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round trip drive for our meeting, he said, "Mr. Armstrong,
I would get up at 2 o'clock in the morning, if necessary, to
see you."
I told the prime minister we were planning to publish a
cover story about him and President Sadat of Egypt in The PLAIN
TRUTH, and he smilingly approved. The meeting ended in a bear
hug.
Our meeting with President Sadat in Cairo had to be postponed,
because President Yitzhak Navon of Israel was in Cairo on a state
visit while we were there, and we were planning a full televised
private meeting with him. Our own TV crew had been flown over
there, and the meeting with Mr. Begin was photographed and will
be shown later on television.
So in the interim we flew over to Paris and on Wednesday
that week Mr. Rader and I had luncheon once again at the chateau
at Waterloo near Brussels, with ex-King Leopold III and his wife.
We returned Sunday, the 9th, to Cairo. On Tuesday the
llth--the 62nd anniversary of the end of World War I (and how
well I remember the wild and jubilant reveling of that day) we
had our televised meeting with the Egyptian president, Anwar
el-Sadat.
Mr. Sadat was speaking at 11 to 12:30 that morning at a
teachers' union graduation in a downtown auditorium. We were
driven during that time to the auditorium building and taken
to a reception room on about the 20th floor of the building.
From there we could watch the ending of President Sadat's speech
to the nation on television, and the graduation ceremony taking
place in the auditorium on the ground floor of the building.
Finally we (Mr. Rader and myself) were let back down to
a parking lot in front of the building and into a private car,
parked directly behind a Cadillac ambulance. This ambulance
follows President Sadat's car wherever he is driven in Cairo,
since threats have been made of assassination. We were driven,
with Dr. Hatem joining us in our car, in the president's motorcade
rapidly through the streets to the Giza Residential Palace.
We made the trip, in some three or four minutes, that would have
ordinarily taken 20 minutes or more in the congested traffic.
The sidewalks were lined with people waving at the president
as he rode by.
At the palace, the president entered first, and we were
met at the entrance portico by the first lady, who took my arm
and walked in with me, followed by Mr. Rader and Dr. Hatem.
Inside, awaiting a brief meeting with Mr. Sadat, was a group
of U.S. congressmen. I was told that they stared in amazed
disapproval, wondering, "Who are those nonofficial Americans, and
what are they doing here?"
The president's wife accompanied us into an elegant reception
room where we chatted for some 15 or 20 minutes. She and I were