Americans Who Died in Kenya Blast Are Honored

The bodies of 10 victims of the Nairobi embassy carnage returned home Thursday, mourned and honored by a president who praised them as Americans of “adventurous spirit” and “generous soul.”

With an occasional tear slipping and adding rawness to the pockets beneath his eyes, President Clinton told their families, in a solemn and slowly cadenced military ceremony televised nationally, that the dead had belonged to a vast staff of men and women who serve in embassies worldwide and “do hard work that is not always fully appreciated and not even understood by many of their fellow Americans.”

“They protect our interests and promote our values abroad,” he went on. “ . . . Far from home, they endure hardships, often at great risk.”

In a quietly emotional moment, Clinton described each of the victims without naming them, then named them without describing them: Sgt. Jesse Nathan Aliganga, Julian Bartley Sr., Julian Bartley Jr., Molly Huckaby Hardy, Sgt. Kenneth Hobson, Prabhi Kavaler, Arlene Kirk, Dr. Mary Louise Martin, Ann Michelle O’Connor and Uttamlal “Tom” Shah.

Secretary of State Madeleine Albright had accompanied the caskets on a gray Air Force C-17 cargo plane that flew from Ramstein Air Base in Germany to Andrews Air Force Base in suburban Maryland a few miles outside Washington.

Although the plane transported 10 flag-draped caskets, the ceremony--staged in the massive Hangar 3 of the base--also honored the two other Americans who died in the terrorist bombing at the Nairobi, Kenya, embassy a week ago.

They were Jean Dalizu, whose family chose to bury her in Kenya, and Senior Master Sgt. Sherry Lynn Olds, whose family in Florida asked that the body come to them earlier.

The nearly simultaneous blasts at the embassies in Nairobi and in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, last week also killed more than 40 Kenyans and Tanzanians who worked for the U.S. government and more than 200 other Kenyans and Tanzanians who worked or walked or rode nearby.

The ceremony’s three eulogists--the president, the secretary of State and Secretary of Defense William S. Cohen--all paid homage to the slain Africans.

Albright had spent a grueling 28 hours on her mission, leaving for Germany at dawn Wednesday and returning on the C-17 at 10:30 a.m. Thursday. She looked grim and tired, the moistness from her eyes marring her makeup. Her evident fatigue did not temper her defiance.

“Make no mistake,” she said. “Terror is the tool of cowards. . . . It is murder, plain and simple. And those who perpetrate it, finance it or otherwise support it, must be opposed by all decent people.

“We will do everything possible to see that those responsible for last week’s bombings are held accountable,” she said. “America’s memory is long, our reach is far, our resolve unwavering, and our commitment to justice unshatterable.”

The president and First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton came from the White House by helicopter more than an hour before the C-17 arrived. That gave them time to comfort the mourning families in private.

The ceremony moved steadily but at a dirge-like, military-directed pace. Even the four-engined, droop-winged C-17 rolled so slowly that it took 15 minutes to move from the landing strip to the hangar.

Five teams of pallbearers, representing the Army, Air Force, Navy, Marines and Coast Guard, carried the caskets in two shifts to waiting hearses in the hangar. A color guard carrying the American, Kenyan and Tanzanian flags led the way as an Air Force band played three hymns: “Goin’ Home,” “Nearer, My God, to Thee” and “Hallelujah.”

There was a touch of theatrics involved, for the hearses carried the caskets no farther than back to the same C-17, which waited to take them to the U.S. Air Force base in Dover, Del. The bodies will be processed by the base’s military mortuary service before going to the families for burial.

Although it contained the standard threats to the terrorists that have become a litany in Washington this week, the president’s eulogy was low-key and concerned mostly with trying to explain the work of the dead to Americans.

“We can only hope,” he told the families, “that even in grief you can take pride and solace in the gratitude all the rest of us have for the service they gave.”

At the end of the ceremony, Clinton walked across the front row that was reserved for the families. He talked with most, shook hands with many, hugged a few and put a hand on one’s shoulder.

The most literary moment came when Cohen quoted the late Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes. “Alas, we cannot live our dreams,” he said. “We’re lucky enough if we can give a sample of our best, and if in our hearts we can feel it has been nobly done.

“These sons and daughters of America,” said Cohen, “were of a manner pure, with lofty purpose. Six days ago they left us, lifted beyond this mortal veil, having given us more than a sample of their best.”

Inside

* THE PROBE: Investigators in Tanzania now doubt that water delivery truck carried explosives in the embassy attack there. A14

* SINGLED OUT? Search for suspects in Nairobi blast has become a nightmare for Kenya’s 8 million Muslims. A14

* THE VICTIMS: A brief look at the 12 Americans who died in the terrorist attack in Nairobi. A15