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"What was really painful," Sadat continued, "was the discovery that my own house had been bugged." The President was sufficiently appalled to proclaim "an immediate end to police restrictions on the freedom of citizens," including wiretapping, "except where the security of the state is concerned"—a wide loophole. He also appointed a committee to investigate the activities of the secret police. Crowds of delighted Egyptians turned out in the streets shouting "Sadat, Sadat" and waving his picture.
In place of the departed ministers, Sadat named a new 33-man Cabinet composed largely of "efficient young men and university professors," as the President put it. Army Chief of Staff Mohammed Sadek, who succeeded Fawzi as War Minister, prudently ordered a stepped-up alert of troops around Cairo almost as soon as the resignations were announced. "The storm is over," Sadat told Egyptians in his speech. "I have told members of the armed forces that I will mince anyone who tries to undermine our internal front."
Sadat's preemptive strike in effect eliminated from power all his major rivals among Nasser's heirs. It also settled a sharp policy debate. Sabry, the first to go, was not only jealous of Sadat's growing personal prestige but also a noisy critic of the President's decision to join Libya and Syria in a vague new Arab federation. Gomaa had objected to Sadat's plans for constitutional reforms to guarantee the civil liberties that the former Interior Minister had made a career of suppressing. Ex-War Minister Fawzi and most of the others had grown impatient with Sadat's search for a diplomatic solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict. Moscow was left without one close friend in the top Cairo leadership. Sadat, at the risk of appearing beholden to Washington in the eyes of more militant Arabs, was in effect keeping open the option to pursue Rogers' diplomatic initiative.
Big Noise from Winnetka. On the surface, the chances of success for that initiative did not appear high last week. No sooner had Rogers returned from his swing through the Middle East than Jordan's King Hussein disinterred an old Arab vow "not to give up one inch of Arab land." Sadat, on a visit to the Suez front early in the week, placated army officers by telling them that the chances of peace were no more than 1 in 100. Some Israelis were likening Rogers' visit to a 1940s popular song: "Big noise blew in from Winnetka/ Big noise blew right out again."
Yet the public posturing and cynicism on both sides masked a subsurface momentum, however gradual, toward an interim agreement on opening the Suez Canal. "There is still life in this possibility," Israeli Foreign Minister Abba Eban told the Knesset, "even if agreement is not certain." As one high U.S. official put it: "The mirror image on both sides is a desire to move with deliberation in order to avoid the misunderstandings that have marred such efforts in the past."