Cable 1973BEIRUT06768 · June 8, 1973 · CONFIDENTIAL

Beirut, June 8, 1973

The Paymaster's Ledger: Arafat's Payments to Lebanese Leaders, Documented

A Lebanese Foreign Office briefing, filed June 8, 1973, passed to the U.S. Embassy a detailed intelligence dossier: Soviet and Iraqi arms flowing through Latakia to Arafat; Lebanese leftist factions receiving half those weapons; and direct cash payments from the Fatah treasury to Lebanon's Grand Mufti, to Kamal Jumblatt, to Imam Musa Sadr, and to a former Sunni deputy. Also: Syria's parallel campaign to convince the fedayeen Lebanon was preparing to liquidate them.

Based on cable 1973BEIRUT06768 CONFIDENTIAL → UNCLASSIFIED

Three weeks after the Melkart Protocol was supposed to regularize the Palestinian armed presence in Lebanon, the Lebanese Foreign Office summoned the U.S. Chargé to hand over an intelligence dossier. Secretary General Sadaqa read from Lebanese Army G-2 and Jordanian reports documenting three simultaneous developments: Iraq had offered 6,000 weapons and the USSR had delivered 2,000 Kalashnikovs at Latakia in Arafat's name; a May 21–22 fedayeen meeting decided to distribute half those weapons to Lebanese leftist groups; and Arafat had personally paid LL 250,000 to the Sunni Grand Mufti, LL 500,000 to leftist deputy Adnan Hakim, LL 100,000 to Shia leader Musa Sadr, and LL 500,000 to Kamal Jumblatt, from the Fatah treasury at Nabatiyeh. Meanwhile Syria was telling visiting Lebanese that the Lebanese government was preparing to liquidate the fedayeen — a claim the Embassy assessed as designed either to justify future Syrian action or to drive the fedayeen into preemptive attack. Sadaqa asked the U.S. to raise the matter with Moscow because the Lebanese had learned the hard way they could not trust Soviet Ambassador Azimov. The cable closes with a concrete Lebanese ask: urgent U.S. weapons for the Lebanese Army.

What this document reveals

Arafat personally funded a cross-confessional roster of Lebanese political figures from the Fatah treasury at Nabatiyeh: LL 250,000 to Sunni Grand Mufti Hassan Khaled, LL 500,000 to Adnan Hakim, LL 100,000 to Imam Musa Sadr, LL 500,000 to Kamal Jumblatt. The paymaster was Abu Jihad (Khalil al-Wazir).
A May 21–22 fedayeen meeting decided to distribute half of a 6,000-weapon Iraqi/Soviet shipment to Lebanese leftist groups — the physical basis for the armed alliance that became the Lebanese National Movement in 1975.
2,000 Kalashnikov rifles arrived at Latakia from the USSR “in the name of Arafat.” Latakia is Syria's principal port; the shipment crossed Syrian territory en route to Lebanon. This is the operational form of the “discreet” Soviet support assessed in 1973BEIRUT05437.
Syria was running a parallel disinformation campaign telling visiting Lebanese politicians that Beirut was preparing another armed attack to liquidate the fedayeen — an assessment the Embassy flagged as either a pretext for Syrian action or designed to push the fedayeen into a preemptive strike.
The Lebanese Foreign Office asked the U.S. to raise the matter with Moscow because the Lebanese had learned they could not trust Soviet Ambassador Azimov. Sadaqa also coupled the dossier with an explicit request: urgent U.S. arms for the Lebanese Army.

Chronology

What happened, in sequence

May 7–18, 1973

The May crisis

Lebanese Army deploys aircraft and tanks against Palestinian camps; Melkart Protocol reached with fedayeen 'unilateral promises' on heavy weapons, camp access, training relocation. Documented in cables 1973BEIRUT05155, 05159, 05437, 05776.

May 21–22, 1973

Fedayeen weapons meeting

Top-level fedayeen meeting decides to distribute 4,000 of 6,000 incoming individual weapons to Lebanese leftist 'nationalist' or 'progressive' groups. The other 4,000 go to fedayeen units.

Late May 1973

Soviet shipment at Latakia

2,000 Kalashnikov rifles arrive at the Syrian Mediterranean port of Latakia from the USSR, addressed in Arafat's name. Iraq also offers 6,000 individual weapons to the fedayeen.

Jun 6, 1973

Three Syrians detained

Temporary arrest of three Syrians by Lebanese authorities — Damascus elevates this as the only item it will discuss in official channels.

Jun 8, 1973

This meeting

Sadaqa reads the intelligence dossier to the U.S. Chargé and asks Washington to raise the matter with Moscow. Pairs the dossier with a request for urgent U.S. arms.

