U.S. AIR FORCE PILOTS FLY 700 ETHIOPIAN JEWS OUT OF SUDAN

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000807470046-9
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: January 12, 2012
• Sequence Number: 46
• Publication Date: March 24, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

STAT
j Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/12 : CIA-RDP90-00965R000807470046-9
ART 1 O LE A:'PEARED
01; par
WASHINGTON POST
24 March 1985
WORLD: NEW
U.S. Air Force Pilots Fly 700
Ethiopian Jews Out of Sudan
By George Wilson and David B. Ottaway
Washington Post Staff Writers
United States Air Force pilots were in-
volved in a top-secret'rescue mission that
brought about 700 Ethiopian Jews out of
the Sudan Friday, administration officials
and Jewish sources revealed yesterday.
"They took out everybody who was
there," said one official, "but 'the numbers
were off" in regard to how many of the ref-
ugees, fleeing famine in their own country,
would be waiting for the airlift alongside a
gravel strip near the Sudanese town of Ge-
daref.
"It was a humanitarian operation," the
official said. The Air Force C-130 transport
planes originated from Frankfurt, Germany,
officials said, and flew the refugees from the
Sudan via the Red Sea to Israel. -
Administration officials said Sudanese
President Jaafar Nimeri approved of the
airlift on condition that it be kept secret.
The details were worked out in a meeting
between Vice President Bush and Nimeri
on March 6. t
The White House, State Department and
Pentagon refused yesterday to comment on
the airlift. Informed sources said one of Ni-
meri's conditions for allowing the black
Ethiopian Jews, called Falashas, to be flown
out was that nothing be said either in the
United States or Israel about the operation.
I.. The Israeli state-run radio and television
networks carried no reports of the airlift.
Nimeri is to fly to Washington on a pri-
vate visit for a medical checkup Wednesday
and is to meet with President Reagan and
other U.S. officials later in the week.
Administration sources declined yester-
day to give the specific number of Falashas
flown out of Sudan. But sources said the Air
Force crews expected two or three times
the number that were located.
An official of the American Association
for Ethiopian Jews (AAEJ), Howard Len-
Koff, said he had learned from sources in
Israel that "close to 700" Falashas had ar-
rived safely there.
He said the number of Falashas previous-
ly thought to be awaiting the airlift in Su-
danese refugee camps was 1,500; he was
unable to account for the discrepancy.
"Where are the others, I don't know,"
Lenhoff said in a telephone interview from
his home in Costa Mesa, Calif. He said he
understood that "a couple" of the C130s had
arrived in Israel empty. Lenhoff was the
immediate-past president of the AAEJ and
serves as its director of research.
.Iri February, AAEJ officials estimated
that there were 3,000 to 4,000 Falashas in
Sudan, but they subsequently revised the
number to 1,500 based on reports from im-
migrants arriving in Israel.
Conditions in the refugee camps were
reported in February to have deteriorated,
and at one point AAEJ officials were receiv-
ing reports that as many as 25 Falashas
were dying a day. But State Department
officials dispute accounts that as many as
1,200 Falashas died of famine and disease
after suspension in January of an Israeli air-
lift. It was not clear whether the deterio-
rating camp conditions accelerated U.S. and
Israeli plans to airlift the remaining Fala=
shas out of Sudan.
The Los Angeles Times, in a 'dispatch
filed from Gedaref Saturday, said 10 pro-
peller-driven C130s landed at a gravel air-
strip eight miles north of the town to pick
up refugees who had been in the Tawawa
refugee camp. '
The planes, according to the dispatch,
came in at dawn in an operation conducted
in tight secrecy and planned by the Central
Intelligence Agency.
Israel airlifted about 7,800 Falashas from
the Sudan to Israel between' Nov. 21 and
Jan. 6 in Operation Moses. The airlift was
called off after news of it leaked out.
Although the airlift officially ended in ear-
ly January, Falashas apparently continued
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/12 : CIA-RDP90-00965R000807470046-9
 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/12 : CIA-RDP90-00965R000807470046-9
a.
to arrive in Israel by other secret means.
Lenhoff said he thought that possibly as
many as 800 had left secretly and that this
might explain why the American pilots
found fewer Falashas than expected.
Lenhoff said the AAEJ's main concern
was the fate of the estimated 8,000 Fala-
shas remaining in Ethiopia out of. the 26,-
000 who had been officially counted by an
Israeli-sponsored group in 1976.
The Israelis believe that the Falashas are
a "lost" Jewish tribe that migrated centuries
ago to Ethiopia, where they long have been
discriminated against because they owned
no land. ;
Since the onset of the Ethiopian revolu-
tion in 1974, efforts have been under way
to move the entire Falasha population out of
Ethiopia to Israel. There are now about
16,000 living there.'
The few administration officials who
would discuss the airlift yesterday indicated
that it was a one-time operation.
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/12 : CIA-RDP90-00965R000807470046-9