OPERATION KAVKAZ IS FORMALLY ORGANIZEDby US journalists to Eg ypt—had strengthened Bergus’s hand at home with an alarm-
ing report that the school’s windows were blown out and the Israeli bombing “was a
threat to the school itself.” Their headline reflected another deception coup by the
Cairo “chattering class”: “Eg ypt Turns Westward: Nasser’s Arms Search.” No one had
told them about Nasser’s real or fictitious rush to Moscow that week.^34
Discussing his ceasefire initiative with Korn in 1988, Bergus still thought it was a
“non-starter,” as the administration had decided after the Dobrynin–Sisco dead end
“not to work with the Soviets any longer.”^35 But in the back-channel discussions that
had (unbeknownst to Bergus) superseded the overt talks, Kissinger welcomed the
idea when it came from Moscow. He noted proudly that the United States could now
“show the Israelis we have achieved something for them with ... our policy of relative
firmness” on the Kosygin letter. Was the timing of Dobrynin’s offer merely coinciden-
tal? Did the Eg yptians and/or Soviets learn of Bergus’s initiative, which was perhaps
even leaked to them intentionally to give it greater force? At any rate, once it was
proposed by the Soviets, the issue was taken up with the Israelis and, despite their
apprehensions that the truce would be used to rearm the Eg yptians, after a week of
discussions they acceded.
Meanwhile, US airmen had a close call in an encounter with Soviet counterparts,
though the latter were the long-established Tu-16Rs at Cairo-West rather than the
newly arrived MiGs. On 11 March “an F-4 from the USS Roosevelt ... experienced a
mid-air collision with a Soviet medium bomber ... Both aircraft experienced only
minor damage.” The event was deemed serious enough to warrant an immediate,
secret memo to the president via Kissinger.^36 But whether or not it was considered an
indication of emboldened Soviet behavior, the near-disaster—which would be
repeated a year later—was never publicized.^37
Then, on 20 March, Kissinger demanded a meeting with Dobrynin and told him
furiously—as even the dry language of the American’s report reflects:
Within 24 hours of calling them [the Israelis] in to make it [the Soviet-proposed ceasefire]
final ... we learned about the introduction of Soviet SA-3 missiles and Soviet combat
personnel. I had warned Dobrynin about the serious consequences of such a step. The
move was reminiscent of such tactics employed ... [in] the Cuban crisis. The Soviet
Government had to learn that the President could not be dealt with on this basis. As a
result, the President had canceled his request to the Israelis for a ceasefire.^38Kissinger, then, was as surprised as the rest of the US establishment by the appear-
ance of the Soviet missilemen (and the Americans had not yet learned at all about the
MiG squadrons, which had already been in Eg ypt for three months). Once again,
diplomacy had served as a smokescreen for military moves. As his subsequent steps
indicate, Kissinger resented this enough to let pique get the better of him. This in
turn would set in motion his own manipulation of the historical record about the end
of Kavkaz, just as Heikal did with the operation’s beginning.