THE COLD WAR'S LONGEST COVER-UP: HOW AND WHY THE USSR INSTIGATED THE 1967
WAR
By Isabella Ginor*
MIDDLE EAST REVIEW OFINTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS (MERIA)
MIDDLE EAST REVIEW OF INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS (MERIA) JOURNAL
MERIA JOURNAL Volume 7, Number 3 (September 2003)

Abstract: The Soviet warning to Egypt about supposed Israeli troop
concentrations on the Syrian border in May 1967 has long been considered a
blunder that precipitated a war which the USSR neither desired nor expected.
New evidence from Soviet and other Warsaw Pact documents, as well as memoirs
of contemporary actors, contradicts this accepted theory. The author
demonstrates that this warning was deliberate disinformation, part of a plan
approved at the highest level of Soviet leadership to elicit Egyptian action
that would provoke an Israeli strike. Soviet military intervention against
the "aggressor" was intended to follow and was prepared well in advance.

"The truth of anything at all doesn't lie in someone's account of it. It
lies in all the small facts of the time."
--Josephine Tey, The Daughter of Time(1)

...

The determining test of the Soviet leadership's intentions must remain
in the facts of its preparation for military action. Pending the unlikely
declassification of the directly relevant Soviet documents, the full scope
and content of the Soviet operational plan can only be approximated by
piecing together a growing number of partial but revealing and complementary
accounts from participants. These outline deliberate and complex military
moves which predated and parallelled the political-diplomatic efforts
designed to manipulate Egypt into provoking Israel to launch a first strike,
following which the USSR would intervene to support the Arab side against
the "aggressor."
Michael Oren cites numerous sources to establish that already in 1966,
with Egypt ostensibly barred from deploying substantial forces in Sinai, the
Soviets devised a master plan for such deployment codenamed "Conqueror."
More revealing, perhaps, is the description of this plan's strategy as
"shield and sword"--the motto and emblem of the KGB. One of this plan's
basic features (a lightly defended front line) was specifically designed "to
serve as bait for luring the Israelis into a frontal assault."(86)
Perhaps even more significant is that "Conqueror" was originated at the
same time that Egypt signed its defense treaty with Syria, which was invoked
by the warning of May 1967. Syria's role in the Soviet instigation of the
1967 crisis has not been adequately explored, partly because Russian
sources--not to mention Syrian ones--are absolutely silent on it. The
Egyptian-Syrian pact was signed in November 1966, just before Amer's visit
to Moscow; but the USSR began pressing for its conclusion shortly after the
coup on February 23 which put Damascus firmly in the Soviet camp and
provided a test case for the activist foreign policy formulated at the
Soviet Communist Party's congress a few weeks later. This official CPSU
doctrine asserted "unity of the three revolutionary trends in modern
times--global Socialism, national-liberation struggle of enslaved peoples
and the international workers' movement."(87)
Syrian leaders, including the new prime minister and defense minister,
were flown to Moscow in a Soviet military plane on April 18. On May 2, a
treaty was signed between Syria and the USSR.(88) Then, as documented by
Walter Laqueur, "During his May [10-18] 1966 visit to Cairo Kosygin
persuaded the Rais [Nasser] that a mutual defense pact between Cairo and
Damascus (to be guaranteed by Moscow) would be in the best interests of all
those concerned."(89) Kosygin's mission and his speech to the Egyptian
National Assembly on May 17, stressing "the important role of your country
also in the Arab peoples' struggle for the solution of the Palestinian
question"(90) must have been cleared by the Politburo with a clear view of
what was to follow. By that time the Soviet plan, at least in its political
aspect, might have begun to take shape. It conformed with the overall change
toward an activist strategy against the United States.
As recalled by Aleksandr Bovin, a member of Andropov's think-tank from
the latter's pre-KGB days (and later Brezhnev's speechwriter), "[By] about
the middle of 1966 there began to ripen within the Soviet leadership an
intent to stamp its foot, to scare the Americans, to put them in their
proper place."(91) The Soviet ambassador in Washington at the time, Anatoli
Dobrynin, writes that such a trend "was reflected during the 23rd Party
congress...which devoted much attention to Soviet-American relations and to
criticism of the USA's policy in Vietnam."(92) Ben-Tzur points to the
meetings held by the Soviet military with Arab and other delegations to the
23rd congress, in all of whose countries violence erupted in short
order.(93)
Syria's role in the CPSU's new global concept can be extrapolated from
contemporary Soviet propaganda, according to its standard methods: "In
Soviet diplomatic practice, every important foreign policy step...was
accompanied by a number of propaganda actions--including publication of
articles, statements by 'independent' organizations and public figures
supporting the Soviet position, invitation...to participate in a Soviet
V.I.P.'s visit, praising the latter and his position, and so on.... these
expensive operations were called 'propaganda insurance' or 'propaganda
backing.'"(94)
Such a campaign was begun already on May 8, 1966 in Izvestia, which for
the first time claimed that Syria "became a central object of military
blackmail and provocation by Israel."(95) On the same day, a TASS cable from
Damascus made the first mention of "a suspicious concentration and movement
of Israeli troops sighted lately on the border with Syria."(96) This report,
predating Kosygin's trip to Cairo, appeared only in the provincial
Sovietskaya Kirgizia. By May 21, upon his return, the national Sovietskaya
Rossiya was charging that "about a third of the Israeli army, after marching
to music through the streets of Haifa, was immediately following the parade
transferred to the Syrian border."(97)
On this background the first official Soviet protest about these troop
concentrations was delivered on May 25, 1966 by the same Semyonov to Israeli
Ambassador Katriel Katz. "The Soviets appear to have had an obsession about
such troop concentrations," writes Parker; Israel counted at least eight
such warnings before the last one actually touched off the war.(98) An apter
description is probably that given by Solomon M. Schwartz, one of the first
researchers on the subject: "The legend about energetic preparation by
Israel for attacking Syria became from the summer of 1966 an integral part
of the Soviet propaganda in the Middle East."(99) In the summer of 1966,
this was indeed a legend. Despite recurring firefights on the frontier,
Israel's entire defense line from Lake Tiberias northward was held by one
company of paratroops with minimal auxiliary units.(100)
The recurrence of these Soviet warnings is customarily invoked to
support the thesis that the May 1967 disinformation was merely a routine
exercise that happened to get out of hand. But this is purely speculative,
and certainly no better founded than an alternative interpretation: that the
repetition of these charges, together with increasingly acrimonious Soviet
statements and the encouragement of Syria to undertake actions (which indeed
provoked a forceful Israeli response climaxing on April 7), were part of a
deliberate escalation designed to prepare the ground for harnessing Egypt to
the military confrontation being prepared and to draw an Israeli strike
against Egypt as well.
On April 22, 1967, in Berlin on his way to a gathering of Communist
bloc leaders at Karlovy Vary, Brezhnev signalled that this regional build-up
was approaching its global objective: a strike at the United States via its
Israeli client. He notified his counterparts, East Germany's Walter Ulbricht
and Poland's Wladislaw Gomulka, of a "decisive blow" that was about to be
dealt to American interests in the Middle East--even at the cost of
sacrificing Nasser.(101) After the mid-May warning was transmitted to Egypt,
Soviet "propaganda insurance" concentrated on "pushing the United States
into the forefront of the Middle East crisis by making Washington
responsible for Israel's actions"(102) in its forthcoming assault on
Syria--precisely according to the guidelines now revealed for Operation
Marabu.
Preliminary details of the Soviet naval landing on Israeli shores with
air support, which was aborted after being put in motion on June 10, were
first published by the present writer in MERIA Journal three years ago,
based largely on reminiscences of participants.(103) In response to the
recent publication of these findings in Russian, Academician Aleksandr K.
Kislov has added the hitherto unconfirmed fact that the landing force
included (in addition to improvised platoons from warship crews) "desant
[landing] ships with well-prepared marines."(104) Since the original
publication, other substantial corroborating evidence has emerged, which,
among other aspects, indicates that planning of this operation began well
before mid-May 1967.
This was already described in 1996-1997, in mostly unused portions of
several interviews conducted by a BBC team for a documentary series. In
denying any Soviet intent to intervene in the 1973 Yom Kippur War, former
KGB "resident" in Cairo Vadim Kirpichenko said: "this was not...1967...when
we were insisting and we were prepared for some decisive actions."(105) And
in a portion of his interview that was not included in the broadcast series,
Foreign Ministry officer Pyrlin stated specifically: "As far as the
invasion readiness goes, yes, the order was given but there was no order to
bomb or to attack Israel--Grechko would not be able to issue such an order
without a Politburo decision."(106)

