Hadow’s advice would have diminishing reverberations in Israel, however, as the crisis entered its third and most critical week. No sooner had Johnson promised to use “every possible effort” to reopen the Straits and not to abandon Israel, it seemed, than he was already backtracking. The White House continued to delay responding to Israel’s requests for arms—the list, now including 100 Hawk missiles, 140 Patton tanks, and 24 Skyhawk jets, had lengthened—and for a liaison with U.S. forces. “If war breaks out, we would have no telephone number to call, no code for plane recognition, and no way to get in touch with the Sixth Fleet,” Gene Rostow heard Harman complain. An Israeli proposal for mutual force reductions in Sinai and the Negev, to be mediated by the U.S. and the USSR, was similarly overlooked. At most, the administration was willing to exert economic pressure against Egypt—so it informed the Israelis.
This lack of decisive action prompted another ardent letter from Eshkol to Johnson. Reminding the president that his promise to use “all and every measures to open the Straits” had dissuaded his government from voting for war, Eshkol warned that Israel was “approaching a point at which counsels of restraint would lack any moral or logical basis.” The only course was to compel U Thant to work for the restoration of the status quo ante in Sinai, to agree to a U.S.-Israel military liaison, and to launch the convoy “within a week or two.” Eshkol concluded by emphasizing that Israel was “experiencing some of the heaviest days in its history,” but his letter wrought no change in America’s position. Instead, Johnson denied that he had even said “all and every measures,” but only every measure within his constitutional powers. Walt Rostow was instructed to make that point perfectly clear to the Israelis at once.23
“Am I wrong in assessing the president’s personal determination as I did?” was Ephraim Evron’s response. Rostow replied obscurely, “You have known President Johnson for a long time and have a right to make your own assessment.” With tears in his eyes he said, “So much hinges on that man.” Evron rushed to report on the talk, his summary hitting Jerusalem “like a slap in the face,” according to Rabin. “There was no way of misinterpreting the cable: we could not expect any action on the part of the United States…[It] had the look and feel of the proverbial last straw.”
Another crisis, this one of credibility, was brewing between the United States and Israel. Asked by Rostow how long the Israelis would now wait, Evron speculated “about ten days.” Ambassador Barbour predicted an even briefer span: “If major terrorism is mounted from Sinai or the Gaza Strip, Israel will have to do it eventually. They [the Israelis] feel they can finish Nasser off and if [there is] no other way to stop terrorism, they will have to do it.” Yet Eshkol, though “thunderstruck” by Evron’s report, was willing to make one last effort. He would dispatch Meir Amit to Washington, there to succeed where Eban had failed in ascertaining whether the administration truly intended to act with Israel and, if not, whether Israel could act alone.24
Every Possible Effort
What seemed to Israelis like backtracking, though, was for Americans the product of galling frustrations. “From the moment Eisenhower made clear that a commitment had been made,” attested Walt Rostow, “Johnson had no doubt that he had to reopen the Straits.” He had advocated adopting a strong public position on the crisis, warning Johnson that its policy was too much “for the record” and not enough “we mean business.” But in grappling with the Middle East, the president faced a battery of obstacles. Opposition to the Regatta plan had stiffened within the defense establishment, in the CIA, and in the Joint Chiefs of Staff, which doubted whether the U.S. had sufficient forces to implement it. “Threats of force will only sustain him [Nasser] in his present course,” concluded a Middle East Control Group analysis, “An appeal to vanity, and avarice, is needed.” Asked by Battle what would happen if a U.S. warship, sent to Tiran, was fired upon, Gen. Wheeler slammed his fist down and bellowed, “Luke, it means war.”
The military’s objections to Regatta paled, however, compared to those raised by Congress when senior White House officials—Rusk, McNamara, Humphrey—took their case to the Hill.
