THE SOVIET–ISRAELI WAR, 1967–1973Israelis and Soviets, but Louis had come with a “service passport” and was already
famous for predicting Khrushchev’s downfall, presumably based on inside informa-
tion. The Time Moscow bureau chief who dealt with Louis to smuggle out
Khrushchev’s memoirs characterized him as a “KGB disinformation agent” and
“authorized provocateur,” who had carried out similar missions in Taiwan (where he
was the first Soviet emissary) and China.^15
He now claimed to have anticipated the Israeli feelers and the Soviet response, “even
before Golda opened her mouth,” by cabling his Israeli friend on the same day she
approached the Finns. The Israeli Foreign Ministry, however, stated that Louis con-
tacted the doctor only on 9 June, and his visa request was received later.^16 This is borne
out by Primakov’s memoir, which shows that Golda’s message was reported to Moscow
on 28 May and that on 3 June the Politburo tasked Andropov to follow up on her ini-
tiative. Louis’s KGB handler and recent biographer, Maj.-Gen. Vyacheslav Kevorkov,
states that KGB Chairman Andropov used to give Louis verbal instructions personally,
and describes the latter’s eager compliance when he was offered—rather than proposed
himself—the mission to conduct “secret talks in Israel.” Kevorkov claims that Louis was
never on the agency’s payroll but gladly accepted such assignments to maintain the
insider’s aura that enhanced his journalistic status, as well as for the sheer adventure.^17
The KGB simultaneously continued its covert operations against Israel. On
11 June, PFLP gunmen on a speedboat out of South Yemen fired rocket-propelled
grenades at the Israeli-operated tanker Coral Sea as it sailed, under a Liberian flag,
through the Bab el-Mandeb strait into the Red Sea with a load of Iranian oil.^18 The
PFLP declared that its operation was aimed as much at Iran and Saudi Arabia as at
Israel and its Red-Med pipeline—which in 1970 had reached peak traffic—as a chan-
nel for their exports to the West to replace the Suez Canal.^19 Despite the organiza-
tion’s, and the South Yemenis’, strong Soviet connections, there is no record that
Soviet complicity was suspected at the time. But newly released documents from the
Mitrokhin Archive describe in detail how KGB experts had given the PFLP “an
authoritative recommendation to organize and implement” the attack, and provided
the RPG-7 launchers.^20
Israel first suppressed the news about the tanker attack and then played down any
relevance to the Eg yptian front; no mention at all was made of a Soviet input, even if
one was suspected.^21 In contrast, the excessive secrecy around Louis’s visit restarted,
when it was exposed, the periodic speculation that he came “to examine the possibility”
of rapprochement.^22 Even if the trip to Israel was his own idea, he already had the repu-
tation of “the Soviet journalist who many people think is a Soviet government agent.”
In Moscow, where he was hosting Eg yptian Foreign Minister Riad, Soviet Foreign
Minister Gromyko “brushed off the reports ... ‘they don’t even deserve to be refuted,’
he said.”^23 But when Israel imposed a similar news blackout on a visit by CIA Director
Richard Helms and it too was broken, this only reinforced assumptions that follow-
ing Louis’s talks