Terry Waite and Ollie North: The Untold Story of the Kidnapping and the Release

ISBN: 9780316359900

定价: 60.00

内容简介

Six months after Terry Waite had been taken hostage1 was
in Washington doing the roundsThe visit took in the State
Departmentcountless think tanks where former Adminis
tration officials reside in exile and those anonymous com
panies beyond the Beltway where erstwhile Pentagon and
Intelligence officials turn former access into profitThrough
these revolving doors of influence I sought information on
what had befallen the envoy of the Archbishop of
Canterbury
The intention was to make a film for BBC Panorama but
the omens were inauspiciousWaite had disappeared into the
black hole of BeirutBy I 9 8 7 most Western governments
had severed their links with the Western part of the Lebanese
capitalWhat fragments of information emerged amounted
to little more than rumour
The American Administrationlike its predecessorhad
nearly been brought down by the issue of hostagesBy the
summer after Waites capturehostages had been relegated
tO thetake fiotefileInitiatives were deadburied by the
revelation that the Reagan Administration had traded arms
for hostagesThe accepted wisdom was that hostages paid
few political dividendsA silence had fallen on official Wash
ingtonwith no one seeming to know whether Terry Waite
ws dead or alive ?
1 was concluding yet another fruitless conversation with a
senior Administration officialwho had only seen me reluc
tantlywhen he saidOur treatment of Waite was shameful
Why}I asked with some surpriseGo ask Ollie Northhe
said with a rueful smile and without elaboration
Northat the timewas the star witness of the Con
gressional enquiry into what had become known as the Iran-