They came with the draft of a joint resolution authorizing the president “to take appropriate action, including use of the Armed Forces of the United States, to secure effective observance of this right [of free passage] in concert with other nations.” Congress was not impressed. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee, deeply afflicted with what Rusk called “Tonkin Gulfitis,” showed no sympathy whatsoever for Regatta. Senators Mike Mansfield, William J. Fulbright, and Albert Gore were particularly adamant that the administration not lead the nation into a second Vietnam, and that the Middle East crisis be resolved solely within the UN framework. Even the most pro-Israel senators—Robert Kennedy and Jacob Javits—expressed reservations about the convoy idea. After canvassing nearly ninety congressmen, a dispirited Rusk and McNamara reported to the president: “While it is true that Congressional Vietnam doves may be in the process of conversion to [Israeli] hawks…an effort to get a meaningful resolution from the Congress runs the risk of becoming bogged down in acrimonious dispute.”25
But obtaining congressional approval was only one of Regatta’s problems; the other was getting additional countries to join. Johnson had assumed that at least fourteen of the eighteen nations approached would join the initiative, but only four—Iceland, New Zealand, Australia, and the Netherlands—would sign the declaration in support of free passage through Tiran, and only the Australians and the Dutch agreed to send ships. Italy, Germany, and Brazil balked at any commitment, however vague, to military action. The French still insisted on the Four-Power summit, and the Argentineans denied they were a maritime country at all. “The Belgians,” wrote one U.S. diplomat, “are waffling.” The keenest disappointment was Canada, one of the original sponsors of Regatta. Fearing an Arab backlash—their UNEF contingent, accused of pro-Israeli bias, was given forty-eight hours to leave Sinai—the Canadians abandoned the convoy idea in favor of reviving the Armistice Agreement and transplanting UNEF in Israel.
“The Canadians and the Europeans will not accept responsibility,” the president recorded in his diary, “They say it’s not their trouble, and they shouldn’t get into the Middle East right now.” Particularly intimidating was Nasser’s threat to fire on any ship attempting to break the blockade, and to suspend the flow of Arab oil to its owners. In a memo to Walt Rostow, Saunders raised the possibility that the United States would launch Regatta and that no one else would follow.26
“We may not succeed; probably we shall not. But our public opinion will not, I believe, understand or support what we may have to do hereafter if we cannot show convincingly that we have tried.” So Prime Minister Wilson tried to encourage an increasingly skeptical LBJ. The Anglo-American alliance, nearly shattered during the 1956 crisis, had held firm through the current one, as the U.S. and Britain divided up the countries solicited about Regatta. But under the twin pressures of domestic and international opinion, even that relationship began to fray. “International action [on the Straits] will be perceived as a thinly disguised Anglo-US action,” claimed a policy paper prepared for the British Cabinet, “At best can get the active support of one or two European countries, possibly of few more, and hostility from rest of the world.” The Cabinet’s conclusions agreed:
The military disposition by the Arab countries and particularly by the UAR represented a permanent change in the balance of power in the Middle East to the disadvantage of Israel, which both she and the Western Powers would have to accept…It was doubtful whether we should seek to enforce in respect of the Gulf of Aqaba rights which we had failed to assert in respect of the [Suez] Canal over so long a period. Nor was it essential to British interests to restore the right of innocent passage in the Straits of the Gulf.
