Over double Scotches in his private drawing room, Egypt's President Anwar Sadat confided to an American visitor early last week that he might shortly move to consolidate his power. He had just dismissed his chief rival, left-leaning Vice President Ali Sabry (TIME, May 17), and he hinted at further moves to strengthen his hold. Even so, few expected him to move as quickly and boldly as he did. Later in the week, in rapid-fire succession, Sadat fired Egypt's tough Interior Minister Shaarawi Gomaa and accepted the resignations of War Minister General Mohammed Fawzi, Minister for Presidential Affairs Sami Sharaf, two leaders of the Arab Socialist Union, the speaker of the National Assembly, and three other ministers—in sum, the heads of all the military, legislative and political institutions in the country. Then he placed all nine under house arrest on charges of plotting to overthrow his government.
The eight ministers and party officials who resigned in sympathy with Gomaa had hoped to bring on the collapse of Sadat's regime.* In essence, they had tried to make Sadat answerable to the party. He insisted on being President in fact as well as in name. If Sadat can make the purge stick—and there was every indication last week that he can—he may well emerge with as much power as his predecessor, Gamal Abdel Nasser, ever enjoyed.
The departed officials were hardliners, opposed to Sadat's flexible and apparently pacific foreign policy. Their removal could lend powerful impetus to the good will established between Washington and Cairo in the wake of Secretary of State William Rogers' visit two weeks ago. Such a development could only rattle Moscow's foreign ministry—and perhaps Jerusalem's as well.
Averted Arrest. Sadat may have been forced to move more quickly than he intended. He had been planning a double family celebration—his wife's birthday and a daughter's wedding anniversary—for the night the upheaval took place. The party was canceled. That afternoon, TIME Correspondent Gavin Scott spent almost an hour at the presidential mansion and found no atmosphere of impending crisis.
As Sadat told it in a speech broadcast to his startled nation, a young intelligence agent, more loyal to the President than to Interior Minister Gomaa, had brought two tape recordings to the President's home early one morning. They were recordings of tapped telephone conversations, revealing that the Interior Minister had set a trap for Sadat about two weeks ago. Gomaa had surrounded the headquarters of Cairo radio with policemen in civilian clothes to prevent the President from speaking to the nation after a stormy meeting of the party's central committee. Sadat chose not to broadcast that night, thus averting a showdown and his possible arrest.
After hearing the tapes, Sadat called up Sharaf and told him to inform Gomaa "that I have accepted his resignation"—despite the fact that the Interior Minister had not submitted a resignation. Sharaf "wept on the telephone," Sadat recalled during his broadcast last week. "I said, 'When I lose confidence in someone, I cannot maneuver or lay an ambush. I am straightforward and always in the open!' "