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Historians/History

Historian's Diary: The State Department's Conference on the Six Day War

by Judith Apter Klinghoffer
Ms. Klinghoffer is a senior research associate in the department of Political Science at Rutgers University, Camden. She is the co-author of International Citizens' Tribunals: Mobilizing Public Opinion to Advance Human Rights and the author of Vietnam, Jews and the Middle East: Unintended Consequences. Click here for her HNN blog.

Following is Ms. Klinghoffer's report on the recent conference by the State Department concerning the Six Day War.

Pre-conference – I noticed on H- diplo a call for papers on the Six Day War. I offered to present one. I was busy, hated to regurgitate as I have not done any new research on the topic so I procrastinated. Luckily the organizer suggested I serve as a commentator or chair. Thrilled, I chose to comment. My husband, Arthur, decided to serve as chair. In mid December we received the papers to be presented on our panels. Mine dealt with the British and West German response to the war. I discovered that Western Europe decided that the future of the Middle East belonged to the Soviets. Dr. James Vaughan of the University of Wales in Aberystwyth included quotes from a December 1967 memorandum written by Sir Paul Gore-Booth “as a supplement to the brief for the Cabinet economic discussion and the further brief on the Chancellor of the Exchequer's proposal for defense economies":

We are clearly faced with the possibility of a historic change in the balance of power in the area bounded by the Mediterranean , the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean including the Gulf. The Russians are pursuing, as they always pursue, a policy of combined national power politics and the promotion of ideology, using one to supplement the other. They have taken over the position of the Egyptians in the Yemen and they are not there for fun. They are both consolidating their power position and using the inter-Arab cold war as the means of doing it. If this initiative is finally successful, our oil supplies will ultimately be in indirect but pretty effective Russian control. It is probable that this result is in some degree inevitable (my emphasis) . We are pulling out because we are nor prepared to make sacrifices, economies, political and social necessary to stay. . . . In the immediate future, again, if (the Russian) succeed – the situation will alter directly and seriously to Western disadvantage.

This is the kind of document I (and I suspect not only I) love, the kind that adds the fine lines to the broad brush strokes I painted in my book. Small wonder Rusk complained to the British that the U.S. was “facing a difficult period in world affairs and Britain was saying it would not be there.” Apparently the West Germans reached a similar conclusion. Dr. Carol Fink of Ohio State University traced the decision to embark on Oest Politics to the aftermath of the war. Europeans may be ruthless realists, but they seem to be very poor predictors of future winners. At least Britain has learned her lesson. In any case, I looked forward to further such enlightening revelations.

Sunday Reception, January 11, 2004 - As recommended we stayed at the State Plaza just across the street from the Department. It is not the most central location, but it is the most convenient one. Our room was beautiful though we later discovered that not all our fellow conferees were as lucky. The hotel is in the process of renovation. The pre-conference reception was next door at the foreign affairs club. In addition to the expected reunion with old time friends and polite small talk with known rivals, I struck up a conversation with some fairly senior foreign service officers which reminded me of a June 6, 1967 memo John Roche sent to LBJ complaining about finding in foggy bottom “a real underground sentiment for kissing some Arab backsides” which he warns is “stupid” because it results in “Arab contempt for us.” “Which brings us back to the question once (perhaps erroneously) attributed to you: 'Whose State Department is it?'" I was repeatedly assured that the Arabs are not anti-Americans but they merely object to American policies. How do the French say? Plus Ca change . . .

Monday Morning - Even before downing our morning coffee, we come face to face with our amiable minders. Yes, I said minders for they were everywhere. They even accompanied us to the bathrooms and waited outside. I take the opportunity to talk with my young minders. To my delight , I learn that since the office of the historian has just hired three new Ph.D.s, we can expect the declassification process to gather speed. To lunch we walk like a kindergarten class – we are counted before leaving the conference room and we march two by two with our “teacher.” The culprit, I learn while waiting for the elevator, is not only code orange. It is the bug that was found in one of the conference rooms during the Albright years.

The conference room itself is more reminiscent of a news making event than a sedate historical get together. It is buzzing with TV cameras (not only those of C-span though the invaluable channel filmed and broadcasted the entire first day of the conference – the one in which only my husband participated!), reporters and excited partisans. Why? Because the released documents included information long sought by researchers obsessed with the USS Liberty. I do not mean to be callous. But like the matters of Kennedy or the Lincoln assassinations, no documentary evidence will ever close the case. For years both those who argue that Israel deliberately attacked the Liiberty and those who insisted that it was a mistake have maintained that classified U.S. documents would prove their case. They were especially interested in NSA intercepts of conversations between an Israeli control tower and two helicopters surveying the attack scene. The NSA released the intercepts last summer. This week's conference was the first time the agency allowed one of its historians to interpret them.

