Even on relatively quiet days during the 14-month Lebanon civil war, nothing was quite as eerie−and as frightening−as the ride from one side of divided Beirut to the other, through a half mile of no man's land along the broad Corniche Mazraa that was no one's preserve but the snipers'. Dozens of people were killed and kidnaped during transit to a crossing point cynics called "Mandelbaum Gate"*: only intrepid souls risked it during periods of fighting when the final stretch had to be negotiated at nothing less than 70 m.p.h. Last week two American diplomats, Ambassador Francis E. Meloy Jr. and Economic Counselor Robert O. Waring, as well as their Lebanese chauffeur-bodyguard, dared the nightmare drive−and were gunned down somewhere between the front lines.
Flag-Draped Coffins. The killing of the ambassador, the fourth U.S. envoy to have died at the hands of assassins in the past eight years (see box), triggered an order by President Gerald Ford to evacuate any U.S. citizen from Lebanon who wished to leave. With Beirut airport closed, the mode would be a convoy to Damascus, about 90 miles away via back roads, presumably under the protection of the Palestine Liberation Organization in the first phase of the trip, the Syrian army, which has occupied much of Lebanon, over the second stage. An 18-vehicle trial run organized by the British embassy brought some 70 British subjects and a few Americans safely out of Lebanon. It also carried the flag-draped aluminum coffins of Meloy and Waring. They had been seen off by a U.S. embassy Marine Honor Guard−in dress blues−and British embassy officials. Though the British column, at first with P.L.O., then Syrian troop escort, was briefly caught in crossfire, it reached Damascus safely.
At the time of the Ford decision, 50 Americans attached to the embassy and some 1,400 other American citizens remained in Beirut; more than 6,000 had left over the past year of strife. Still, Washington's order did not amount to outright evacuation; it simply "strongly urged" Americans to leave−part of a relatively low-key approach that envisaged the use of U.S. military force only as a last resort. The President called the killings a "senseless, outrageous brutality," but he also declared that the U.S. would not be "deterred from its search for peace by these murders." Throughout, Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger was in touch with Middle East leaders by cable, urging safe passage for any American convoy. One such convoy of about 150 people formed up but at week's end was temporarily postponed for security reasons.
Worst Case. If there were risks in the convoy scenario, they seemed alleviated by a formidable military backup. On station for a possibly larger evacuation operation, a "worst case scenario" in Pentagonese, were the carriers America and Guadalcanal, as well as at least half a dozen other ships of two special Sixth Fleet task forces; early in the week the Air Force had shuttled four CH-53 helicopters and three C-130 transports into the British airbase at Akrotiri in Cyprus, an hour's flight from Beirut.