Key figures

Who was involved

Yasser Arafat

PLO Chairman; Fatah leader

This cable documents Arafat personally disbursing funds to named Lebanese political leaders from the Fatah treasury at Nabatiyeh, via Abu Jihad. It also documents the 2,000 Kalashnikov rifles delivered at Latakia 'in the name of Arafat.' The cable establishes Arafat as simultaneously the recipient of Soviet military support and the financier of Lebanese political influence operations crossing Sunni, Shia, and Druze confessional lines.

Imam Musa Sadr

Shia cleric, founder of the Movement of the Deprived

The cable documents Musa Sadr as a recipient of LL 100,000 from the Fatah treasury in June 1973 — 15 months before his Movement of the Deprived was publicly launched, and five years before his 1978 disappearance in Libya. This documentary trace of PLO funding, routed through Lebanese Army G-2 intelligence into U.S. diplomatic reporting, is a pre-war record of the financial architecture of Shia political mobilization in Lebanon.

Kamal Jumblatt

Druze leader, PSP founder, future LNM leader

Jumblatt appears three times in this single cable: as recipient of LL 500,000 from Arafat's Fatah treasury; as beneficiary of heavy and light weapons being smuggled to his followers in the Shouf; and as sender of 250 followers to Syria for military training. The documentary record of the 1975 Lebanese National Movement's armed mobilization began here.

Abu Jihad (Khalil al-Wazir)

Fatah co-founder; PLO military operations chief

Identified in this cable as the paymaster of Fatah's Lebanese political influence operations, operating from the Fatah treasury at Nabatiyeh. His dual role — operational military commander and disbursing officer — documents the integration of military and political functions within Fatah. Assassinated by Israeli commandos in Tunis, April 16, 1988.

The Record

Three weeks after the agreement

The Melkart Protocol had been reached on May 17, 1973. The Lebanese Army and Palestinian factions had exchanged written commitments on heavy weapons, camp security, training locations, and the operational posture of the fedayeen inside Lebanon. It was supposed to be the end of the May crisis.

On June 8, 1973 — three weeks later — the Secretary General of the Lebanese Foreign Office summoned the U.S. Chargé and read him an intelligence dossier. None of the Melkart commitments had been implemented. Instead, the situation had gotten worse.

The arms supply

Iraq had offered the fedayeen 6,000 individual weapons. Two thousand Kalashnikov rifles had arrived at the Syrian port of Latakia, from the USSR, addressed in Arafat's name. A top-level fedayeen meeting on May 21–22 had decided how to distribute the weapons when they reached Lebanon: 4,000 to fedayeen units, and 4,000 to Lebanese leftist groups described as "nationalist" or "progressive" forces. Jordanian intelligence added that three fedayeen were being sent to Baghdad to arrange the purchase and delivery of 930 wire-guided anti-tank rockets for a new rocket unit to be emplaced near the Syrian-Lebanese border crossing at Masnaa.

The arithmetic was not subtle. Half of the incoming fedayeen arms inventory was going to Lebanese militia formations, not to Palestinian fighters. This was the material base of an armed alliance between the PLO and indigenous Lebanese leftist factions — the physical assembly of what would, two years later, become the Lebanese National Movement.

The payments

Paragraph 4 of the cable contains the most detailed information in the pre-war archive about direct financial relations between Arafat's Fatah and Lebanese political figures. The list is specific: LL 250,000 to Grand Mufti Shaykh Hassan Khaled; LL 500,000 to leftist former deputy Adnan Hakim; LL 100,000 to Shia leader Imam Musa Sadr; LL 500,000 to Druze leftist Kamal Jumblatt. The payments crossed confessional lines. The paymaster, the cable reports, was Abu Jihad — Khalil al-Wazir — operating from the Fatah treasury at Nabatiyeh.

These were substantial sums. In 1973 Lebanese pounds, they translate to roughly USD 30,000 to USD 150,000 per recipient at contemporary exchange rates — meaningful political financing by any measure, and especially so for a religious scholar (the Grand Mufti) or for a political figure whose public identity rested on principled independence (Musa Sadr).

The Syrian campaign

In parallel, Sadaqa documented a Syrian information operation. The Syrian Foreign Minister had refused to answer substantive questions from his Lebanese counterpart over four or five contacts in a week, limiting himself to minor specific grievances like the temporary arrest of three Syrians on June 6. But in Damascus, visiting Lebanese politicians — including the Maronite Raymond Eddé, the Abdullah Yafi group, and Arab League Secretary-General Mahmoud Riad — were being told by top Syrian officials that the Lebanese government was preparing another armed attack to liquidate the fedayeen.

The Embassy's assessment was that this was a pretext-manufacturing operation. The Syrian allegation — that Lebanon was planning to liquidate the fedayeen — could serve either as justification for subsequent Syrian military action, or as a means to convince the fedayeen they were genuinely threatened and drive them into preemptive action of their own. The cable names this mechanism. It does not wait for scholarly retrospective to identify the pattern.

