Word: smokescreen
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Sadat's Smokescreen. Diplomatically, there was no indication that the Arabs had finally decided to invade; in fact, quite the reverse. Egypt's President Anwar Sadat had been openly telling visiting Western diplomats that the Arabs could not possibly win a war against Israel. His well-publicized fence-mending operation with Saudi Arabia's conservative King Feisal, his urging that Arab oil be used as a long-range commercial and diplomatic weapon against Israel, and the slight rebuke he gave Libya's hawkish strongman Colonel Muammar Gaddafi by delaying the proposed merger of Egypt and Libya...
...some alarm, but Israel discounted the danger. Explained one U.S. intelligence expert: "The Israelis are right there, and they should know. This time they did not read the signals right." By last week an Israeli Foreign Ministry official privately admitted that, "what was coming out of Cairo was a smokescreen. What Sadat was trying to do was obvious-lull us into a security that was not there." But Israel also helped lull itself into a sense of false security. Since the devastating victory over Egypt, Syria and Jordan in the Six-Day War, Israel's political and military leaders...
Nicholas Georgiadis, costume and scenery designer, has created a dazzling 17th century court and a forest that grows and gondolas that pierce thick smokescreen fogs. The dancers are sumptuously gowned in silks. Conductor George Crum, musical director of the ballet, evokes the heroic era of Czarist Russia in a polished interpretation...
...Foreign Relations Committee outlined three U.S. interests in Latin America: our "grand strategy" for national defense, the economics of U.S. trade and investment, and the need for Latin American support in U.N. votes. But even in 1964, invoking national defense and U.N. politics provided no more than a flimsy smokescreen for the United States's real motives...
Despite the foregoing familiar elements, Smokescreen marks a change for Francis. Though he has written about successful riders before, this is the first time he has identified with a man who has it made. Indeed we are treated to the problems of celebrity. The hero, Edward Lincoln, is a famous movie sex symbol. The ruthless studio connives to exploit him; craven flacks bedevil him. Lincoln, who grew up in a racing stable, promises a dying friend that he will check up on why her expensive South African stable has not had a winner in months. The reason turns...