The story in TIME this week on Egypt's political convulsions involving Mohammed Naguib and Lieut. Colonel Gamal Abdel Nasser (see FOREIGN NEWS) came as no real surprise to the editors in New York−nor will it to the TIME readers who have followed the recent stories on Egyptian politics. The reason was some perceptive, hard-digging reporting by TIME'S Jim Bell, now in Bonn, Germany after a three-year tour in the Middle East.
As early as last April, when most people still considered Naguib the real power in Egypt, Bell was the first reporter to flatly identify Nasser as the driving force in Egypt's new regime. Cabled Bell: "When the British sit down with the Egyptians for the Suez evacuation talks, they will find the key man isn't Mohammed Naguib or Foreign Minister Fawzi. Instead, the big gun will be Gamal Nasser . . . Have interesting biography and anecdotes on Nasser, who is about due recognition for what he is . . ."
The result of this was TIME'S two-column story (May 4, 1953) on Nasser, which described him as "a lean young field officer, just turned 35, who does not even hold Cabinet rank. Lieut. Colonel Gamal Abdel Nasser is becoming the real power in Egypt's military junta−more important even than Naguib, the reluctant dictator."
Bell first began to suspect that Nasser was the man to watch shortly after the coup d'etat of July 23, 1952. Says Bell: "We started hearing the phrase El Bekbashi constantly around army headquarters. El Bekbashi wanted this done . . . has ordered . . . Bekbashi means lieutenant colonel in Arabic. El Bekbashi was obviously a big man, but we didn't know who he was. It was not until late summer that we learned that El Bekbashi was Nasser.
"During early fall we began hearing Nasser's name more and more. He led debate over outlawing the Wafd Party. When you went to Naguib's office, you noticed that every visitor and every piece of paper went first to Nasser in a small, nearby office before reaching Naguib himself. Gradually, as it became obvious that other members of the Revolutionary Council deferred to him, we became convinced that Nasser was the regime's No. 2 man. It became apparent about this time that Naguib was spending so much time kissing babies and other public-relations chores that he had little time for running the government."
In January 1953, Bell reported: "There is an uneasiness in the air in Cairo which becomes apparent after a few days to anyone who has felt Egypt's uneasiness in times past. It is hard to pin down because, despite the fact that the officers get around in public, they have isolated themselves from newsmen . . . The cause for this uneasiness is the increasing number of fights in the Officers' Committee itself, where the inability of the new regime to get anything done−except on paper−toward solving Egypt's basic problems is making tempers short. There have always been arguments among the officers, but of late they have been sharper, more basic. So far, they've ended up in agreement, but agreement is becoming harder and harder to get. The thing that's causing the trouble is that some officers, led generally by Lieut. Colonel Gamal Nasser, are impatient with the moderates, led generally by Mohammed Naguib . . ."