The diplomatic ask

Sadaqa asked the United States to raise the Lebanese-Syrian-fedayeen question with the Soviet Union. The Lebanese government explicitly did not intend to raise it with the Soviet Ambassador in Beirut — because, Sadaqa said, the Lebanese had learned the hard way that they could not place any stock in what Ambassador Azimov said. Soviet words and Soviet deeds, in the Lebanese assessment, did not correspond.

He coupled this with a direct request: urgent U.S. weapons for the Lebanese Army. The intelligence dossier and the arms request were delivered in the same meeting. The cable captures them in the same text. The connection between them was not rhetorical but operational: the Lebanese state, facing the arms flow and political payments documented in the preceding paragraphs, was asking the United States for matching military assistance.

What the record shows

This cable is the pre-war Lebanese financial and logistical record. It documents, on the factual level, what the political-assessment cables (1973BEIRUT05437, 1973STATE086221) described at the level of judgment: a coordinated Syrian-Palestinian-Soviet-Iraqi system of arms and money flowing through Lebanon to destabilize Lebanese state sovereignty. The recipients were named. The amounts were specified. The paymaster — Abu Jihad — was identified. The ports and border crossings were located.

None of this appears in the standard historical account of pre-war Lebanon. It is in the documentary record because a Lebanese Secretary General read it aloud to a U.S. Chargé on the morning of June 8, 1973, and the Chargé's cable preserved it.

Key Locations

●

Latakia, Syria — Syrian Mediterranean port where 2,000 Soviet Kalashnikovs arrived in Arafat's name

●

Nabatiyeh — Fatah treasury location where Abu Jihad disbursed payments to Lebanese leaders

●

Masnaa border crossing — Planned site for new fedayeen anti-tank rocket unit; principal Lebanon-Syria road crossing

○

Qlaiaat Airport — Northern Lebanese military airfield targeted for fedayeen seizure plan

○

Shouf region — Jumblatt's political base; site of weapons smuggling to Lebanese leftist groups

Map data © OpenStreetMap contributors · View in OpenStreetMap

Primary Source

This article is based entirely on U.S. Embassy Beirut cable 1973BEIRUT06768, dispatched on June 8, 1973 and originally classified CONFIDENTIAL. Declassified and released by the U.S. Department of State under Executive Order Systematic Review, July 5, 2006. No facts have been added, removed, or altered.

View original on Wikileaks PlusD →

Topics

1973 pre-war LIMDIS Fatah payments Arafat Musa Sadr Jumblatt Abu Jihad Syria Iraq USSR Kalashnikov Latakia

CONFIDENTIAL

Origin	U.S. Embassy, Beirut, Lebanon
To	Secretary of State, Washington D.C.
Date	June 8, 1973
Cable ID	1973BEIRUT06768
Classification	CONFIDENTIAL → Declassified 2006

Lebanese-Syrian Relations

Annotated version — all original facts and language preserved in full

CONFIDENTIAL
PAGE 01 BEIRUT 06768 081837Z 11

ACTION NEA-06
INFO OCT-01 SS-14 ADP-00 EUR-10 IO-03 NSC-10 NSCE-00 CIAE-00 INR-10
     NSAE-00 RSC-01 PM-03 PRS-01 L-02 ACDA-10 AF-04 RSR-01 /076 W

034207 R 081652Z JUN 73
FM AMEMBASSY BEIRUT
TO SECSTATE WASHDC 2581
   DIA WASHDC
INFO AMEMBASSY AMMAN
     AMCONSUL JERUSALEM
     AMEMBASSY JIDDA
     AMEMBASSY KUWAIT
     AMEMBASSY LONDON
     AMEMBASSY MOSCOW
     AMEMBASSY APARIS
     AMEMBASSY TEHRAN
     AMEMBASSY TELAVIV
     USMISSION UN
     USCINSEUR

C O N F I D E N T I A L BEIRUT 6768
LIMDIS
DEPT PASS CAIRO

EO 11652: GDS
TAGS: PFOR, PINS, LE, SY
SUBJECT: LEBANESE-SYRIAN RELATIONS
REF: BEIRUT 6565

1. SECGEN SADAQA OF LEBANESE FONOFFICE ASKED CHARGE CALL ON HIM LATE MORNING
JUNE 8. HE PROCEEDED INFORM CHARGE AND EMB OFF OF HOW GOL SEES CURRENT
SITUATION AS IT CONCERNS SYRIANS, LEBANESE LEFT AND FEDAYEEN. SADAQA READ
FROM SEVERAL INTELLIGENCE REPORTS RECEIVED FROM LEBANESE AND JORDANIAN
SOURCES IN WAY OF DOCUMENTING HIS CASE.

