Looking back on 1974, it is very hard to describe to a new audience the tensions that pervaded the White House. Even though Kissinger had just achieved a major diplomatic triumph by working out the first Israeli-Syrian agreement after a 33-day act of shuttle diplomacy, Nixon was feeling the increasing pressure on him from the Watergate investigation. His secret telephone tapes were being sought by the special Watergate prosecutor; Nixon’s top aides, H.R. Halderman and John Ehrlichman had been forced to resign in 1973 and both were later convicted and served brief jail sentences.
When Kissinger returned from his successful Israeli-Syrian shuttle agreement in early June, he was surprised to find that Nixon wanted to share the “good” Middle East fallout and to go to the area himself, with Kissinger as his guide. In that Watergate atmosphere, stories had been appearing in many newspapers, including The New York Times [by Seymour Hersh] alleging that Kissinger had ordered wiretaps on his own associates. He had denied being responsible for these wiretaps when he was being confirmed as Secretary of State in 1973, but the accusations continued. Kissinger blew up at a press conference in Vienna on the way to the Middle East and said he would resign if not cleared by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
The committee cleared him.
Nixon’s trip to the region was a success; he was warmly welcomed everywhere he went—Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Syria and Israel. But soon after he returned home, Nixon decided that rather than face an impeachment trial in the House of Representatives, he would resign. He did so on August 9, 1974, having announced his decision in a televised address on the previous evening..
The advent of Vice President Gerald Ford to the presidency also came at a low water mark for American foreign policy. Even though the United States had been instrumental in getting South Vietnam’s leaders to agree to the end of the war in January 1973, by the time Ford took office in the summer of 1974, Congress was adamant against supplying South Vietnam with any more military help and against any further U.S. intervention in the war there. The United States, to get Saigon’s participation in the peace agreement, had promised to come to its aid in case the North Vietnamese violated the accord. As a result, even though they had signed a ceasefire with the South Vietnamese in Paris, by 1075, it was becoming clear that the North was about to conquer the South. Ironically, in March 1975, Kissinger accompanied by the press set out on a mission to bring about a more meaningful agreements between Egypt and Israel. The initial accord in 1974 was more establishing the cease-fire than in any Israeli pullback. But Sadat was continuing to press for such a pullback by Israel.
So we left Washington in mid-March 1975, with Kissinger hoping for the second Egyptian-Israeli accord. Yitzhak Rabin had replaced Golda Meir as prime minister, and although Rabin would later be seen as a force for peace, at that time he was stubborn. Sadat wanted the Israelis to pull back from the so-called Mitla and Gidi passes in the Sinai and to return control of the oil wells in the Sinai. A deal would also require peace-keepers, U.S. and/or U.N.
Unfortunately, with the North Vietnamese already violating the January 1973 peace accord, and Congress refusing to provide much aid to the South Vietnamese, there was a sense of foreboding in the Kissinger camp as we headed to the Middle East in early March. On March 19, 1973, I wrote an article for The Times: “Reporters aboard the plane were given an appraisal of the overall world situation that was the most pessimistic they had heard in some time.”
“Some of the comments were clearly self-serving and underlined Mr. Kissinger’s well-known concerns about Congress and the erosion of United States influence abroad. But reporters were inclined to take most of them seriously as at least reflecting what Mr. Kissinger and his closest aides were thinking.”
“All around the world, American diplomatic influence is on the decline,” the newsmen and women were told. “Portugal, Turkey, Cambodia, Vietnam, the Middle East—all are problems that no longer respond to American pressure and influence.” Not only was South Vietnam soon to fall, but so was Cambodia and Laos.
The round of diplomacy between Israel and Egypt did not seem to go well. But I think we correspondents, having seen HAK pull out an accord in Syria, were confident that he would succeed again. But in the end it was not to happen. Yet, after we correspondents had sat around all Saturday, March 23, 1975, we were called in for a press conference with Robert Anderson, who announced that the latest round of negotiations were being suspended. It was a significant blow to American prestige at a time when the United States was suffering substantially by the rapidly deteriorating situation in the Far East.
On our way home, Kissinger’s plane stopped to refuel in London, and while we were on the ground Kissinger gave us a significant background briefing in which it was quite clear to all of us that he was holding the Israelis principally responsible for the failure to achieve an accord.
Upon returning to Washington, President Ford called for a reevaluation of the U,S, foreign aid program, a move that was immediately challenged by the Israeli supporters in Congress who viewed the move as an effort to pressure Israel into making more concessions. Washington at that time was a place full of crises. much of it economic. New York City at that time was laying off many city workers and various crises kept developing.
The first sign of a breakthrough occurred just before the July 4 holiday when Simca Dinitz, the Israeli ambassador to Washington, summoned me and a few other reporters to his office to reveal that he had engaged in a form of shuttle diplomacy, flying on a U.S. Air Force plane to the Virgin Islands for two days of talks with Kissinger, who was vacationing at the Caneel Bay Plantation, the Rockefeller-owned resort on Saint John. Those talks ultimately led to a series of meetings over the next month and a half. Finally on August 15, 1975, I wrote a story with a Washington dateline that said: “United States and Israeli officials completed work today on the draft language for a new agreement between Israel and Egypt now in the final stages of negotiation,” Kissinger flew to Vail, Colorado to brief Ford on the breakthrough.
Kissinger, himself, with the usual complement of reporters, headed back to the Middle East in late August and was able to wrap up the accord in less than a week. Israel agreed to withdraw from the Mitla and Gidi passes in Sinai and to turn over to Egypt the Abu Rodeis oil field to Egypt. In return the Israelis got pledges from the United States that their oil supply would not be reduced and their security not impaired. U.S. observers would be stationed on the passes.
An important sidelight on that trip for me was that a passenger on that plane was a freshman Congressman from Brooklyn, Stephen Solarz, who was very interested in foreign affairs, and in particular, the fate of Syrian Jews, many of whom lived in his home district. He worked hard behind the scenes to get Assad to let many of the Syrian Jewish women to emigrate to find husbands. He later played an important role in my coverage of the latest accord.
When we returned to Washington, much of the accord was secret, Joseph Sisco, Kissinger’s top aide, briefed the House Foreign Affairs Committee in secret on the contents of the accord. That afternoon, Solarz called me and read to me from his notes virtually all the secret parts. That gave The Times a nice exclusive for a while. The day my story ran, Sisco called me up and said to me on the phone: “Bernie, one question. Was your source from the committee or from the department.” I replied, “Joe, I’m sorry but no comment.”
This turned out to be Kissinger’s last Middle East negotiation. With 1976 an election year, Kissinger took trips to Africa to visit Zaire, and to talk to South African leaders about setting up independent countries on its borders. It was also a chance to revisit Iran, where we all went to a small caviar “factory” on the Caspian Sea.
Kissinger
