Posted on 08/13/2014 7:05:16 AM PDT by SJackson
Editor’s note; In connection with the 40th Anniversary of the resignation of President Richard M. Nixon, Roger Stone is releasing his second book, Nixon’s Secrets: The Rise, Fall and Untold Truth about the President, Watergate, and the Pardon (Skyhorse Publishing), on August 11th. Stone was a close confidante and adviser to Nixon during his post-presidency.
Below is an exclusive excerpt where Stone writes of President Nixon’s support of Israel during the Yom Kippur War, despite much opposition from both his Cabinet and Congress.
At 6 a.m. on Saturday October 6, 1973 White House Chief of Staff Alexander Haig woke up President Nixon at his home in California with news that Egypt and Syria had attacked Israel.
The news of Middle East aggression shocked the American foreign policy and intelligence communities to such an extent that a study prepared by the CIA Center for the Study of Intelligence in conjunction with the Nixon Presidential Library concluded, “To intelligence historians, the October 1973 war is almost synonymous with ‘intelligence failure.’”
It became clear in the hours after the attack that the Arabs had surprised Israeli forces and the Israeli state faced the greatest threat to its survival since the original war of independence three decades earlier. Along the border with Syria, along the so-called Golan Heights, 180 Israeli tanks faced 1,400 Syrian tanks supplied by the Soviet Union; likewise Egypt crossed the Suez with 80,000 soldiers facing little Israeli opposition.
In the days following the Yom Kippur attacks Israel suffered a number of setbacks, and Washington became increasingly concerned. Nixon alone concluded that the US must step in to back Israel against Arab forces whose primary military supplier was the Soviet Union—the 1973 war became more than just necessary to save the Jewish state, it became a struggle between the world’s preeminent Super Powers. Kissinger opposed the US action.
It is one of history’s great ironies that Nixon’s proposed airlift played an integral role in the salvation of the Jewish state, as in the years since the release of the Watergate Tapes it has become one of the established facts of the Nixon mythos that the president was a raving anti-Semite. The tapes continue to damn Nixon, who maintained a cognitive dissonance when it came to several prominent Jewish members of his senior staff-Kissinger, White House counsel Leonard Garment, and speechwriter William Safire as well as economist Herb Stein.
In one rant from 1971, Nixon railed against the Jews who in his estimation were both “all over the government” and disloyal, he told Haldeman that the Jews needed to be controlled by placing someone at the top “who is not Jewish.” Incredible, given the position in which he would find himself in two short years, Nixon would argue to Haldeman that, “most Jews are disloyal,” and “generally speaking, you can’t trust the bastards. They turn on you.” In another exchange, just months before the 1973 war, Nixon rants to Kissinger about American Jews and what he saw as their selfish view of foreign policy.
On a call on April 19, 1973, Nixon revealed a concern that American Jews would “torpedo” a US-Soviet summit vowing that, “If they torpedo this summit… I’m gonna put the blame on them, and I’m going to do it publicly at nine o’clock at night before eighty million people”. Then, perhaps most damning, Nixon would go on to argue, “I won’t mind one goddamn bit to have a little anti-Semitism if it’s on that issue… they put the Jewish interest above America’s interest and it’s about goddamn time that the Jew in America realizes he’s an American first and a Jew second.”
Yet, Nixon would play a pivotal role in protecting the Jewish state, as Nixon recognized that the defeat of Israel was unthinkable for US interests. Nixon went to Congress to request authorization for emergency aid for Israel despite the Gulf States announcing a price increase of seventy percent in the wake of the Arab assault. After Nixon went to Congress for authorization, the Gulf States responded vigorously, announcing a total boycott of the United States, causing the oil shock of 1973.
The Gulf States’ retaliation simply served to further entrench the opposition of many who had fought to slow or halt the shipment of weapons to the Israelis (the former being represented by Secretary of State and National Security Advisor Kissinger, the latter being represented by Secretary of Defense Schlesinger). Nixon hit the roof when he learned that Kissinger was delaying the airlift because of a concern that it would offend the Russians. Despite the opposition of his national security and foreign policy brain trust, Nixon ordered the airlift, saying, “We are going to get blamed just as much for three planes as for three hundred,” and later in exasperation at the slow start of US support, said “Use every [plane] we have—everything that will fly.”
