Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, August/September 2019, pp. 73, 74
Compiled by Delinda C. Hanley and Sami Tayeb
Georgie Anne Geyer, 84, died on May 15 at her home in Washington, DC of complications from pneumonia. The “globe-trotting reporter” inspired other women journalists to become foreign correspondents. Mike Royko, a former colleague, wrote that when she began her career in 1959 in the Chicago Daily News newsroom, “a woman was as rare as a teetotaler.” Geyer went on to become a syndicated columnist. She interviewed Fidel Castro many times in Cuba, publishing a biography called Guerrilla Prince in 1991.
In 1975, Geyer moved to Washington, DC to write a syndicated column for the Los Angeles Times and then, in 1980, for the Universal Press Syndicate. More than 120 newspapers, as well as the Washington Report, picked up her column. She interviewed Iraq’s Saddam Hussain, Iran’s Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, Libya’s Muammar Qaddafi, Tunisia’s Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, Egypt’s Anwar Sadat, Jordan’s King Hussein and Palestine Liberation Organization’s leader Yasser Arafat.
Geyer spoke Spanish, Portuguese, German and Russian. In 2007, she was diagnosed with cancer of the tongue, which affected her speech, ending her TV talk-show and moderator invitations, as well as her regular appearances on PBS’s “Washington Week in Review” and Voice of America. She continued to write her column and published 10 books, including When Cats Reigned Like Kings, a remarkable book describing cat-goddesses in Egypt, monks in Myanmar who teach cats to jump through hoops, and a Virginia family that guarded the heritage of the Japanese bobtail. The last time the Washington Report spoke with Geyer was at a Sept. 28, 2018 ANERA fundraiser for refugees, where admirers surrounded her, praising the long career of a fearless journalist who covered the world’s hot spots.
Eugene (Gene) Hall Bird, 94, died June 2 of complications from pneumonia at a retirement home in Vancouver, WA. Raised on a farm in Eugene, OR, he joined the Navy in 1943 and went on to study journalism at the University of Oregon. In 1948 he married Jerine (Jerri), and in 1950 they attended graduate school in Sweden together, inspiring a life-long fascination with international relations. Bird joined the State Department as a Rockefeller Foundation intern, and in 1953 joined the Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs. In 1956, his first overseas assignment was in the Jordanian-controlled part of Jerusalem, which was the subject of a memoir by his son, Kai Bird, Crossing Mandelbaum Gate: Coming of Age Between the Arabs and Israelis, 1956-1978. It was in Jerusalem that Gene and the Washington Report’s late publisher, Andrew I. Killgore, met and became lifelong friends. Bird went on to serve in Beirut, Jeddah, Cairo, Riyadh, Bombay and New Delhi.
After two decades in the Foreign Service, Gene and Jerri Bird retired to Washington, DC. He became director of the Council for the National Interest (CNI), co-founded by Republican Congressmen Paul Findley (IL) and Paul “Pete” McCloskey (CA). CNI seeks “to promote a U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East that is consistent with American values, protects our national interests, and which contributes to a just solution of the Arab-Israeli conflict.” During his tenure Bird led several delegations of Americans to the Middle East and organized presentations on Capitol Hill.
From 1990 to 2002 Bird was the Washington Report’s State Department correspondent. Washington Report co-founders Andrew Killgore and Richard H. Curtiss provided office space to CNI for several years, in what is now the Museum of the Palestinian People.
Jerri, founder of Partners for Peace, which sponsored an annual speaking tour of “Women of Jerusalem: Three Women, Three Faiths, One Shared City,” died in 2012. Survivors include their son, Kai Bird of New York City, Christina Macaya of Camas, WA, Nancy Bird of Cordova, AK, and Shelly Bird of Alexandria, VA.
John Gunther Dean, 93, died on June 6. Born in Breslau, Germany, Dean served as U.S. Ambassador to Cambodia, Lebanon, Denmark, Thailand and India. He was forever haunted by his role in the evacuation of the U.S. Embassy in Cambodia during the last days of the Khmer Republic as the capital fell to the Khmer Rouge. “We’d accepted responsibility for Cambodia and then walked out without fulfilling our promise,” Dean recalled. “That’s the worst thing a country can do. And I cried because I knew what was going to happen.”