2. FIRST REPORT WAS FROM LEBANESE ARMY G-2 AND DESCRIBED BY ARMY AS COMING
FROM COMPLETELY RELIABLE SOURCE, WHO OBTAINED INTELLIGENCE FROM FEDAYEEN
SOURCES IN BEIRUT. MAIN POINTS WERE: (A) IRAQ HAS OFFERED FEDAYEEN 6,000
INDIVIDUAL WEAPONS AND 2,000 KALASHNIKOV RIFLES HAVE ARRIVED AT LATAKIA FROM
USSR IN NAME OF ARAFAT; (B) ON MAY 21-22 TOP LEVEL FEDAYEEN MEETING DECIDED
DISTRIBUTE 4,000 OF THESE INDIVIDUAL WEAPONS (AFTER DELIVERY IN LEBANON) TO
VARIOUS FEDAYEEN UNITS AND 4,000 TO VARIOUS LEFTIST GROUPS ("NATIONALIST"
OR "PROGRESSIVE" FORCES);

3. SECOND REPORT RECEIVED FROM JORDANIAN INTELLIGENCE AND CONCERNS FEDAYEEN
PLAN TO TAKE QLAIAAT AIRPORT IN NORTH LEBANON USING SOME LEBANESE ARMY
OFFICERS TO DEVELOP INTELLIGENCE ON AIRFIELD AND ITS DEFENSES. JORDANIANS
ALSO REPORTED SMUGGLING OF LARGE QUANTITIES LIGHT AND HEAVY WEAPONS TO
SEVERAL LEBANESE CITIES AND INTO SHOUF AREA WHERE THEY WILL BE DISTRIBUTED
TO LEFTIST GROUPS, INCLUDING THOSE OF KAMAL JUMBLATT AND NAJAH WAKIN (PRO
SYRIAN NASSERIST DEPUTY).

4. ANOTHER LEBANESE REPORT INDICATES LARGE SUMS OF MONEY GIVEN BY ARAFAT TO
CERTAIN MOSLEM AND LEFTIST LEADERS IN ORDER INFLUENCE THEM FAVORABLY TOWARD
FEDAYEEN AND AGAINST GOL (AND FRANGIE). AMOUNTS CITED INCLUDED LL250,000 TO
GRAND MUFTI SHAYKH HASSAN KHALED (SUNNI); LL500,000 TO LEFTIST FORMER DEPUTY
ADNAN HAKIM (SUNNI); LL100,000 TO SHIA LEADER IMAM MUSA SADR; AND LL500,000
TO LEFTIST KAMAL JUMBLATT. MONEY REPORTED PAID OUT BY ABU JIHAD FROM FATAH
TREASURY AT NABATIYEH. ANOTHER JORDANIAN REPORT SAYS THREE FEDAYEEN BEING
SENT TO BAGHDAD TO ARRANGE FOR PURCHASE AND DELIVERY TO LEBANON OF SOME 930
"COBRA" MODEL WIRE GUIDED ANTI TANK ROCKETS WHICH REPORTEDLY HAVE RANGE OF
2 KILOMETERS AND ARE 190 CENTIMETERS LONG. NEW FEDAYEEN ROCKET UNIT TO BE
ORGANIZED AND EMPLACED NEAR SYRIAN LEBANESE MAJOR BORDER CROSSING AREA AT
MASNAA (WHERE FEDAYEEN TRIED UNSUCCESSFULLY CUT ROAD AND HAD SEVERAL PITCHED
BATTLES WITH LEBANESE ARMY IN EARLY MAY). ALSO SOME 250 OF KAMAL JUMBLATTS
FOLLOWERS BEING SENT TO SYRIA FOR TRAINING.

PAGE 03 BEIRUT 06768 081837Z

5. SADAQA SAID THAT WHILE SOME DETAILS OF THESE REPORTS MIGHT BE QUESTIONABLE,
GOL IS CONVINCED THEY ARE MOSTLY TRUE AND THAT THEY REPRESENT A CLEAR SYRIAN
AND IRAQI THREAT TO LEBANON. THIS ALL THE CLEARER WHEN TAKEN TOGETHER WITH
EXTRAORDINARY SARG BEHAVIOR VIS A VIS GOL AND CLOSURE OF BORDER. SYRIAN
FONMIN HAS BEEN CONTACTED FOUR OR FIVE TIMES BY LEBANESE FONMIN OVER PAST
WEEK YET HAS CONSISTENTLY AVOIDED ANSWERING QUESTIONS ON WHAT ARE BASIC
PROBLEMS BETWEEN SYRIA AND LEBANON. INSTEAD HE LIMITS COMMENTS IN OFFICIAL
CHANNELS TO COMPLAINTS ABOUT MINOR, SPECIFIC CASES (EG, TEMP ARREST OF 3
SYRIANS ON JUNE 6).

