The Fall of Andy Young

Secrecy, deception and pressure politics trip Carter's friend

It is very difficult to do the things that I think are in the interest of the country and also maintain the standards of protocol and diplomacy ... I really don't feel a bit sorry for anything that I have done. And I could not say to anybody that given the same situation, I wouldn't do it again almost exactly the same way.

With that touch of bravado, Andrew Young last week announced that he had resigned as U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations. Jimmy Carter, expressing "deep regret" in a handwritten letter, accepted the resignation of his close friend, fellow Southerner and one of his earliest and staunchest black political backers.

Washington was startled, as were capitals around the world, for in his 31 months at the U.N., the freewheeling Young had demonstrated an extraordinary capacity to ride out and survive the controversies that he generated. But this time there was no stilling the uproar when it was learned that Young had met with an official of the Palestine Liberation Organization, in violation of repeatedly stated U.S. policy, and then deliberately misled the Department of State about the meeting.

It was soon clear that Young had become too great a liability for a White House that has been striving to demonstrate that it is capable of national leadership. Not only had Young's deception gravely embarrassed Secretary of State Cyrus Vance, but the meeting with the P.L.O. had enraged Israel and threatened to derail U.S. diplomacy in the Middle East. American black leaders, on the other hand, were angry at Carter for so readily accepting Young's departure, and they hinted that the President might pay for his action with lost black votes. Several of them also blamed the dismissal on Jewish pressure and warned that it would exacerbate tension between U.S. blacks and Jews.

The furor over Young erupted just as Robert Strauss, a special U.S. envoy for the Middle East negotiations, was heading back there for talks with Israeli and Egyptian leaders. He had already faced a gathering crisis over Israeli concern that the U.S. was reaching out to try to bring the P.L.O. into the Middle East peace process, a prospect that is anathema to Jerusalem. Said Strauss on the plane to the Middle East: "The Young affair ... reinforces the unfounded suspicions that the U.S. is dealing in the dark with the P.L.O."

Things did not go well during Strauss's two-hour meeting on Friday with Israeli Premier Menachem Begin. On the matter of most concern to the U.S., how to draw the Palestinians into the current talks on autonomy for the West Bank and Gaza Strip, Begin reiterated his country's position that there must be neither change nor dilution of the Camp David accords or

U.N. Security Council Resolution 242, which implicitly affirms Israel's right to exist as a state. Strauss basically concurred, but added that the U.S. favors "a reaffirming and a building on" of 242 with a new draft that could cite 242 and include the Camp David language recognizing the "legitimate rights of the Palestinian people." He told the Premier that the U.S. "might go forward with a resolution of its own in the U.N." along these lines.

When he asked for Begin's approval of this, Strauss said that he "met with negative results." In fact, the Israelis hinted darkly that rather than be pressured by the U.S. to back such a motion they would withdraw from the autonomy talks. From the five sessions held so far, it has become evident that the West Bank and Gaza leaders will not join the process without the approval of the P.L.O. But Begin's threat to withdraw from the talks was almost completely unexpected.

From Jerusalem Strauss flew to Egypt, where President Anwar Sadat stressed that any new U.N. resolution should not interfere with the autonomy talks. As Strauss was returning to Israel on Sunday, Begin's cabinet declared that it "rejects unequivocally" the U.S. resolution on 242. Such an initiative, said a cabinet spokesman, "contradicts the commitments of the U.S. to Israel." With an impasse thus threatening, there was speculation in Israel that yet another Begin-Carter-Sadat summit might be needed to revive the peace process.

Looming over the Strauss Middle East trip was the debate that it is scheduled to begin this week in the Security Council. Expected to be placed on the agenda is a motion that could modify 242 to recognize the Palestinians' right to their own state. While the U.S. is prepared to honor its promise to Israel and veto such a motion, Washington wants the kind of compromise resolution that Strauss outlined to Begin. In theory this might prompt P.L.O. acceptance of 242 and remove the main obstacle to open U.S.-P.L.O. contacts, thus leading to Palestinian participation in the autonomy talks.

What makes it so difficult for the U.S. to talk to the P.L.O. is a 1975 promise that Washington made to Israel not to "recognize or negotiate" with that Palestinian organization until it accepts Israel's right to exist and Resolution 242. Although more than 100 nations recognize the P.L.O. as the legitimate political arm of the Palestinians, the Israelis adamantly condemn it as a terrorist force dedicated to the destruction of Israel.

