le’s friend and one of my harshest critics, and in South Carolina, black voters propelled Senator Fritz Hollings to a come-from-behind victory. In a presidential campaign, that is more important than whether the voters agree with a candidate on specific issues. He was trying either to kill himself by crashing into the building or to stage a landing on the South Lawn, like the one executed by a young German pilot in Moscow’s Red Square a few years earlier. I believe Abu Ala and Abu Mazen also would have agreed but didn’t want to be at odds with Arafat.
For all our excitement and commitment, we were tired going in, not having taken any real time off after the election. In an almost desperate attempt to regain the initiative, the foreign and defense ministers of NATO met in London. In the Pentagon, a few military and civilian leaders were interested in the issue, including the commandant of the Marine Corps, Charles Krulak, and Richard Danzig, the undersecretary of the navy. Arafat wouldn’t even do that, because he didn’t want to be seen conceding anything.
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