The October War came as a major shock to the Israelis, who had been overly confident that no Arab state would dare attack Israel. But within a week, there was no sign of this “war” ending any time soon. I wrote after the first week: “Although Israeli forces have taken the offensive against Syria, they face a difficult and a long struggle if they try to crush the 60,000 man Egyptian force that has crossed the Suez Canal. Is Israel—or Egypt—willing to avoid such a bettle and agree to a diplomatic formula, including a cease-fire, that could open the way to a dialogue and, conceivably, to a more durable peace in the Middle East?” I added that the assumption that Israel could easily repulse a two-front offensive no longer seems valid.” I wrote: “Nearly 2,000 Israelis have been killled, double the number of those who died during the Six-Day War of 1967 That would be proportionate to 140,000 Americans dying. Five hundred Israeli tanks were destroyed and 75 planes shot down. But the Arabs have not made serious inroads into Israel and have suffered higher casualties..”
Initially, the United States and Israel were so confident that the Israelis were so militarily superior to the Arabs that the Egyptian attack on the mor ning of October 6 caught them by surprise and cost them dearly in men and materiel. At first, the U.S. defense establishment was wary of rushing to Israel’s aid. But Kissinger prevailed upon them and eventually planes and tanks were being shipped at a rapid pace.
In anticipation of Kissinger’s forthcoming and public trip to Peking (it was not called Beijing for a few more years), the Chinese Mission to the United States which was then located at the Mayflower Hotel in downtown Washington, arranged a big send-off dinner for the Kissinger party, including the correspondents and their wives at the hotel. We all had a grand time, but at the end of the dinner, Kissinger and his top aides slipped away and drove to Andrews AFB for what was then announced as an unpublicized trip to Moscow to discuss an end to the fighting in the month-old war. A cease-fire was achieved but it took months for the actual boundaries to be worked out between Israeli and Egypt and between Israel and Syria. And many more trips.
Finally, on November 5, 1973, Kissinger, his aides, including a department doctor, and 17 correspondents including me, left on our “China trip,” but it would turn out to be much more than that. It began with a landing in Morocco where Kissinger had to deal with Royal mounted honor guards, then on to Tunisia and next–Egypt where Kissinger had his first face to face meeting with Anwar Sadat with whom he was to develop a very close relationship through many negotiations. When we set out, I don’t think anyone believed the trip would be decisive in bringing about a lasting ceasefire. As a result of the visit to Egypt, Egypt reopened relations with the United States and exchanged ambassadors. Herman F. Eilts reopened the U.S. Embassy the next year. We then flew to Peking and while we were there, Joseph Sisco, who was Kissinger’s right-hand man, was able to get the Israeli cabinet to approve the arrangements worked out with Sadat for a lasting ceasefire. This led to the first Israeli-Egyptian accord since the armistice agreement negotiated in Rhodes in 1949 following the fighting after the birth of Israeli in 1948.
In one of my first “Reporter’s Notebook,” from Peking, I noted that Kissinger’s spokesman, Bob McCloskey had met with newsmen today on the tenth floor of the Mindzu Hotel, where the official party was staying. “It was one of the few times in the last week that he was been able to meet with newsmen at less than 30,000 feet.” I also noted that relations with the 17 reporters on the plane occasionally “became strained.” Before reaching Cairo Kissinger and McCloskey had both cautioned the newsmen from speculating that anything “spectacular” might arise from the Kissinger-Sadat talks. But when it was learned that the talks led to a restoration of relations and for the basis of a cease-fire with Israel, “some newsmen felt badly deceived.” At this point, I should also add that the term “newsmen” was not completely accurate. Helen Thomas, the White House correspondent for UPI, was it correspondent on the plane.
On this trip, we went to Amman to meet with King Hussein of Jordan, who continually frustrated Kissinger by his failure to make any deals with Israel. And then we all flew to Riyadh, the capital of Saudi Arabia, which in 1973 was sparsely populated. What I still remember is that after we landed, Kissinger jokingly said to me, and Murray Marder of the Washington Post and Barry Schweid of the Associated Press that since we were Jewish, we could not disembark. I replied in the same joking way that “if they let you off, we’ll come too.” We landed and were treated no differently from anyone else. Kissinger relates in his memoirs how virulently anti-Zionist King Faisal was in his diatribes, although later on, he tried to separate that from being anti-Jewish.
In Riyadh, for this trip, the U.S. Embassy had provided two phone lines to the outside world. I remember Marder waiting a long time for a connection and finally getting through, but instead of the Post, it turned out he was connected to a drug store in D.C.
We went on to Tehran where I was struck by the heavy traffic in the streets and the crowds in downtown Tehran. Several of us sampled the cuisine and of course enjoyed the caviar. We did not meet the Shah on this trip, but I had met him on one of his earlier trips to Washington and thought him then a very worldly diplomat and was truly shocked when he was forced to leave the country several years later. We then flew to Pakistan so Kissinger could repeat the way he entered China in 1971. As far as the Chinese portion of the trip, Kissinger spent a good deal of it trying to reassure the Chinese that Nixon’s problems with Watergate would not affect U.S. relations with China. I personally was struck by the fact that in 1973 things were still pretty primitive in China. The Mindzu Hotel, where we all stayed, was a second-class hotel. In a few more years, five star hotels would sprout up in China. We were all guests at consecutive dinners in the Great Hall of the Peoples. After a relaxing stopover in Tokyo and a chance to raid the American PX in Alaska, we returned home in the beginning of December 1073. But we were soon back on the Middle East diplomatic trail.
