In the evening, Nixon suggested to Kissinger that the scheduled Moscow summit might be
cancelled. Kissinger raved that India wanted to detach not just Bengal, but Kashmir also, leading tothe further secession of Baluchistan and the total dismemberment og Pakistan. "Fundamentally,"
wrote Kissinger of this moment, "our only card left was to raise the risks for the Soviets to a level
where Moscow would see larger interests jeopardized" by its support of India, which had been
lukewarm so far.
December 9-- The State Department and other agencies were showing signs of being almost human,
seeking to undermine the Nixon-Kissinger- Bush policy through damaging leaks and bureaucratic
obstructionism. Nixon, "beside himself" over the damaging leaks, called in the principal officers of
the Washington Special Action Group and told them that while he did not insist on their being loyal
to the President, they ought at least to be loyal to the United States. Among those Nixon insultedwas Undersecretary of State U. Alexis Johnson. But the leaks only increased.
December 10--Kissinger ordered the US navy to create Task Force 74, consisting of the nuclear
aircraft carrier Enterprise with escort and supply ships, and to have these ships proceed from their
post at Yankee Station in the Gulf of Tonkin off Vietnam to Singapore. [fn 17]
In Dacca, East Pakistan, Major General Rao Farman Ali Khan, the commander of Pakistani forces
in Bengal asked the United Nations representative to help arrange a cease-fire, followed by the
transfer in of power in East Pakistan to the elected representatives of the Awami League and the
"repatriation with honor" of hisurrender had been approved by Yahya Khan. But when Yahya Khan heard that the US fleet hads forces back to West Pakistan. At first it appeared that this de facto
been ordered into the Indian Ocean, he was so encouraged that he junked the idea of a surrender and
ordered Gen. Ali Khan to resume fighting, which he did.
Colonel Melvin Holst, the US military attache in Katmandu, Nepal, a small country sandwichedbetween India and China in the Himalayas, received a call from the Indian military attache, who (^)
asked whether the American had any knowledge of a Chinese military buildup in Tibet. "The Indian
high command had some sort of information that military action was increasing in Tibet," said
Holst in his cable to Washington. The same evening from the Soviet military attache, Loginov, who
also asked about Chinese military activity. Loginov said that he had spoken over the last day or twowith the Chinese military attache, Chao Kuang-chih "advising Chao that the PRC should not get too (^)
serious about intervention because USSR would react, had many missles, etc." [fn 18] At the
moment the Himalaya mountain passes, the corridor for any Chinese troop movement, were all
open and free from snow. The CIA had noted "war preparations" in Tibet over the months since the
Bengal crisis had begun. Nikolai Pegov, the Soviet Ambassador to New Dehli, had assured theIndian government that in the eventuality of a Chinese attack on India, the Soviets would mount a (^)
"diversionary action in Sinkiang."
December 11- Kissinger had been in town the previous day, meeting the Chinese UN delegate.
Today Kissinger would meet with the Pakistani Deputy Prime Minister, Ali Bhutto, in Bush's suit atthe Waldorf- Astoria. Huang Hua, the Chinese delegate, made remarks which Kissinger chose to
interpret as meaning that the "Chinese might intervene militarily even at this late stage."
December 12- Nixon, Kissinger, and Haig met in the Oval Office early Sunday morning in a
council of war. Kissinger later described this as a crucial meeting, where, as it turned out, "the firstdecision to risk war in the triangular Soviet-Chinese-American" relation was taken. [fn 19]
During Nixon's 1975 secret grand jury testimony to the Watergate Special Prosecution Force, the
former President insisted that the United States had come "close to nuclear war" during the Indo-
Pakistani conflict. According to one attorney who heard Nixon's testimony in 1975, Nixon had