6. HOWEVER IN PUBLIC COMMENTS BY SYRIAN PRESS AND RADIO AND IN WHAT TOP
SYRIAN OFFICIALS SAYING TO LEBANESE WHO HAVE RECENTLY VISITED DAMASCUS
(INCLUDING RAYMOND EDDE, ABDULLAH YAFI GROUP, AND ARAB LEAGUE SECGEN RIAD)
SYRIANS MAKE WORST SORT OF ALLEGATIONS THAT LEBANESE GOVT AND ARMY HAVE NOT
LIVED UP TO ARRANGEMENTS WITH FEDAYEEN AND THAT THEY ARE IN FACT PREPARING
ANOTHER ARMED ATTACK IN EFFORT LIQUIDATE THE FEDAYEEN (SEE SEPTEL FOR MORE
DETAILS). GOL IS FORCED TO CONCLUDE THAT SYRIANS NOT SINCERELY INTERESTED
IN RESOLVING ANY OUTSTANDING PROBLEMS BUT RATHER TO EXERT MAXIMUM POLITICAL
AND PSYCHOLOGICAL PRESSURE ON GOL AND PRES FRANGIE. DANGER IS THAT THIS
COULD EITHER BE PRETEXT FOR MORE ACTIVE AND FORCEFUL SYRIAN/FEDAYEEN ATTACK
ON LEBANON AT SOME FUT DATE OR THAT CAMPAIGN COULD CONVINCE FEDAYEEN THEY
ARE REALLY IN DANGER, THEREBY CAUSING THEM TO START SOMETHING ON THEIR OWN.

7. IN REPLY TO QUESTION SADAQA SAID THAT IT OBVIOUS LEBANESE ARMY AND GOL
NOT IN ANY WAY PREPARING TO ATTACK FEDAYEEN, ALTHOUGH ARMY TRYING MAINTAIN
SOME CONTROL OVER FEDAYEEN MOVEMENTS AND ARMS SMUGGLING. THUS FAR FEDAYEEN
HAVE BEEN UNWILLING TAKE ANY ACTION TOWARD IMPLEMENTATION OF MOST IMPORTANT
POINTS OF THEIR "ARRANGEMENTS" WITH GOL, NAMELY THE REMOVAL OF HEAVY AND
MEDIUM ARMS FROM CAMPS; THE REMOVAL OF FEDAYEEN REGULARS FROM CAMPS; THE
TRANSFER OF FEDAYEEN HEADQUARTERS OUT OF LEBANON; AND THE TRANSFER OF ALL
TRAINING OPERATIONS OUT OF CAMPS TO AGREED AREA NEAR BORDER WITH SYRIA. YET
SYRIANS ARE TELLING ONE AND ALL THAT IT IS GOL WHICH DELINQUENT IN NOT
KEEPING ITS BARGAIN WITH FEDAYEEN.

PAGE 04 BEIRUT 06768 081837Z

8. IN SUMMING UP, SADAQA SAID THAT GOL WOULD APPRECIATE IT IF DEPT CONSIDERED
ITSELF IN POSITION RAISE MATTER OF SYRIAN BEHAVIOR AND FEDAYEEN NON EXECUTION
OF PROMISED WITH SOVS. HE SAID THAT GOL DOES NOT INTEND RAISE MATTER WITH
AMB AZIMOV BECAUSE LEBANESE HAVE LEARNED HARD WAY THAT THEY CANNOT PLACE
ANY STOCK IN WHAT AZIMOV SAYS, WHICH OFTEN FAILS TO CORRESPOND TO SOV DEEDS.

9. SADAQA ADDED THAT GRIM SITUATION AS GOL SEES IT MEANS THAT REINFORCING
OF LEBANESE ARMY BECOMES ALL MORE IMPORTANT AND URGENT. HE EXPRESSED HOPE
THAT USG WOULD SOON HAVE POSITIVE REPLY TO LEBANESE REQUEST FOR ARMS.

10. COMMENT: WHAT SADAQA HAD TO SAY ABOUT SYRIANS, LEBANESE LEFT AND FEDAYEEN
IS JUST ABOUT WHAT WE HAVE BEEN REPORTING FOR SOMETIME. THERE IS NO QUESTION
BUT THAT SYRIAN ECONOMIC AND POLITICAL PRESSURE AND ARMS SUPPLY IS CAUSING
SERIOUS PROBLEMS FOR GOL BOTH IN BRINGING FEDAYEEN TO IMPLEMENT THEIR
PROMISES AND IN DEALING WITH INDIGENOUS LEFTIST OPPOSITION. WE WOULD HOPE
THAT EMBASSY MOSCOW OR DEPT COULD RAISE PROBLEM OF LEBANESE-SYRIAN-FEDAYEEN
RELATIONS WITH SOVS IF OPPORTUNITY PRESENTS ITSELF, EVEN THOUGH WE REALIZE
IT UNLIKELY HAVE MUCH EFFECT ON SYRIANS.

HOUGHTON

NOTE BY OC/T: NOT PASSED CAIRO.

