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The Cadillac sped through back streets and made it safely to the former Royal Palace, which now houses the Sovereignty Council. As protocol demanded. Rountree signed the official visitor's book, but then both Americans made the error of lingering for a half-hour of coffee drinking and talk with junior officials. It was enough time for the mob leaders to shunt their hoodlums across town by truck. As Rountree and Fritzlan left the palace, their car was nearly overwhelmed.
A boy sat on the hood, hammering on the windshield with his shoe. A large stone cracked the glass after the boy was pulled off. Again the car sliced through the crowd, was nearly cut off by a herd of cattle but, after colliding heavily with a cow, slipped past. All along the route to the embassy it was met by a barrage of mud, stones and assorted filth. Further back waved crudely lettered signs: "Go home, little dog Rountree." "Rontry, do not step on our beloved land with your bloody feet!" Waiting at the embassy gate was a truckload of mobsters chanting, "Go home, Rountree ... Go home, Rountree!"
Next day, while the newspapers gloated about Rountree's "fleeing from the crowds which came to receive him," the State Department envoy was scheduled to call on Iraq's head of state, General Kassem. The Iraqis sent an army station wagon and a jeepload of troops and—semi-secretly and with no flag flying—the U.S. Assistant Secretary of State was smuggled off to call on the Prime Minister of a supposedly friendly country. It was the only time he left the embassy in his two days in Iraq.
Kassem was amiable but hardly contrite. Over cigarettes and coffee he explained that "the people here are free to demonstrate their feelings," insisted they had nothing against Rountree personally but were simply expressing resentment of the U.S. built up over the years of the Nuri asSaid regime, which came to a bloody ending last summer. In turn, Rountree said the U.S. wanted friendly relations with Iraq and hoped that greater mutual confidence could be created. After exchanging platitudes for 90 minutes, Rountree left. Kassem's next visitor was the Soviet ambassador, who spent 45 minutes with the general in what was also described as "an atmosphere of friendship and cordiality" in Baghdad papers next day; on orders, each visit got equal space. Rountree left for Beirut that noon, a day early, after traveling to the airport in an unmarked car.
Hunted and Humiliated
There had only been shouts, stones and vulgar slogans, and the unusual spectacle of a high U.S. representative conducted about a Middle Eastern city like a hunted criminal. Yet, if Fritzlan had followed the route from the airport that the mob had expected, the embassy car would certainly have been stopped, probably overturned and set afire, and the men inside could have been in gravest peril. If General Kassem had not wanted William Rountree humiliated or worse, he showed an inefficiency and stupidity not previously apparent in him.