DECEPTION-ON-NILE, JULY 1972than solid gold as promised.^12 Vakhtin reckoned in retrospect that “the Eg yptians
were trying ‘to sweeten the pill,’” but his account hardly reflects any bitterness at the
time beyond the Soviets’ usual contempt.
Once flown back home, the advisers and interpreters received somewhat more
welcome and recognition than the mass of Kavkaz regulars who would form the bulk
of the withdrawal and return by ship. Murzintsev received the Order of the Red
Banner. Vakhtin, a recent alumnus of the Military Languages Institute, wrote that his
entire group of interpreters who had served from 1970 to 1972, forty officer gradu-
ates and fifty noncoms who were still students, were nominated for the somewhat
lower Order of the Red Star, “the biggest mass award in the history of the institute.”^13
But those advisers and interpreters who were not due to be relieved were not with-
drawn at all.
On Eg ypt’s Revolution Day, four SAMs were fired at Israeli planes flying east of
the canal and Eg ypt claimed a Phantom shot down (the IAF denied it). This first
cross-canal SAM launch since the Stratocruiser downing was ascribed in Israel to a
demonstration of the Eg yptians’ capability to operate the “missile shield” on their
own. It underlined Sadat’s Revolution Day speech, in which he drew applause by
declaring “I am not a Soviet agent ... I will never be a Marxist.”^14
This was exactly the spin propagated by the Cairo gossip mill, which now applied
it also retrospectively to the previous, pre-“expulsion” incident. As the CIA reported
in hindsight, the dogfight on 13 June was now “rumored to have been the result of
an attempt by Eg yptian pilots to intercept an Israeli flight against Soviet orders or
advice, and the incident is said to have become another point of friction” between
them. The agency conjectured that “Israeli political leaders may be restrained from
retaliating for fear of the effect ... on the Soviet evacuation.”^15 In Langley, then, Sadat’s
“expulsion order” was accepted by way of “no sooner said than done.”
B. Kissinger’s feigned surprise
Chapter XXX of Kissinger’s memoirs is entitled “Sadat Expels the Soviets.” After
omitting the essential antecedents, Kissinger claims that Sadat’s announcement came
“as a complete surprise” to him—pretending that it was all Sadat’s doing, at Kissinger’s
own behest but without his being notified, and hiding his role in negotiating it with
the Soviets:
To be sure, my strateg y had sought to induce Cairo to lessen its reliance on the Soviet
Union. I had expected that at some point ... Sadat would be prepared to offer to trade
Soviet withdrawal for progress with us. But ... I never guessed that he would settle the issue
with one grand gesture, and unilaterally ... for no return.^16Contemporary accounts describe his rhetorical display of astonishment: “‘Why
has Sadat done me this favor?’ he asked his aides. ‘Why didn’t he get in touch with