When Uncle Sam Rolled Out the Magic Carpet for Hajj

By Nick Danforth

In 1952 an unidentified young photographer—wearing a bow-tie, looking at his camera, presumably at work for the US government—stands by a C-54 transport plane on a Beirut tarmac. In front of him, Muslim pilgrims in white robes prepare to board the plane en route to Mecca. Another photographer for the United States Information Service captures the whole scene, complete with the US Air Force logo on the plane’s fuselage.  It was an American PR dream, a propaganda coup so good that the government photographs carefully documenting it were deemed superfluous and have seldom if ever been seen. Shortly after arranging for several thousand stranded pilgrims to be airlifted from Beirut to Saudi Arabia, the State Department cabled its Middle Eastern embassies telling them best not to go overboard trumpeting the story. Local press would do the work for them, and with too much boasting the embassy risked promoting the story to the point they “killed it with self praise.”

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