Middle East
A personal friend of the late King Hussein of Jordan, Cooley interviewed most of the Middle East's heads of state, including Saddam Hussein, Muammar Gadaffi, Anwar al-Sadat, David Ben-Gurion, and the Shah of Iran. He interviewed Yasser Arafat many times and was acquainted with the senior leadership of Fatah and the other secular Palestinian groups.
Cooley and his wife Vania were among 90 foreign residents of the Intercontinental and Philadelphia hotels in Amman who were taken hostage in June 1970 by George Habash of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and released after the personal intervention of King Hussein.
Cooley worked with Pierre Salinger on the Investigation into the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103.
Read more about this topic: John K. Cooley
Famous quotes by middle east:
“There’s no telling what might have happened to our defense budget if Saddam Hussein hadn’t invaded Kuwait that August and set everyone gearing up for World War II½. Can we count on Saddam Hussein to come along every year and resolve our defense-policy debates? Given the history of the Middle East, it’s possible.”
—P.J. (Patrick Jake)
“During the first formative centuries of its existence, Christianity was separated from and indeed antagonistic to the state, with which it only later became involved. From the lifetime of its founder, Islam was the state, and the identity of religion and government is indelibly stamped on the memories and awareness of the faithful from their own sacred writings, history, and experience.”
—Bernard Lewis, U.S. Middle Eastern specialist. Islam and the West, ch. 8, Oxford University Press (1993)