249. Memorandum From the Chief of the Near East and South Asia Division, Directorate of Operations, Central Intelligence Agency (Cogan) to Director of Central Intelligence Turner1

SUBJECT

  • Talking Points for Your 8 April Meeting With President Sadat

1. Action Requested: None; this is for your information.

2. The following topics are appropriate for you to draw on in your meeting with President Sadat scheduled for Tuesday, 8 April:2

[Page 675]

—You may tell President Sadat you are pleased that the purchases of arms from Egypt for Afghanistan are proceeding smoothly. Training in the use of the Egyptian-supplied hand held antiaircraft missiles is nearing completion and the missiles should be moving into Afghanistan in the next few weeks. It is quite likely Sadat will ask you for a reading on the present situation in Afghanistan and prospects for the insurgents.

[Omitted here are items unrelated to Afghanistan.]

—You may tell Sadat that we hope the Middle East briefings which have been arranged for him have been satisfactory. A joint CIA/State/DoD team briefed him in October 1979, but another joint team we sent in February 1980 was unable to see him but briefed Vice President Mubarak. FYI: Since the beginning of 1978 we have also sent two other teams to brief Sadat but he was unavailable to receive them.

  1. Source: Central Intelligence Agency, Office of the Director of Central Intelligence, Job 82M00501R: 1980 Subject Files, Box 12, C–370, 21 Jan–30 Oct 80, Egypt. Secret; [handling restriction not declassified] The memorandum was sent through Carlucci and McMahon.
  2. No record of the first April 8 meeting between Carter and Sadat was found. For the memoranda of conversation of other meetings during Sadat’s April 7–10 State visit to the United States, see Foreign Relations, 1977–1980, vol. IX, Arab-Israeli Dispute, August 1978–December 1980, Second, Revised Edition, Documents 354, 355, and 356.