Finally, after several days of internal politicking amongst the upper echelons of the Administration, Nixon got his airlift: “Operation Nickel Grass.” Over the course of the airlift 567 missions were flown, delivering over 22,000 tons of supplies, and an additional 90,000 tons were delivered to Israel by sea. Later in her life, Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir would admit that upon hearing of the airlift during a cabinet meeting, she began to cry.
Nixon’s loyalty drove him to save a US ally from the threat of utter destruction despite the real risk of economic crisis, and political cost to himself. To borrow the phrase from the Kennedy clan, Nixon’s decision to aid Israel was a true “profile in courage.”
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Great Post. Nixon was smart and cunning. God Bless Israel now more than ever as Obama is simply evil.
In my opinion, saving Israel was President Nixon’s greatest accomplishment.
Well at least Nixon was good for someone besides China.
A few years ago, I was asked by our Rabbi’s wife, a flaming liberal, how I could have switched sides from being a leftist to a conservative Republican. There were a number of factors involved in my political evolution, not the least of which was growing up, but I decided to answer her in terms she might understand, so I answered “the Yom Kippur War.”
“What did that have to do with it?”
“I realized that if we had done what liberals and leftists wanted us to do and disarmed, we would not have been able to help Israel survive that war.”
She had no answer, and she walked away.
Interesting read.
I was one such person....
Regarding Israel, Nixon was "rough around the edges." But when push came to shove, he put American power behind her. When one looks at those 175MikeMikes moving through the Sinai Desert bearing the Star of David, the issue is not in doubt.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2014/08/08/half-the-country-doesnt-think-watergate-was-a-real-scandal-why/
Subsequently, so-called "journalists" ignored worse crimes committed by subsequent Presidents, whom they favored.
Anyone remember what happened to the sailors on the USS Liberty? Thirty-four dead American sailors....direct attack by the government of Israel.
The United States did much more than airlift supplies during the Yom Kippur war. President Nixon laid everything on the line at that time to support Israel.
I agree.
The airlift kept Israel from being forced to use nuclear weapons in 1973.
No telling what might have happened if Israel had stopped the enemy with battlefield nuclear weapons. Golda was crying with joy that she would not have to authorize their use. She would have let loose with them if needed...”Never Again” is not just a cliche, it’s an action plan.
Yes, Israel had a limited number of low-yield nuclear weapons in 1973.
Nixon: “You send everything that flies, dammit!!”
A great moment.
Great and important article.
I remember that, I was a young Marine PFC on a Navy troop carrier when that took place. The rumors of Russian subs in the area scarred the crap out of me. I spent as much time as possible top side, just looking out.
We got almost no news from anyone. What a time.
This is very true. I was only 12 at the time, but I lived 20 miles from McGuire AFB, and the ground started shaking and the windows rattling from all of the C-5As and C-141s taking off for Israel. I remember VERY well the worldwide alert of all US forces when Brezhnev "offered" to send several Soviet airborne divisions as "peacemakers" to stand between Israel and Syria. Nixon did, indeed, stand for Israel as well as this country's interests, and as someone who cares deeply about Israel I will never forget that - regardless of Nixon's personal feelings and foibles.
What disturbs me is why so many of my co-religionists cannot accept the fact that it was a Republican President that actually did more for Israel by way of actions than all Democrat Presidents did, combined, through their bloated rhetoric. These people have swallowed the liberal Kool-Aid, something that I find unacceptable from people that are supposed to be intelligent.
I don't remember the particular book, but I do remember reading that the Israelis communicated to Nixon that they were going down the tubes because of the quantities of first-class Soviet equipment that the Egyptians and Syrians had, and that if things didn't change in a day or two that they were going to nuke the Arabs - EVERYWHERE. Including the Aswan Dam and the Saudi oil fields. Now, this was a book and not tablets handed down from God, but I remember that the author was someone with some high degree of credibility. I don't know that the Israelis would have gone that far, but if you're looking at a second genocide within a generation it isn't too far-fetched to say "screw everyone else if they're doing this or letting it be done to us."
That’s probably true. Golda Meir is said to have communicated to Nixon over the phone that Israel wouldn’t be going quietly, even if it meant problems for the US. However I doubt that was the basis of Nixon’s decision. I think he viewed it as a proxy cold war battle, which he didn’t want to lose. And in his memoirs he’s indicated the greatest mistake of the Eisenhower administration was pressuring Israel, England and France to return the Sinai and Suez canal in anticipation of Egyptian gratitude. Which was returned by an Egyptian move toward the Soviets.
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