Even before Andy Young's venture, there were a number of U.S.-P.L.O. contacts, most notably by Milton Wolf, a leader of the Cleveland Jewish community and currently U.S. Ambassador in Austria, who met with Issam Sartawi, a Vienna-based P.L.O. official. Coming on top of the other contacts, Young's meeting with the P.L.O. set off alarms in Jerusalem. It seemed to confirm a shift in U.S. policy and clearly raised the level of contact; as U.N. Ambassador, Young sits in the Carter Cabinet.

The strategy to bring the P.L.O. into the peace process was apparently originally prompted by the Saudis, using their vast oil exports as pressure. However it is unclear whether the P.L.O. will go for this scheme, even if Israel does. The Palestinian Central Council, a P.L.O. policy-making body, last week agreed to reject any Security Council resolution that did not specifically call for a Palestinian state and recognize the P.L.O. as the "sole and legitimate representative of the Palestinian people." Such a hard-line P.L.O. stance, however, had not been so certain in late July, when the U.S. saw the controversial resolution heading toward a U.N. vote. If the U.S. vetoed it, the Arabs would be furious; if it did not, the Israelis would be furious. Washington wanted to obtain a delay and assigned the task to Young, among others.

As Young explained it last week, he first approached the ambassadors of Kuwait, Syria and Lebanon but was told that they could not arrange a postponement of the Council debate. They advised him instead to talk to someone from the P.L.O. Young responded by telling Kuwaiti Ambassador Abdalla Yaccoub Bishara that he "could not meet with representatives of the P.L.O." Then he added coyly, "Neither could I refuse an invitation from a member of the Security Council to come to his home to talk business." Bishara was just such a member. Young then sent out an obvious signal: "I can't tell you who you can have in your home."

So when Young dropped by Bishara's Beekman Place town house on July 26, accompanied by his six-year-old son Andrew, he had a pretty good idea that a P.L.O. official would be there. Indeed, he encountered Zehdi Labib Terzi, the P.L.O.'s courtly, white-bearded observer at the U.N. The young boy played alone while the diplomats talked for about 15 minutes. Explained Young: "I made no attempt to negotiate any arrangements or any language with Terzi. I simply stated to him that it did not seem to me to be in anybody's interest to have a Council meeting on Palestinian rights at this time."

Straightforward as this might sound, Young knew that his brief meeting was hardly routine. Undertaken on his own initiative, though possibly with some kind of tacit or indirect encouragement from within the Administration, it had broken the U.S. pledge to shun substantive P.L.O. contacts. As a result, he did not report the encounter to his superiors at the State Department. He later defended his action by claiming that he did not wish to implicate the department. In an interview with TIME, Young explained that the State Department once actually had told him not to report officially a social encounter with a P.L.O. representative at the Syrian ambassador's home. Said Young: "I wrote up a one-page memorandum of the conversation and gave it to a high-level State Department official. But he told me, 'Don't send that in. Just put it in your file.' "

Young's unorthodox initiative, in fact, probably did play some part in getting the Security Council meeting postponed from July 27 to Aug. 23. For nearly two weeks, at any rate, that welcome development seemed to be the only result of the chat with Terzi. And then the balloon went up. The reason: the Israelis knew about the meeting.

According to a U.S. Government source, TIME learned, Young "walked right into" the espionage network Israel maintains in New York to keep watch on the Palestinians. "The Israelis have staked out the Arabs around the U.N. with bugs, taps and surveillance," said the source. Israeli agents thus followed Terzi to the Kuwaiti residence and watched Young arrive. What went on inside the town house, said the American source, was picked up by clandestine Israeli recording devices that had been planted some time before. (A senior Israeli source gave a slightly different version, saying that Israel obtained details of the Young-Terzi talk not from inside the town house but by intercepting P.L.O. communications.) When asked if he thought that his meeting with Terzi had been bugged, Young replied: "I have no way of knowing, nor do I care."

U.S. intelligence experts say that New York City has long been the center of Israeli espionage in America. According to them, the Israelis have obtained information by posing as FBI agents and once even used a synagogue as a wiretap center. Washington tolerates these operations because it does not want to jeopardize its valuable working relationship with Israeli intelligence in the Middle East.

After waiting a few days, the Israelis made public the Young-Terzi meeting, presumably to interrupt the U.S. encounters with the P.L.O. But Young feels that Jerusalem might have had another motive in breaking the news. He told TIME: "I think the Israelis were after the President, and I think we have desperately got to move the Camp David discussions forward. But Israel does not want to move anywhere. Nobody in Israel is capable of statesmanship at this time because everybody's playing domestic politics."

