 In 1953, Downs was assigned to the Rome bureau, where he spent the next three years covering the Mediterranean and Vatican City.Over time his focus shifted to the Middle East and the Arab–Israeli conflict.In 1954 he recorded an interview with then-Egyptian Prime Minister Gamal Abdel Nasser, and went on to interview Israeli Presidents David Ben-Gurion and Moshe Sharett about the tensions with Egypt and the Arab world.