Inside Report (5)

Was the US Embassy in Cairo in the dark about Anwar Sadat's death long after -journalists knew? If so, many critics in Cairo argue, then the Embassy had fallen down on the job. But a Western diplomat on the scene argues that the Embassy did know Sadat had died only 1 1/2 hours after the Oct. 6 attack. It was -considered inappropriate, however, for the US to announce what had not been made -official by the Egyptian government.

Such an announcement channeled through Foggy Bottom, it is argued, might have caused an anti-American reaction in the Arab world similar to that in 1979 when the State Department revealed that the Grand Mosque in Mecca was under siege.