that nothing would have suited the Communists better than an unhappy incident--even Rountree's murder--which would have provoked an aroused U.S. into breaking off relations with Kassem. As U.S. representatives, they recognized the need to be there in Baghdad. But, understandably, they did not enjoy it.

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