CONFIDENTIAL NNN

Originally classified CONFIDENTIAL / LIMDIS · Declassified and released by U.S. Department of State under EO Systematic Review · Now UNCLASSIFIED · Not passed to Cairo

1.
Secretary General Sadaqa^[1] of the Lebanese Foreign Office asked the Chargé d’Affaires to call on him late morning on June 8. He proceeded to inform the Chargé and the Embassy officer of how the GOL sees the current situation as it concerns the Syrians, the Lebanese left, and the fedayeen.^[2] Sadaqa read from several intelligence reports received from Lebanese and Jordanian sources in order to document his case.

2.
The first report was from Lebanese Army G-2 and described by the Army as coming from a completely reliable source, who obtained intelligence from fedayeen sources in Beirut. Main points were: (A) Iraq has offered the fedayeen 6,000 individual weapons, and 2,000 Kalashnikov rifles have arrived at Latakia from the USSR in the name of Arafat;^[3] (B) On May 21–22 a top-level fedayeen meeting decided to distribute 4,000 of these individual weapons (after delivery in Lebanon) to various fedayeen units, and 4,000 to various leftist groups (“nationalist” or “progressive” forces).^[4]

3.
A second report was received from Jordanian intelligence and concerns a fedayeen plan to take Qlaiaat Airport^[5] in North Lebanon, using some Lebanese Army officers to develop intelligence on the airfield and its defenses. The Jordanians also reported smuggling of large quantities of light and heavy weapons to several Lebanese cities and into the Shouf area, where they will be distributed to leftist groups, including those of Kamal Jumblatt^[6] and Najah Wakin (pro-Syrian Nasserist deputy).

4.
Another Lebanese report indicates large sums of money given by Arafat to certain Muslim and leftist leaders in order to influence them favorably toward the fedayeen and against the GOL (and Frangieh). Amounts cited included LL 250,000 to Grand Mufti Shaykh Hassan Khaled (Sunni); LL 500,000 to leftist former deputy Adnan Hakim (Sunni); LL 100,000 to Shia leader Imam Musa Sadr; and LL 500,000 to leftist Kamal Jumblatt.^[7] Money was reported paid out by Abu Jihad^[8] from the Fatah treasury at Nabatiyeh. Another Jordanian report says three fedayeen are being sent to Baghdad to arrange for purchase and delivery to Lebanon of some 930 “Cobra” model wire-guided anti-tank rockets^[9] which reportedly have a range of 2 kilometers and are 190 centimeters long. A new fedayeen rocket unit is to be organized and emplaced near the Syrian–Lebanese major border crossing area at Masnaa (where the fedayeen tried unsuccessfully to cut the road and had several pitched battles with the Lebanese Army in early May). Also, some 250 of Kamal Jumblatt’s followers are being sent to Syria for training.

5.
Sadaqa said that while some details of these reports might be questionable, the GOL is convinced they are mostly true and that they represent a clear Syrian and Iraqi threat to Lebanon. This is all the clearer when taken together with extraordinary SARG behavior vis-à-vis the GOL and the closure of the border.^[10] The Syrian Foreign Minister has been contacted four or five times by the Lebanese Foreign Minister over the past week, yet has consistently avoided answering questions on what are the basic problems between Syria and Lebanon. Instead he limits comments in official channels to complaints about minor, specific cases (e.g., the temporary arrest of three Syrians on June 6).

6.
However, in public comments by Syrian press and radio, and in what top Syrian officials are saying to Lebanese who have recently visited Damascus (including Raymond Eddé,^[11] the Abdullah Yafi group, and Arab League Secretary-General Riad), the Syrians make the worst sort of allegations — that the Lebanese government and army have not lived up to arrangements with the fedayeen and that they are in fact preparing another armed attack in an effort to liquidate the fedayeen. The GOL is forced to conclude that the Syrians are not sincerely interested in resolving any outstanding problems, but rather are trying to exert maximum political and psychological pressure on the GOL and President Frangieh. The danger is that this could either be a pretext for a more active and forceful Syrian/fedayeen attack on Lebanon at some future date, or that the campaign could convince the fedayeen they are really in danger, thereby causing them to start something on their own.^[12]

7.
In reply to a question, Sadaqa said that it is obvious the Lebanese Army and GOL are not in any way preparing to attack the fedayeen, although the Army is trying to maintain some control over fedayeen movements and arms smuggling. Thus far, the fedayeen have been unwilling to take any action toward implementation of the most important points of their “arrangements” with the GOL, namely: the removal of heavy and medium arms from camps; the removal of fedayeen regulars from camps; the transfer of fedayeen headquarters out of Lebanon; and the transfer of all training operations out of camps to an agreed area near the border with Syria.^[13] Yet the Syrians are telling one and all that it is the GOL which is delinquent in not keeping its bargain with the fedayeen.

8.
In summing up, Sadaqa said that the GOL would appreciate it if the Department considered itself in a position to raise the matter of Syrian behavior and fedayeen non-execution of promises with the Soviets.^[14] He said that the GOL does not intend to raise the matter with Ambassador Azimov because the Lebanese have learned the hard way that they cannot place any stock in what Azimov says, which often fails to correspond to Soviet deeds.