“The intercepts to me suggest strongly that the Israeli attackers did not know they were aiming deadly fire at a vessel belonging to the United States,” NSA official David Hatch told the conference. “In a careful reading, the intercepted communications between the air controller at Hatzor and helicopters dispatched in the wake of the attack show a progressive reversal of perception on their part.”

“At first — confidence the aircraft were to inspect an Egyptian ship. Then - signs that the ship might not be Egyptian after all. And finally — growing evidence that it could belong to a friendly nation,” he said. This, Hatch noted, did not provide “absolute proof” of Israel 's claim of mistaken identity because there were no intercepts of conversations during the actual attacks. “We must admit that we cannot learn from it what the higher-ups knew, what they ordered or why they ordered it,” Hatch said.

State Department historian Harriet Schwar who edited the new volume assured the assembled that “I saw no transcripts of the attack itself or any indication there had been such transcripts.” What the documents did reveal , Schwar noted was that the CIA soon concluded the attack was a mistake. According to the CIA report, “the Israelis were not aware at the time of the attack they were attacking a U.S. ship,” Schwar said. The report “concluded that the attack was not made in malice but was by mistake, representing gross negligence.” The Defense Intelligence Agency and an extensive review by presidential adviser Clark Clifford concurred with those conclusions, Schwar added. Clifford's conclusion was significant because initially he had advised President Johnson to treat the attack the way he would if the Soviets or Arabs were responsible — in other words, as an act of war.

The real argument between Israel and the U.S. concerned the question of whether “heads had to roll.” The American administration wanted Israel to punish those responsible for what it considered “gross negligence.” Not that they punished any of the American culprits for their role in the tragic affair. The Israelis concluded that “the errors committed, though unfortunate, were reasonable in a combat situation, and not criminally negligent in nature.” All the usual experts were on hand along with the media, survivors and hot heads.

I was much more interested in the ironic and timely paper presented by a member of the CIA History staff Dr. David Robarge on the subject, “CIA Estimates and the Six Day War.” I was taken aback to discover Robage accurately described the prestige the agency and its CIA director garnered from the “accurate and timely intelligence” they provided during the war, the way it turned a skeptical president into a believer and secured Helms a seat at the decision making table. I was surprised to see him ignore the agency's failure to pick up the planed May 27 Egyptian attack on Israel . (See my "Face It: Intelligence Agencies Sometimes Fail." ) When I questioned Dr. Robage about this omission, he was aghast. Neither Helms nor CIA documents mentioned the potentially crucial mistake.

Lunch - We sat with a number of Israeli and Arab conference participants. On the surface, discussion focused more on the present and the future than the past. But the palpable fear and distrust of the Arabs which permeated my fellow intellectuals was disturbing. They continue to prefer the devil they know (be it Asad or Arafat) to the devil they do not. Hence, they continue to oppose the democratization of the Middle East, much preferring to place their fate in the hands of “enlightened” dictators.

Monday Afternoon - Much more sedate atmosphere as many of the reporters, cameras and partisans left the premises. I was fascinated by a paper which dealt with the Soviet military preparation prior to the war presented by Isabella Ginor . It was based on East European documents. She promised to send me a copy. Her previous articles on the subject can be found at meria.com. Question time belonged to the audience and once again Liberty partisans were the first to reach the microphones. They included an elderly former American ambassador spouting far fetched anti-Israeli conspiracy theories. Afterwards, I told him how disappointed I was to hear such theories voiced by a serious person like himself. In a manner reminiscent of Howard Dean, he claimed that he merely repeated accusations floating in the wild blue yonder. “You were an ambassador, when you repeat such hogwash you give it credibility,” I continued to chide disrespectfully. “Do you think the Chinese would ever believe that the bombing of their Belgrade embassy was an accident?" I asked. “I happen to know it was,” he said and began to tell me of some inside knowledge he had of the matter. “But do you think you would ever convince the Chinese?” I asked. He looked bewildered and grateful as a fellow former Foreign Service officer used his diplomatic skills to extract him from the unpleasant conversation.

I ended up having a similar if a more pleasant exchange with the pretty young woman who escorted us out of the building. She asked how we enjoyed the day and I told her I was disappointed by the overemphasis on the Liberty . “You know, those poor survivors,” she responded. “I know,” I repeated “but there is no way to convince them any more than you will ever convince the Chinese or the Iranians for that matter.” I told her of a Chinese friend of mine, a person who received his Ph.D. in this country, participated in the Fulbright program, sent his only daughter to study in the U.S. and yet, after the attack on the embassy in Belgrade was amongst those affirming on Chinese television that there was no way that the bombing was accidental. She said she has never considered the parallel. To my delight, she returned to the same subject the following day and noted how much she has been thinking about the comparison.

