The Soviet-Israeli War, 1967–1973. The USSR’s Military Intervention in the Egyptian-Israeli Conflict

NOTES

pp. [199–201]^

17. CEASEFIRE VIOLATION SEALS A STRATEGIC GAIN
    
    
    1. Recorded testimony of an unnamed Israeli pilot, in film shown at an IAF Association
       event to mark the fortieth anniversary of the War of Attrition, 26 November 2009.
    
    
    2. Yeshayahu Ben-Porat et al., Kippur, Tel Aviv: Special Edition, first published in Hebrew
       (as Ha-Mehdal), December 1973, p 13; Gordon, Thirty Hours, p. 81. Bar-Siman-Tov’s
       otherwise perceptive War of Attrition, which was written after the effects of the ceasefire
       violation became evident, makes no mention of it and describes the United States and the
       USSR as partners in arranging the ceasefire; see pp. 185–92.
    
    
    3. Hersh, Price of Power, pp. 229, 230n*.
    
    
    4. UPI and AFP, Davar, 4 August 1970, p. 1.
    
    
    5. K.V. Pirogov, “Egipet darit svoe serdtse,” in Meyer et al., To g d a, p. 300. This conforms to
       the mention by Kapitanets (Na Sluzhbe, p. 256) that, by September 1970, Nasser had
       authorized an R&R facility for Soviet submariners at Mersa Matruh, indicating prepara-
       tions for an extended presence.
    
    
    6. Ben-Porat, Kippur, p 13.
    
    
    7. Ma’ariv, 12 August 1970, p. 2.
    
    
    8. John L. McLucas, director of National Reconnaissance Office, to Secretary of Defense
       Melvin Laird, “Taking Stock of the National Reconnaissance Program,” 18 December
       1972, p. 12, http://www.nro.gov/foia/declass/GAMHEX/HEXAGON/9.PDF
    
    
    9. Nixon and Kissinger blamed State for “failure to take proper photographs of Eg yptian
       positions ... which led Washington mistakenly to deny that Cairo was violating the agree-
       ment.” Barry Rubin, Secrets of State: The State Department and the Struggle over US Foreign
       Policy, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985, p. 164.
    
    
    
    


18. Norman Polmar (Spyplane: The U-2 History Declassified, Osceola, WI: MBI, 2001,
    pp. 166–7) attributes mediating the ceasefire itself entirely to Kissinger.


19. Yisra’el Landress, Davar, 2 August 1970, p. 1.


20. Beam, Multiple Exposure, p. 248. US and British veterans’ websites clarify that the U-2s
    were posted to Akrotiri, Cyprus, stopping over at an RAF base in Britain; one of them
    dates the first monitoring flight as late as 11 August: “both the CIA (Det G) and the
    USAF set about planning a ‘fast move’ of a U-2 ... the CIA were quicker off the mark.”
    Alan Johnson, “U-2 Dragon Lady, RAF Akrotiri,” http://www.u2sr71patches.co.uk/1sters.
    htm; Louis E. Dye, “Brief Bio: U-2 Program,” http://roadrunnersinternationale.com/
    dye_l.html


21. Jeffrey Richelson, The Wizards of Langley: Inside the CIA’s Directorate of Science and
    Technolog y, Boulder, CO: Westwood, 2001, pp. 138–9.


22. But even the operation’s codename was known by 1976, when it was given in Joseph
    S. Roucek, “Cyprus in the Mediterranean Geopolitics,” Il Politico (Univerity of Pavia,
    Italy), 41, 4 (1976), p. 737.


23. That is, 1968–72, John L. McLucas’s term as NRO director. McLucas to Laird in ibid.


24. Craig A. Daigle, “The Limits of Détente: The United States, the Soviet Union, and the
    Arab–Israeli Conflict, 1969–1973,” PhD thesis, George Washington University, 2008,
    p. 188.