9.
Sadaqa added that the grim situation as the GOL sees it means that reinforcement of the Lebanese Army becomes all the more important and urgent. He expressed hope that the USG would soon have a positive reply to the Lebanese request for arms.^[15]

10. Comment
What Sadaqa had to say about the Syrians, Lebanese left, and fedayeen is just about what we have been reporting for some time. There is no question but that Syrian economic and political pressure and arms supply is causing serious problems for the GOL, both in bringing the fedayeen to implement their promises and in dealing with indigenous leftist opposition. We would hope that Embassy Moscow or the Department could raise the problem of Lebanese–Syrian–fedayeen relations with the Soviets if the opportunity presents itself, even though we realize it is unlikely to have much effect on the Syrians.

HOUGHTON

Editorial Footnotes

[1]Sadaqa: Secretary General of the Lebanese Foreign Office (Fonoffice), one of the Embassy's most frequent Lebanese government contacts in the 1973 cable series. He also appears in cable 1973BEIRUT05437 (May 12, 1973) as a source on Presidency thinking. In this cable, Sadaqa is functioning as the Lebanese government's chosen channel for relaying an intelligence dossier to the United States — a diplomatic request for action, framed as an informational briefing.

[2]The tripartite frame — "Syrians, Lebanese left, and fedayeen" — is itself analytically significant. The Lebanese Foreign Office is presenting these three not as separate problems but as a linked system: Syrian state pressure, indigenous Lebanese leftist mobilization, and armed Palestinian presence operating in concert. The subsequent paragraphs document specific financial and logistical links tying all three together — Syrian arms flowing to both fedayeen and Lebanese leftists, and Arafat personally financing Lebanese Muslim and leftist political figures.

[3]"2,000 Kalashnikov rifles have arrived at Latakia from the USSR in the name of Arafat": this is a specific, dated logistical fact. Latakia is Syria's principal Mediterranean port. The attribution "in the name of Arafat" — rather than to the PLO as an institution — is documented here in Lebanese Army G-2 intelligence reporting passed to U.S. diplomats. Soviet weapons flowing through a Syrian port to Palestinian armed factions in Lebanon is the operational form of the "discreet" Soviet support for the fedayeen that cable 1973BEIRUT05437 identified at the level of political assessment.

[4]The May 21–22 fedayeen meeting's decision to distribute 4,000 of 6,000 weapons to Lebanese leftist groups (described as "nationalist" or "progressive" forces) is one of the most important facts in this cable. It documents a deliberate PLO policy of arming Lebanese domestic factions — not only Palestinian fighters. The word "nationalist" in quotation marks is the Embassy marking the ideological label used by those factions themselves. This arms transfer — from Iraqi/Soviet-supplied fedayeen stockpiles to Lebanese leftists — is the physical mechanism behind the alliance that would become the Lebanese National Movement (LNM) in 1975.

[5]Qlaiaat Airport: the military airport in the Akkar plain of northern Lebanon, near the Syrian border. Fedayeen plans to seize it — using Lebanese Army officers to develop intelligence on its defenses — would constitute a direct armed assault on Lebanese sovereign territory. The infiltration of Lebanese Army officers as intelligence sources for foreign armed factions is the operational form of the "state within a state" problem that successive cables in this archive document.

[6]Kamal Jumblatt (1917–1977): leader of the Lebanese Progressive Socialist Party (PSP), hereditary leader of the Druze community in the Shouf region, and — by 1975 — leader of the Lebanese National Movement. This cable documents two distinct relationships between Jumblatt and the Syrian/Palestinian alignment: (1) weapons smuggling to his followers in the Shouf; (2) 250 of his followers being sent to Syria for military training. And in paragraph 4, it also documents LL 500,000 in direct financial payments from Arafat's Fatah treasury to Jumblatt personally. Jumblatt would be assassinated in the Shouf on March 16, 1977 — an act widely attributed to Syrian agents after his opposition to Syrian intervention in Lebanon.

[7]This paragraph contains one of the most consequential intelligence reports in this archive: a detailed itemization of direct financial payments from Arafat's Fatah treasury to specific named Lebanese political and religious leaders. The recipients crossed confessional lines — a Sunni Grand Mufti, a leftist Sunni former deputy, a Shia religious leader (Imam Musa Sadr), and a Druze-descended leftist political leader (Kamal Jumblatt). The amounts in Lebanese pounds (LL), adjusted for 1973 values, range from approximately USD 30,000 (Musa Sadr) to approximately USD 150,000 each (Hakim and Jumblatt). The inclusion of Musa Sadr in this list is particularly significant: the charismatic Shia cleric who founded the Movement of the Deprived (precursor to Amal) was politically independent, but the Embassy's reporting documents him as a recipient of PLO funding in June 1973, 15 months before his Movement launched and five years before his 1978 disappearance in Libya. The presence of these payments on the factual record — through Lebanese Army G-2 intelligence, captured in U.S. diplomatic reporting — is a documentary fact about the pre-war political economy of Lebanon that does not appear in standard accounts.

