Man's Job

Still raging at the assassination of their Prime Minister, which they blame on Nasser's "hirelings," the Jordanian authorities at first were prepared to deal harshly with the pilot of the U.A.R. jet who swooped helplessly down to an emergency bellylanding near Amman after reconnoitering along Jordan's frontier. But the Syrian lad who climbed out of the cockpit seemed too young to be shot, too honest and helpful even to punish severely. Instead, the Jordanians decided that Lieut. Adnan Madani, 24, would make a useful propaganda weapon to embarrass Gamal Abdel Nasser. By trotting Madani out as a "defector," Jordan could "prove" that Syrians were unhappy in Nasser's U.A.R.

While the Amman radio beat the drums with promises of "big news" about the case (and Cairo Radio mumbled embarrassedly), Lieut. Madani had the run of the air force base where he was detained, eating at the officers' mess and sharing a room with a Jordanian air force officer in genial camaraderie. He seemed cheerfully prepared to cooperate, and the Jordanians happily scheduled a big conference where Madani was to be put on show as a Nasser spy in the sky. But early that afternoon he excused himself from the group of officers chatting at the club, explaining that he had forgotten to get something in his room. Moments later, a shot rang out, and rushing up, the Jordanians were horrified to find Madani dead on the floor of his room, a bullet through his temple, a pistol at his side.

Shocked officials summoned three doctors as witnesses, urged a U.A.R. diplomat to come and see for himself the genuineness of the suicide. But Cairo now had another tune to play. Nasser's radio hurled charges of murder, suggesting that King Hussein's brother and uncle personally ordered the shooting. When Jordan's embarrassed funeral cortege reached the Syrian frontier to turn the body back, U.A.R. guards swept the Jordanian wreaths into the roadside dust. In Damascus and Cairo the U.A.R.'s propagandists and patriots staged a triumphant demonstration for the boy who, rather than embarrass his country, had chosen death.

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