Israel leaked the fact that Young and Terzi had met to Newsweek magazine. That prompted a query to the State Department. This was the first that Foggy Bottom had heard of the matter and Young was asked for an explanation. His story: he had been out strolling with his son, decided to stop in to see Bishara, and there accidentally found Terzi, with whom he engaged in nothing more than "15 or 20 minutes of social amenities." Later, when this account was branded a lie, Young did some semantic acrobatics. "I did not lie, I didn't tell all of the truth. I prefaced my remark [to the State Department]: 'I'm going to give you an official version,' and I gave an official version which did not in any way lie."

Secretary Vance, flying back from a visit to Ecuador, got a cable informing him of Young's explanation. Naturally believing his ambassador and relieved at hearing that this had been only a chance encounter, rather than a violation of the U.S. pledge on the P.L.O., Vance authorized State Department Spokesman Tom Reston to release Young's explanation. He did so Monday noon, Aug. 13.

With the news of some kind of a meeting out, Young decided to call on Israel's U.N. Ambassador Yehuda Blum, a Czechoslovakian-born expert on international law. What Young especially wanted to accomplish, he said, was to assure the Israelis that they were wrong to feel that "there was some grand conspiracy to change our policy toward the P.L.O."

The Israeli ambassador listened impassively to Young's account of what had actually transpired at the house on Beekman Place. Blum said that the contact with Terzi "and some events in the last few months were not conducive to the atmosphere of trust." He pointedly recalled that Young had made a number of statements with "which we were not exactly pleased." For one thing, Young had said in January that the P.L.O.'s U.N. delegates were "very decent human beings"; for another, he had compared the Israeli bombing of Lebanon with the U.S. bombing of Viet Nam.

Young argued that the Israelis should keep quiet about the details of the meeting with Terzi in order to avoid an anti-Israel, pro-Palestinian backlash among American blacks. As could be expected, Blum informed his government of Young's visit. The Israeli Foreign Ministry then lodged a protest with the U.S. embassy in Tel Aviv.

The U.S. embassy sent an urgent cable to Washington that was on Vance's desk at 7 a.m. Tuesday, when he came to work. Its contents stunned him. He ordered that Young be asked to explain the contradictions between what he had told the State Department and what the Israelis claimed he had told Blum. This time, Vance got from Young the complete version of his meeting with Terzi. The Secretary was furious with Young for communicating with the Palestinian without authorization and especially for compounding this mistake by concocting a misleading story that the State Department had issued as the truth. In broader terms, the Secretary was worried about possible damage to the already frayed U.S.-Israeli relations. Vance went to the White House and told the President that Young had to go. Said a senior White House aide: "Vance was adamant." Carter tentatively agreed, but said that he wanted "to sleep on it."

Carter faced a painful dilemma. He had claimed truth and honesty as touchstones of his Administration, and here his U.N. Ambassador had caused the Administration to issue a false statement on an enormously sensitive matter. Moreover, several members of the Cabinet had just been sacked on charges of bucking White House authority. How could Carter fail to hold Andy Young, even though a good friend, to the same standard? Explained a ranking Carter aide: "The President knew that he couldn't tolerate that. He knew that he had to take him out. He was heartsick about it." What made matters worse, added this aide, was that even though Young had long enjoyed a privileged position as the White House's main link to black America and to much of the Third World abroad, his action had made him "a political liability at a time when the President can't afford another liability."

Young too realized this. He wrote out a letter of resignation before going to Washington for a 10 a.m. meeting to which he had been summoned by Vance. While Young later described this session as "pleasant," some of Vance's top aides said that the usually cool Secretary of State did nothing to conceal his outrage at the embarrassment Young had caused the department. He told the ambassador that he should go to the White House to quit.

That was exactly what Young already intended to do. During his 90-minute talk with Carter in the Executive Mansion's family quarters, the ambassador offered to resign. Young later hinted that he might have been able to keep his job if "I could promise that I wouldn't continue creating incidents. But I can't promise that." But some White House aides quibble with Young's recollection; they say that the President did not give his errant ambassador any real alternative to resignation.

Shortly after their first session, Young joined Carter again, and the two went into Hamilton Jordan's office. There most of the senior White House staffers had gathered to discuss and lament what was happening to Andy Young. With Carter's arm around his shoulder, Young said movingly: "I have friends here and so I want to tell what I've decided." Two hours later, the normally sarcastic Jody Powell, the White House Press Secretary, was barely able to choke back tears and prevent his voice from quivering as he told reporters that Young was quitting.

