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The Scheme to Hook Up a King With the Wasp Woman and Other Wild Plans

Khalid Elhassan August 31, 2020 34 min

Susan Cabot - Hussein of Jordan — Susan Cabot and King Hussein. Veja

37. Hitting It Off

King Hussein and Susan Cabot met on April 9^th, 1959. There were doubts at the time that the scheme might go awry because of Cabot’s Jewish heritage – she was born Harriet Shapiro. Fears that Cabot’s background might prove problematic for the Muslim monarch were quickly dispelled: Hussein was smitten.

According to a CIA memo, he got along so well with Cabot that when he left LA for the East Coast, the king: “wished to meet with her during his stay in New York City from 14 through 18 April“. So the CIA rented Hussein a house in Long Beach, Long Island, and registered Cabot in Manhattan’s Barclay Hotel “under an assumed name“.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.