Tuesday Morning – All was quite in the conference room. The only TV camera belonged to the State Department. This was the day for scholars. The papers were much more narrowly focused and Jim Hershberg, God bless him, did his “shtick.” He arrived late for his panel bearing gifts, a batch of newly released and translated documents from the East European archives which he proceeded to distribute to the participants. The sole heat generated came during question time from a representative of the Syrian embassy who complained about the paucity of Arab participants. Indeed, there were a large number of Israeli participants but only a single Egyptian and a single Jordanian. The organizers retorted that they did their best. Always prepared, Jim asked whether the Arab countries have opened their archives to their scholars or have any plans to do so. “The best way to get your side of the story told,” he correctly noted, “is to open your archives.” He would be thrilled to help. (Well connected Arab scholars do get a limited access to some archives, but they are not permitted to photo copy the documents or even to take notes. Instead, they try to memorize as much of the information as possible and hurry to write it down once they leave the archive. The same procedure was described to me by a Chinese colleague.)

The lady from the Syrian embassy made no promises about archives, but complained that State was negligent in informing her embassy about the conference as she only found out about it the day before. There are also plenty of Arab–Americans who could have represented the Arab point of view, a sympathizer noted. The organizers responded that they did their best to publicize the conference within academic circles. When I raised the question with one of them during the break, they assured me that they had indeed placed calls for papers in numerous H-Nets, not to mention outlets of Middle East Studies. If so, why the absence? Perhaps because scholars had to seize the opportunity and offer to participate or perhaps because scholars had to fund their own participation. Americans, Israelis and a few Europeans did. The rest may have waited for a paid invitation. Of course, this did not mean that the Arab point of view was absent. Americans and Israelis enjoy nothing more than to take their own governments to task.

My Turn - Having noted that rather than critique the panel papers, commentators used the time to express their own views and promote their books, I happily jettisoned the notes and did the same. First and foremost, I was troubled by the a-historical claims expressed by some of the “old timers” to the effect that an easy Israeli victory was expected by all (it is reminiscent of all the pundits who assert that they always knew that getting rid of Saddam was going to be a cake walk). Actually, Egyptian air craft superiority led not only the Arab and Soviet military analysts to expect an Egyptian victory but also many European defense analysts including the French who supplied Israel with its aircraft. Moreover, both Dean Rusk and Robert McNamara worried sick about the prospect of an Israeli defeat given the May 20 and June 2 JCS report concerning the weakness of American military outside of the Vietnam theatre. “Imagine if Israel had lost?” I asked rhetorically. I was amazed to be accosted by a former ambassador to the region. “What if Israel had lost?” He repeated angrily. “It would have merely been a humanitarian disaster, nothing else.” A colleague standing next to me said: “Marshall," referring to the secretary of state's opposition to the creation of Israel. “Let me read to you the answer reached by the joint State-Defense Study group. I had it marked but had no time to read it,” I said. He waited. “The Nasserification of the region,” I read, “would have presented Washington ‘with a security crisis of major, and potentially catastrophic, proportions: NATO military positions were being outflanked. Communications between Europe, Africa and Asia were threatened. . . .Oil essential to the European (and Japanese) economies could be used as lever of political coercion.” “That's Aramco,” he said leaving in a huff. I read in the new volume a description of what Walt Rostow called an “interesting moment” – “Mr. Acheson looked back on the whole history of Israeli independence and, in effect, said that it was a mistake to ever create the State of Israel.” It was then that I finally understood the depth of Foggy Bottom's animosity toward the Jewish state. It was an animosity which the brilliant Israeli victory, which even Rusk admitted saved the U.S. from a rather tight spot, did little to assuage.

Suddenly, I felt tired. But we stayed for one more panel. It included an Egyptian historian who placed the blame for the war on a “de facto coup” by Nasser's trusted friend and army commander, abd al-Hakim Amer. I wanted to hear the Jordanian statesman’s presentation but Jim Hershberg promised to post the papers on line, so we left. I wish both Arab presenters were not relegated to the last afternoon of the conference. It was Friday and we were not the only ones anxious to avoid the rush hour traffic.

The New East European Documents - I cannot recommend more strongly that all those interested in the Middle East or the Cold War read the newly declassified East European documents. Maybe one day I will discuss them in some detail. The greatest shocker was to discover that the USSR did its best to urge Nasser to improve his relations with the U.S. American documents repeatedly describe how anxious the U.S. was to keep Nasser from falling into the Soviet camp. Little did the Americans know that they were working in tandem with Soviet officials who wanted to lessen as much as possible the burden of keeping afloat the Egyptian economy. In the end, Vietnam prevented both sides from exploiting successfully the Israeli victory though Brezhnev also blamed Arab extremism. He told his East European colleagues on July 11, 1967 : “Our military equipment was once again squandered. The Arabs are counting on us, they want to drag us into war. In Vietnam we are in fact already involved, but there is a political platform. And here we cannot fight just to liquidate Israel.” And when all was said and done, that was what the Arabs demanded of their friends then, and that is what many of them continue to demand now. The rest, as our Rabbis would say, is commentary.

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