436
CAIRO TO DAMASCUS
3
Middle East —the stone on my heart—as terrorist as any
Arab or Nazi gang. A small but loud voice elsewhere, they had
become increasingly active in the Arab world. They enjoyed
the protection of the corrupt Lebanese regime which had
come to power in 1947 through rigged elections and police
terror, with Dashnag help. They were also—and this hurt me
deeply as an American—in the good graces of certain illinformed agencies of our State Department, who regarded
this treacherous element among the Armenians as friends of
the Allied cause.
A hopelessly outnumbered, utterly unrepresentative, thoroughly hated (though often feared because of its methods of
"direct action") element in every Armenian community except
Beirut, the Dashnags, nonetheless, have consistently portrayed
themselves to uninformed Americans, and others, as being sole
representatives of and spokesmen for all Armenians everywhere. As a matter of fact, they speak for and represent the
dictates of a narrow political clique, dominated by a few top
leaders, known as the Armenian Revolutionary Federation,
popularly termed Dashnag. Investigating the Dashnags on their
home ground in Beirut was one of the most dangerous tasks I
undertook.
I met General Dro Ganayan, follower of the Nazi armies,
a notorious Dashnag officer who told me that he had advanced
with the Wehrmacht in their penetration of the Caucasus
region and had retreated with them after Stalingrad.
I also met an Armenian Catholic priest named Father
Gamsaragan. A short, chunky, hard man in a cassock, he submitted me to a stiff cross-examination before answering questions. "I am Dashnag," I told him, giving Actionized details
of my alleged membership.
"Good," he answered, "I know no other kind of Armenians. As a matter of fact, it was because of the Dashnags
3
In mentioning the Dashnags in this chapter I am referring only to the
Dashnag in Europe and the Middle East, unless the American Dashnag is
expressly named.