At a State Department briefing, Young declared that he "didn't have much to offer in the way of advice" about what the U.S. should do in the Middle East; but he questioned the wisdom of the rigidity of U.S.-P.L.O. contacts. At one time, he said, we all thought "that the P.L.O. would go away. They have not gone away. They seemingly have increased in their political influence and potential economic strength. And I don't think it's in anybody's interest to ignore those kinds of forces."

Until Carter names a successor, Young will remain at his U.N. post. He will thus complete his one-month tour as Security Council president and probably will lead a group of businessmen on a trade mission to West Africa in mid-September. As for his plans after that, he ruled out running for office in 1980, saying that he intends "to work with President Carter for his re-election."

Reaction to Young's resignation varied widely around the globe. In Africa a liberation movement veteran was saddened, remarking that Young was "the only American I ever met who listened well. And there's a lot you don't even have to tell him." In Beirut a P.L.O. statement declared that Young was coerced into resigning, a tactic that "represents the ugliest form of mental terrorism and racist persecution." Israeli officials studiously avoided comment. But in Bonn, a high-ranking official said that Young "typified the Carter Administration's amateurism."

The nation's black leaders were stunned by the departure from the Administration of its most prominent black member. Mayor Richard Hatcher of Gary, Ind., called it a "forced resignation" that was "an insult to black people." To Congressman John Conyers, a Michigan Democrat, what happened to Young was a "pointblank firing." Benjamin Hooks, executive director of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, charged that Young had been made "a sacrificial lamb for circumstances beyond his control." Instead of being out of a job, said Hooks, Young "should have received a presidential medal" for pulling off "a brilliant diplomatic coup."

Hatcher, alluding to next year's election, said that "the trauma of the departure of Andrew Young certainly creates an amount of confusion [among blacks] over who your friends are and who your enemies are."

Some blacks may include American Jews among the enemies, and this could become the ugliest and most alarming immediate result of the Young affair. Said the Rev. Jesse Jackson, a Chicago civil rights activist: "There's tremendous tension in the air around the nation over the forced resignation." Relations between the two groups, he said, are "more tense than they've been in 25 years." Observed David Fincher, a black Miami businessman: "Blacks are asking, 'Is this the way that Jewish people feel about us? Are all Jews like that?' " A leader of a major Jewish group reported that he and his colleagues have been getting bitter calls from blacks who charge that Jewish organizations promote the interests of Israel, a foreign power, over those of the U.S. Said he: "This looks like a black-Jewish confrontation and we are very upset."

Angry as they were, most black leaders recognized that fanning black-Jewish hostility would benefit no one and quickly began taking steps to defuse the issue. Hooks, for example, speculated that Carter was not necessarily "giving in" to Jews when he accepted Young's resignation. Said he: "In light of all the recent Cabinet resignations, it seemed to be another test of Carter's ability to lead." The fact was that only a few prominent Jews had called for Young's head, while most Jewish leaders praised the Ambassador's work at the U.N.

As for Young, he urged black officials around the country to cool down any agitation on his behalf. He denied that there would be "any polarization between black and Jewish leaders," but he added that there would be "something of a confrontation as friends." He also warned that the black community's evolving attitude toward the Middle East should "in no way be seen as being anti-Jewish. It may be pro-Palestinian in a way that it was not before, in which case the Jewish community will have the responsibility of finding a way to relate to that without being anti-black." This week, black leaders will be meeting in Washington to discuss relations with the Jews. Also high on the agenda: the black relationship with the Carter Administration.

How that relationship is eventually defined could have an impact on the President's reelection. As a start, Carter will have to answer satisfactorily a number of questions posed last week by black leaders. Examples: Will the Administration pursue the policy toward Africa that had been championed by Young? And why was Ambassador Wolf in Austria allowed to keep his job even though he had several meetings with the P.L.O.? Blacks will also be closely watching Carter's choice to replace Young. The President has already said that he would consult Young. Democratic Congressman Parren Mitchell of Maryland, a former chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus, warned Carter not to compound his mistake by appointing "a traditional, white Anglo-Saxon Protestant, Foggy Bottom-type to the U.N. post."

While the White House confronts these essentially domestic problems arising from Young's resignation, there remains unresolved the urgent Middle East policy matter that got the ambassador into trouble: How to coax the P.L.O. into a more moderate stance and bring them into the peace process without causing an Israeli walkout. Squaring this diplomatic circle will require compromises achievable only through extraordinarily skillful negotiations.

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