American Caliph

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This book would have been impossible to complete without the love, support, and encouragement of my family, friends, colleagues, and students. They are too many to name and recognize here individually, but I am greatly indebted to each of them and express my heartfelt gratitude to all of them.

I owe a great debt to the many people who were held hostage by the Hanafis in March of 1977 and decided to share their stories with me. In many cases, these people chose to revisit traumatic moments in their lives and I feel deeply privileged to have earned their trust. I hope this book will prove to be of some value to them all.

I also owe my thanks to the many people who were part of the Hanafi organization and opened up to me with their personal stories. I could not have achieved any real understanding of the organization and of the characters involved without them. I hope that, at the very least, this book will help them make a bit better sense of parts of their own lives.

There are several individuals and institutions who provided valuable material support at various stages of this book project, and I would like to use this space to thank them:

Abdullah Salim and his wife, Umm Salma Salim, were most generous, welcoming me into their home and their lives and providing me with invaluable materials that served as the foundation of this book. Patricia and Malek Akkad shared precious family records with me about Moustapha Akkad’s life and works. Tino Zahedi helped me connect with the late Ardeshir Zahedi, who welcomed me into his home in Montreux, Switzerland, and shared from his treasure of documents and memorabilia. Robert L. Rabe shared photographs and documents relating to his grandfather, Washington police deputy chief Robert Rabe.

Paul Delaney lifted my spirits for nearly the entire time that I worked on this book. He generously provided me with full access to his own immaculately preserved reporting materials from the sixties and seventies. Patrick Bowen consistently shared from his treasure trove of primary historical documents and from his encyclopedic knowledge of specific characters and events. Karl Evanzz shared materials related to the Nation of Islam that I would have had an incredibly difficult time finding otherwise.

The staff at Human Rights Campaign, which now occupies the building on Rhode Island Avenue in Washington that was the headquarters of B’nai B’rith, generously granted me access to the building. Joshua Gibson at the Council of the District of Columbia has supported me in various ways ever since I met him on the fortieth anniversary of the Hanafi siege in 2017, including by giving me access to primary materials of great value.

Tom Buckley, a one-man archive of Washington broadcast television history, shared broadcast clips with me related to Max Robinson. Judge John Fisher at the District of Columbia Court of Appeals allowed me access to his own materials and opened doors to many others. Dave Tevelin was one of the few people I encountered in the course of researching this book who had researched the Hanafi siege in detail, and I thank him for sharing various court records with me. Nancy Cohen, who suffered through the Hanafi siege herself, shared important historical documents from B’nai B’rith and materials from the collection of her late husband, Si Cohen, who was held hostage by the Hanafis.

The Washington police department allowed me access to materials related to several investigations and court cases that remain preserved at their headquarters. I want to especially thank Colonel James M. Brown, who helped me navigate the material when I got there. This book may have proven to be an insurmountable task without the help of librarians and archivists at the following institutions who helped me navigate and understand the sprawling materials that related to my book: the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library and Museum; the Gelman Library and the National Security Archives at George Washington University; the Jack Tarver Library at Mercer University; the Hoover Institution Archives; the Brown Media Archives; the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library; the District of Columbia Archives; the Gary Public Library; the Library of Congress; the Public Information Office at the FBI; and the Vanderbilt TV News Archive.

I thank Robert Reed, Laurel Macondray, and Rebecca Calcagno at the National Archives at College Park, Maryland, for reviewing thousands of pages of archival records. Sam Schuth at the Boatwright Memorial Library helped me find materials from all over the world, in several languages, always with great enthusiasm, knowing well that I would soon come back for more.

I was awarded the J. Anthony Lukas Work-in-Progress Award in 2020 when my book was still in drafts. The award and prize were a lifeline. They allowed me much needed time and space to complete the book and I am deeply grateful for their recognition and support. New York University’s Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute welcomed me as a visiting scholar for two years. The resources at NYU were invaluable, especially at a time when other doors were closing because of COVID. My special thanks to Ted Conover, the director of the institute, as well as to Robert Boynton, who has been a guiding light throughout my journalism career. The seeds of this book are in our conversations about American Islam that started more than a decade ago.

There are many people at the University of Richmond who helped me, particularly my colleagues in the Journalism Department, who afforded me the time and space for reporting and writing and encouraged me to close my office door once in a while. The offices of the provost and the dean of arts and sciences at the university provided me with financial support at various junctures, for which I am deeply grateful.

I owe special thanks to Claire Comey, who worked as my research assistant on this book for nearly the entire four years that she was a student at the university. Without her supreme organizational skills and attention to detail, I might have been lost, especially during the early stages of the project. I owe a great debt to Rollo Romig for all his insightful and valuable feedback that helped me shape the book in important ways.

My thanks to Larry Weissman and Sascha Alper at Brooklyn Literary, who have been championing my work for more than a decade. The specific idea for this book grew from conversations with Alex Star, who first recognized the potential for a story. As my editor at Farrar, Straus and Giroux, he kept me on track with his sharp thinking and thoughtful guidance. I also thank Ian Van Wye and the rest of the team at FSG for all their work on this project.

Finally, I want to acknowledge my wife, Mimi. I am forever grateful for the chance to share this life, and our beautiful children, with her. Without her, this book would never have even been started.