Britain, too, was “going soft” on Regatta, and “digging in its heels” in favor of restoring some symbolic UN force in the Straits which would remain under Egyptian army control. All
“strategic cargoes” to Israel, except oil, would be impounded. Efforts meanwhile would be made to deter Israel from going to war and embroiling the world in a superpower showdown. Rankled over America’s attempts to portray the convoy as a “British initiative” and to associate it with Israeli—not universal—interests, Wilson had begun to suspect that Johnson had promised Eban more than he admitted. The prime minister refused to host the signing of the declaration, and restricted British involvement in joint naval planning.27
Yet naval planning continued, albeit quietly so as not to arouse congressional suspicions. Briefs were complied examining America’s status in the murky legal waters of Tiran, and estimates made of the potential damage of implementing Regatta—$1 billion in foreign exchange, billions more in capital assets. A schedule was set for the operation. It would begin with an Israeli-owned vessel flying a foreign flag and carrying nonstrategic cargoes, followed by a similar ship bearing oil. If either of these were impeded in the Straits, two U.S. destroyers and a tactical command ship would then challenge the blockade. And if the squadron were at tacked—an unlikely scenario, according to military planners—a Mediterranean-based task force would “neutralize enemy air capabilities” and, if necessary, conduct an amphibious landing. Finally, if war broke out between Egypt and Israel, food, humanitarian aid, and ammunition would be offered to Israel, irrespective of which side struck first.28
Contingency planning for Regatta was supposed to conclude on June 5, though mounting the operation could take a month or more—time that Johnson did not have. Acting on the assumption that the Israelis would delay their attack no longer than the two weeks cited in Eshkol’s letter, the Joint Chiefs of Staff began moving some sixty-five naval ships into the eastern Mediterranean. The Intrepid, returning from Vietnam and successfully traversing the Suez Canal, joined its Sixth Fleet sister carriers, America and Saratoga. The armada remained “outside an arc whose radius is 240 miles from Port Said”—far enough not to provoke the Egyptians, but well within striking range.29
Not listed among these vessels, but instructed to proceed from the Ivory Coast to Rota, Spain, was the 455-foot, 294-man Auxiliary General Technical Research Ship (AGTR), the USS Liberty. Though armed only with .50-caliber machine guns, the ship was equipped with cutting-edge listening and decoding devices, and among its crew were members of the highly classified Naval Security Group. The Liberty was a spy ship, code-named Rockstar and operating at the behest of the National Security Agency. In Rota, the vessel picked up three Marine Corps Arabic translators, who joined three Russian experts already aboard, and after undergoing repairs set sail again on June 2. Overriding orders from U.S. Naval Command in Europe to remain in Rota “until directed otherwise,” the Liberty made “best speed” to the Middle East, there to assume a patrolling pattern just beyond the territorial waters of Egypt and Israel.30 Its exact mission, unknown even to the skipper, Commander William L. McGonagle, was probably to track the movements of Egyptian troops and their Soviet advisers in Sinai.
Johnson was committed to Regatta, yet that commitment did not prevent him from resorting to alternative types of diplomacy. The need for such options was brought home not only by the opposition of Congress and the maritime states, but by the bleak prophesies of American diplomats in the Middle East.
Ambassador Porter in Beirut reported that no one in the Arab world believed that the issue was really the Straits—“Would the United States be as concerned over the issue if it were Jordan’s port of Aqaba?”—and warned against falling into a Soviet trap. “On the scales we have Israel, an unviable client state whose value to the U.S. is primarily emotional, balanced with [the] full range [of] vital strategic, political, commercial/economic interests represented by Arab states,” wrote Hugh Smythe from Damascus. Citing national security exigencies, Burns in Amman recommended that the U.S. “not honor” its commitments to Israel. “In the event that Israel does go to hostilities,” he explained, “we will never be able to convince the Arabs we have not encouraged her to do so. This will wreck every interest we have in North Africa and the Middle East …for years to come.” Finally, from Cairo, Nolte recalled that Nasser had simply done to Israel what Israel had done to Egypt in 1956—“tit for tat”—and the U.S. had no obligation to rescue the Jewish state, a nation “established by force.” He further warned that the Egyptians would indeed open fire on the convoy. “It is inconceivable to us that [the] UAR with full Soviet backing would not, repeat not, militarily confront any naval or other force which attempts to enforce ‘free passage.’”31
These exhortations—punctuated by bomb explosions at the Beirut and Jidda embassies—had a powerful impact on Rusk. Though still determined to go “full steam ahead” on Regatta, he had lost any delusions about its price. “Unless we show the Israelis that we are prepared in the last analysis to use force to keep the Straits open, we are not likely to dissuade them from taking the law into their own hands,” he confided to Foreign Minister Harmel of Belgium. “On the other hand, to commit ourselves in this way now would not only reduce our flexibility in seeking a peaceful solution but could bring us into direct military confrontation with Nasser.”
