“A FAMOUS INDISCRETION” AS THE AIR WAR PEAKSWe should occasionally use this in our own interests.” But, he concluded, “it might
be useful to simultaneously provide our response to the US proposals on the Middle
East ... through Kissinger as well.”^50 So the back channel was placed on the back-
burner for the time being, and Kissinger—whether embarrassed by his “indiscretion”
or, more likely, sensing another debacle in the works for Rogers’s diplomacy—did not
press Dobrynin for the replies he still owed. Judging by both their reports, the Middle
East was mentioned only in passing (as an item on the agenda of a proposed summit).
Neither side’s reports reflect any detailed discussion in the back channel throughout
the coming, crucial month.
Instead, Kissinger left to the State Department the thankless task of dealing with
the Soviets. Meeting Foreign Minister Gromyko on 11 July, with Nasser still in the
USSR, Ambassador Beam protested that Nixon’s conciliatory response to Kosygin’s
threat, and particularly his politically risky withholding of planes from Israel, had
been snubbed. “Soviet support of the UAR in the Canal combat zone has led to a
major qualitative change in the military balance ... contributing to a serious escalation
of the conflict.” Gromyko “was non-belligerent and avoided giving offense,” but
rejected US accusations that “Soviet military personnel have in fact moved into close
proximity to the Suez Canal. New deployments of Soviet surface-to-air missiles make
this conclusion inescapable.” The Soviet foreign minister insisted:
The USSR has a certain number of advisers in the UAR. ... Their number represents a
threat to no one. ... Even if something along the lines of what [Beam] said had taken place,
... they would be purely defensive actions. He went on to stress that he had not used the
conditional tense accidentally.Although Beam hadn’t even mentioned it, Gromyko volunteered that “Israel ... is
spreading tendentious information ... and if one should believe them, then one would
think that Israeli and Soviet pilots are clashing. This is totally absurd.” Beam’s reply was
diplomatic: “We do not have precise, accurate information from the Soviet side regard-
ing its military activity in the UAR. This situation may engender exaggeration and
speculation, but the evidence available to us is impressive and very disturbing.”^51
Despite the urgency of Israel’s request for the latest EW systems, two USAF offi-
cers and several technicians delivered them only eight days after Nixon’s approval, on
12 July—the day after Gromyko’s evasion. Like their Soviet counterparts, the
American experts traveled in civvies, on a commercial flight. Their dispatch was—
incidentally or intentionally—camouflaged by the overt arrival, on a USAF Boeing,
of a twenty-one-man “fact-finding mission” from the Air Force Strike Command, led
by the command’s deputy chief, Lt-Gen. James Edmundson. It “heightened specula-
tion that the Nixon administration is planning some sort of gesture as a partial coun-
ter to the growing Soviet involvement in Eg ypt. There have been unconfirmed reports
that ships of the US 6th Fleet or a US Air Force squadron might visit Israel to dem-
onstrate American support.”^52 This would never materialize; the “gesture” would