[8]Abu Jihad (Khalil al-Wazir, 1935–1988): Fatah co-founder and the PLO's principal operational commander for military affairs. Here he is identified as the paymaster of Fatah's Lebanese political influence operations, operating from the Fatah treasury at Nabatiyeh. His role as both military operations chief and disbursing officer for political payments illustrates the integration of military and political functions within Fatah. Abu Jihad was assassinated by Israeli commandos at his home in Tunis on April 16, 1988.

[9]"Cobra" wire-guided anti-tank rockets: the reference is to the Bölkow/MBB "Cobra" anti-tank guided missile, a West German design widely exported in the 1960s and 1970s. A fedayeen request to purchase 930 units through Baghdad for deployment near the Syrian-Lebanese border at Masnaa — the principal highway crossing between the two countries — would represent a dramatic upgrade in fedayeen anti-armor capability, specifically sited to contest Lebanese Army mechanized forces along the critical east-west road corridor.

[10]Syrian closure of the border: Syria had closed the Lebanese-Syrian border following the May 1973 fighting, imposing significant economic pressure on Lebanon. Lebanese transit trade — the economic backbone of the Lebanese financial sector — depended heavily on Syrian overland routes to the Gulf. The border closure, combined with the political pressure campaign documented in this cable, constituted a coordinated strategy of economic coercion.

[11]Raymond Eddé (1913–2000): leader of the Lebanese National Bloc, prominent Maronite political figure and former presidential candidate. Syrian overtures to Eddé in Damascus illustrate the breadth of Syrian political contact with Lebanese figures — reaching even across the sectarian lines that Syrian policy would otherwise exploit. Eddé would later oppose Syrian intervention in the Lebanese civil war and spent his final decades in self-imposed exile in Paris.

[12]The cable's assessment — that the Syrian campaign "could convince the fedayeen they are really in danger, thereby causing them to start something on their own" — identifies a specific mechanism of deliberate destabilization: persuading the fedayeen that a threat exists in order to induce them to take military action. This is the pattern of manufactured crisis that successive cables in this archive document. The Embassy is naming it here in June 1973, 22 months before the civil war began.

[13]This list of unimplemented fedayeen commitments is the substantive content of the Melkart Protocol and related May 1973 agreements, which cable 1973BEIRUT05776 documented in real time. The fedayeen had made written promises regarding (1) removal of heavy and medium arms from camps; (2) removal of regulars from camps; (3) transfer of headquarters out of Lebanon; and (4) relocation of training to designated border areas. Three weeks after these commitments were made, Sadaqa documents to U.S. diplomats that none had been honored. The "state within a state" was consolidating its position through selective non-compliance.

[14]The Lebanese Foreign Office's request that the United States raise the Lebanese-Syrian-fedayeen issue with the Soviet Union — and explicit refusal to raise it with the Soviet Ambassador in Beirut — documents Lebanese diplomatic assessment that Soviet Ambassador Azimov was not a reliable channel for substantive communication with Moscow. The Lebanese government is asking the United States to undertake the diplomatic representation it feels it cannot undertake directly. This request places the U.S. Embassy in a specific position within the regional diplomatic architecture of the period.

[15]The "Lebanese request for arms": Lebanon had submitted a formal request to the United States for enhanced military assistance in the aftermath of the May 1973 crisis. Sadaqa's pairing of the intelligence dossier with the arms request — in the same meeting, as the final substantive point — is a clear diplomatic tactic: establish the severity of the threat, then anchor the case for U.S. weapons to match. The cable is, among other things, a document in the Lebanese state's attempt to obtain American military backing for an army the Embassy had assessed in cable 1973BEIRUT05437 as limited to 6,000 combat troops against 15,000 fedayeen fighters.

CONFIDENTIAL

How to Cite

Annotated version:
Institute for Lebanon, “Lebanese-Syrian Relations” (1973BEIRUT06768), June 8, 1973. instituteforlebanon.com/cables/1973BEIRUT06768/

Original cable:
U.S. Department of State, U.S. Embassy, Beirut, Lebanon, “Lebanese-Syrian Relations” (1973BEIRUT06768), June 8, 1973. Wikileaks Public Library of US Diplomacy (PlusD).

CONFIDENTIAL
Middle-tier U.S. classification level
LIMDIS
Limited Distribution — more restricted than standard classified distribution
GOL
Government of Lebanon
SARG
Syrian Arab Republic Government
FEDAYEEN
Palestinian armed fighters (Arabic: فدائيين)
FATAH
Palestinian National Liberation Movement — dominant PLO faction
G-2
Lebanese Army Military Intelligence (Deuxième Bureau)
LL
Lebanese Pound (lira) — national currency unit
SEPTEL
Separate Telegram — cross-reference to another cable
USG
United States Government