Rusk consequently redoubled diplomatic efforts in the Security Council, promoting a Danish resolution in support of U Thant’s moratorium idea. Goldberg lobbied hard for the initiative, and appeared to be making headway when Egypt submitted its own draft denouncing “Israeli aggression” and calling for a revival of the Armistice. The sole chance for a breakthrough lay in reaching a tacit understanding with the Soviets. Privately, Federenko indeed expressed an interest in preventing hostilities; Soviet ships in the Mediterranean were merely “a military parade,” he said. His speeches remained virulent, however, assailing Americans for denying Egypt the right to blockade while they, themselves, blockaded Cuba and “drowned Vietnam in blood.”32
Stymied at the UN, the administration went above Federenko’s head and directly to his bosses in the Kremlin. In letters to Kosygin and Gromyko, Johnson and Rusk, respectively, stressed their common interests in assuring free passage and averting war, but also Nasser’s culpability in blockading the Straits and the dangers facing world peace. Using as their stick the threat of Israeli preemption—“We do not believe that Israel will back down…nor that she should be asked to”—the Americans proffered their carrot: agreement on the moratorium followed by a superpower summit in either New York or Moscow.33 The White House was still waiting for an answer to this invitation when, after a session described as “more notable for heat than light,” the Security Council finally adjourned. It would not reconvene for forty-eight hours, until Monday, June 5.
However vigorously pursued, diplomacy in the UN and with the Soviets was of limited value compared to direct talks with the antagonists themselves. Far greater benefits could be gained by restoring direct channels with Egypt. A first attempt in this direction was made on June 1 by Charles Yost, the State Department Middle East expert who arrived in Cairo to help Nolte. Yost made contact with his old acquaintance, Mahmoud Riad, who agreed to meet him at his home.
The foreign minister spoke for over ninety minutes, with “intense and uncharacteristic emotion and bitterness,” excoriating U.S. policy (“hopelessly pro-Israel”) and then Israel itself: “The Zionists’ treatment of the [Palestinian] refugees is taught to every school child and the issue will not die.” Nasser, he explained, could not lose face by backing down on the blockade, and would fight “anyone” attempting to break it. Though his generals were pressuring him to attack, he preferred to wait for the Israelis to strike first and then to destroy them in the desert. A short war, followed by a UN-engineered ceasefire, just might break the impasse, Riad mused. Then the parties could proceed to a “realistic settlement” in which the refugees would be repatriated and Israel could find alternative sources of oil. “The problem is not economic but purely psychological,” he said.
The conversation did not augur well for continued dialogue with Cairo. Yost reported that there w
as no sign of Arab “battle fatigue” or a readiness to compromise on Tiran. “As long as the prospect either of Israeli attack or Western use of force in the Straits seems imminent, Arab excitement and unity will probably mount rather than decline,” he wrote, warning that the Egyptians would defend their blockade with force. As such, Yost proposed that the United States accustom itself to Nasser’s new status. Israel would learn to live without Eilat, as it did before 1957.34
But Yost’s meeting with Riad was only the beginning of Washington’s efforts to reach Nasser. These were redoubled on a different, clandestine plane, through Robert B. Anderson—the same Robert B. Anderson who had tried to mediate a secret Egypt-Israeli peace in 1956. The Texas oilman had been in direct phone contact with the president since the outset of the crisis. During a farewell meeting with Ambassador Kamel on May 24, Johnson proposed that Anderson undertake a secret junket to Cairo. The answer was positive, and Anderson embarked, confident in the belief that the crisis was largely the result of Egypt’s financial problems, to be solved by inviting ‘Amer to the United States. An agreement could be reached in which American wheat would be traded for Egyptian moderation.
Six Days of War Page 24
