THE SOVIET–ISRAELI WAR, 1967–1973line spread in Moscow, had not at all displayed “anger against our own extremists,”
who proposed a crackdown against Israel. On the contrary,
during the peak of the war in the Middle East ... when Israel violated the ceasefire agree-
ment ... seized a large piece of territory on the west bank of the Suez and moved tanks
towards Cairo, Brezhnev did two things: a) he wrote a letter to Nixon with a proposal to
send Soviet–American troops into Eg ypt together; or if Nixon did not want to do that,
Brezhnev would do it alone. That is why the Americans announced defense readiness
condition 1 [sic].Allowing for the inaccuracies (Brezhnev’s note was sent three days later), this much
was known before Chernyaev’s journal was published. However, he also found that
b) Brezhnev wrote a note to Politburo members, suggesting to do “something” immedi-
ately—to bring the Soviet fleet to Tel Aviv or allow the Eg yptians to strike Israel with our
medium-range missiles (but not Tel Aviv or Jerusalem), or something else. Two things
remain a mystery—why have Nixon and Kissinger not leaked [this] information ... [and]
why did Brezhnev’s note to the PB not have any consequences. Who stopped this initiative
and how.It attests once more to the compartmentalization of knowledge in the Soviet hier-
archy that over a month after the fact, Chernyaev (the deputy director of the Party
Secretariat’s international department) was not aware that Scuds had already been
launched. Chernyaev’s following statement is even more revealing : “it is astonishing
that the letter has not been confiscated. Even some staff in our department have read
it, and are still reading it, when everything turned out differently.”^24 In other words,
“confiscation” and elimination of potentially embarrassing documents was the rule
rather than the exception—yet another illustration that absence of archival evidence
cannot in itself disprove otherwise reliable reports.
The ship supposedly emitting radiation was first spotted on 22 October entering
the Mediterranean from the Black Sea. It docked on the 25th at Port Said—an
unlikely destination, unnecessarily close to the combat zone if it carried warheads for
the Scuds or the Foxbats, both of which were stationed near Cairo. Rather, this ship
was probably escorted by, or was an auxiliary of, a Soviet flotilla of five warships that
was ordered into Port Said on the 24th.
According to Capt. Zaborsky, as early as 17 October (that is, after the Israeli canal
crossing ), “preliminary plans for a limited ‘demonstration’ landing of Soviet naval
infantry on the west bank of the canal were drafted ... One large and six medium
landing ships were already in the region but they were all being used for equipment
transport”—that is, the resupply sealift. “Subsequently ... Gorshkov ordered the
already deployed landing ships to be used for troop transport and a landing force to
be assembled of ‘volunteers’ from the crews of all combatant and auxiliary ships.”
Capt. Evgeny Semenov, then the Eskadra’s chief of staff, wrote in his journal that