MOROCCO COUNRY READER TABLE OF CONTENTS A ... - ADST

At that same time, there was percolating in the body politic of Morocco the effects of what an
American president had done in 1942. You remember President Roosevelt had met with the
Sultan after the Casablanca Conference. He told the Sultan that he would do nothing to facilitate
continued French colonialism in the world. And that applied specifically to Morocco.
Roosevelt's word had given rise to feelings of independence, which were focused in the
Independence Movement (in Arabic the word is Istiqlal). Istiqlal was banned by the French, it
was anathema to the authorities and, of course, it was gaining ground rapidly among Moroccans.
So you had this implacable confrontation between the French on the one hand, with their
extraordinary armed forces...I became quite well acquainted with General Duval, who was the
head of those armed forces for much of the time that I was there...and the Moroccan people. The
French armed forces controlled the city, patrolling where necessary. They had spies; they had
their ways of exercising authority. And on the other hand, you had the Moroccans, who were
quietly going about in their djellabas (long gowns).
The djellaba, in a sense, was a metaphor for their politics -- a deceptively common outer garment
able to conceal arms while they looked you in the eye and said, "I'm not doing anything wrong,
I'm just trying to stay out of trouble," then going behind the scenes and conducting what we
today call terrorist attacks.
One of my jobs, when I moved to the political section of the embassy, was to send in weekly
reports of the number of arson cases, terrorist attacks, armed incidents, such as assaults on
French authority by Moroccans.
My boss there, by the way, was a figure of great capacity and dimensions. I'm sure you've heard
his name -- Bill Porter. I'm terribly sorry he did not get his chance to do an oral history. Bill
Porter was a man who understood the Moroccan mentality.
Q: He was what?
NORLAND: He became the consul general in the fall of '53. John Dorman had been the consul.
Q: In those days, we didn't have an ambassador because it wasn't...
NORLAND: It was not independent. We had a minister resident in Tangier. And those ministers
were extraordinarily competent people. John Carter Vincent was one. And Joe Satterthwaite.
And the reason those ministers were there was because they did not require Senate confirmation.
John Carter Vincent was suspect because of his China policies.
Q: You're talking about the McCarthy period.
NORLAND: Yes, he was minister during the McCarthy period.
Q: So this is where you kind of...I won't say buried them, but kept them out of the line of fire.