Word: heikal
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1960-1969
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...intimacy is such that he can blithely riffle through the "In" box in Nasser's office. A word from him, and a journalist or foreign businessman gets an interview with the U.A.R. President. When a research employee was jailed for reporting critically on Egypt's economy, Heikal not only got the man freed and the report released but also forced Intelligence Chief Amin Huweidi to write a letter-to-the-editor explaining why he had tried to suppress the report in the first place. Lamented Huweidi later: "Centers of power are supposed to have been abolished...
...Though Heikal's influence derives directly from his intimacy with Nasser, it is amplified by his weekly article in the Friday (Sabbath) edition of Al Ahram. The night it goes to press, more than a dozen embassy chauffeurs wait until the first copies are printed, and then speed back to their offices for immediate translation. Al Ahram's Friday circulation jumps by a third and wire services rush out stories on what Heikal has written, knowing it to be an accurate reflection of Nasser's thinking...
Since the Six-Day War, Heikal's discursive prose (two columns on Page One and a full page inside) has dealt primarily with what in Egypt is known as "the Setback." Last April, Heikal managed to offend just about everyone from the Pentagon to Pravda when he advocated "a battle to shatter the myth of Israeli military supremacy . . . one in which the Arab forces might destroy two or three Israeli divisions, kill between 10,000 and 20,000 men, and force the Israeli army to pull back even a few kilometers." When a barrage of public and private entreaties...
What About Farouk? In his column last week in fact, Heikal contended that "those who called for an immediate military solution through war realize that after two years this challenge is larger than, they had imagined." As for a peaceful solution, its "exponents find themselves face to face with the inevitability of the need to struggle." His conclusion (undoubtedly cleared with Nasser) is a study in hard-line ambiguity: "Force is the only way, and force is a long and hard course of many stages and various methods...
Chunky, 5 ft. 9 in. and dark, Heikal displays a thorough but careful command of English, flashing his near-perfect white teeth and waving his omnipresent Havana cigar. He was born 45 years ago in a small village near Cairo, and made his reputation as a war correspondent in 1948 in Palestine, where he first met Captain Gamal Abdel Nasser. By 1952 they had become fast friends. Just before the revolution, Nasser pointedly asked him what he thought should be done about the Farouk regime. "I knew then," Heikal says, "that something was afoot and that they had confidence...