In an article published in the November 2002 issue of the Washington Report, publisher Andy Killgore described Dean’s urgent phone call from the office of the secretary of state before his confirmation hearing as Ambassador to Lebanon in 1978. “John,” the caller said, “we have just noticed that your mother’s [maiden] name is Ashkenazi. Does this make a serious problem for you?”
“Absolutely not,” the near legendary Dean replied, “my father was Jewish, too. I represent a secular America, so that’s all there is to it.”
Ambassador Dean traveled from one end of Lebanon to the other, from 1978 to 1981, in the early days of its civil war, trying to keep the divided country intact. Israel maintained a rump state in southern Lebanon, and Dean argued that close ties with Israel would harm Christian interests in the long run. He cabled protests to Tel Aviv and Washington, DC whenever Israeli planes intruded into Lebanese airspace.
In the May 2004 Washington Report, Killgore wrote about Israel’s attempt to assassinate Dean, his wife Martine, their daughter and her fiancé. “Had Mossad, Israel's secret intelligence organization, succeeded it would have been the perfect crime—the crime of the century. The plan was breathtaking in concept: to assassinate the American ambassador to Lebanon, in Lebanon, with American weapons, intended for Israeli’s defense only. Everything about it would point to Lebanon as the culprit,” Killgore wrote.
“But fate intervened, and things went wrong. The tires on Ambassador John Gunther Dean’s limousine automatically re-inflated when they were shot out...the light tank shell simply bounced off the car’s armor.” Dean’s papers, available at former President Jimmy Carter’s Library in Atlanta, show how no one was willing to talk to him about the Israeli assassination attempt, nor the anti-tank canister that had been made in America, shipped to Israel in 1974 and used to try to kill his family. His papers also describe the PLO’s attempts to help the U.S. gain the freedom of the American hostages in Iran. Ambassador Dean earned the respect and affection of Lebanon, which awarded him its highest decoration.
Dean suspected Israeli involvement in the 1986 plane crash that killed Pakistani President Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq and U.S. Ambassador to Pakistan Arnold Raphel. His insistence on calling for a full investigation into the circumstances around Zia-ul-Haq and Raphel’s deaths led Washington to bring his 30-year distinguished career in the Foreign Service to an abrupt halt in 1989, according to his granddaughter, Laura Dean. He is survived by his wife Martine, his children Catherine Curtis, Paul Dean and Joseph Dean.
Shamshad Ahmad, 68, Shamshad Ahmad, 68, suffered a major stroke at his home in the Pine Hills neighborhood of Albany, NY, and died July 11, after he was rushed to intensive care.
Born in India in 1951, Ahmad moved to Albany in 1979, taught physics at the University at Albany and was the president of Masjid As-Salam, as well as an interfaith community leader and advocate. Family and friends remember him for his traits of honesty, humbleness, courageousness, compassion and wisdom.
Ahmad co-founded Project SALAM, an organization that provides legal support and advocacy for Muslims who have been wrongly accused of terrorism charges by the FBI and Justice Department. He helped found the organization in the wake of a post-9/11 terrorism sting operation against Yassin Aref, the imam of Masjid As-Salam and Mohammed Hossain, a co-founder of the mosque. Both were convicted and imprisoned by a federal jury in 2006. In 2009 Ahmad published a book about the case, Rounded Up: Artificial Terrorists and Muslim Entrapment After 9/11.
Aref, who has since been released from prison and deported to Iraq, issued a statement in light of Ahmad’s passing: “During the hardest and darkest days in our community, this man stood firm and tall like a mountain. He was a leader but all about humility and service to others. That was his passion, that was his joy and his way to lead! Last night, America lost a good and sincere citizen and contributor, Albany lost their professor and peacemaker, the Muslim community lost their leader, my children lost their caregiver and mentor, and I lost my loyal friend and big brother. May Allah have mercy on him and reward him on our behalf.”
Ahmad leaves behind his wife, Kishwar, four children—Sajid, Huma, Faisal and Shazia—and 11 grandchildren living in Albany, Texas and London.