Preparations for the prospective landing were one feature of the
unprecedented reinforcement of naval units in the Mediterranean which had
been in full swing from January 1967, when Navy commander Gorshkov visited
Egypt.(107) According to accepted Soviet procedure, military moves on this
kind of scale required Politburo approval:

...such as mobilizations general or partial; substantial movements of
troops, particularly from one military district to another; large maneuvers,
especially unplanned ones; deployment and use of any type of weapons of mass
destruction; putting on alert all Soviet armed forces, or forces in one or
several military districts; and some other matters.(108)

The Politburo thus had to approve the "first large-scale movement of
Soviet naval units into the Mediterranean at the end of February" which
began shortly after Amer submitted his plan to Nasser and Gorshkov's visit
to Egypt.(109) The ships were drawn from the Black Sea and Northern Fleets.
Two of the participants in the projected landing operation give their
respective dates for starting the voyage to the Mediterranean as May 3, from
the Baltic and May 20, from an Arctic base.(110) At least one Soviet nuclear
submarine (K-131) was sent from the Barents Sea into the Mediterranean "on
the eve of crisis...by decision of the leadership."(111) Another Soviet
nuclear submarine, based in Alexandria, received orders to fire nuclear
missiles at Israel if the latter should use nuclear arms against the
Arabs.(112)
Soviet warships carrying nuclear weapons were also dispatched to the
Red Sea before the hostilities started, ostensibly because "...there existed
in Moscow a concern that in a turn of events unfavorable for it, Israel
could use certain kinds of WMD [weapons of mass destruction], the existence
of which never was denied by official Tel Aviv." On June 8, this squadron
was at close enough range to arrive "partially for deterrence, to the Red
Sea shores of Egypt"--a move triggered, according to the official Russian
history, by the Israeli attack on the U.S.S. Liberty.(113)
After another 10 ships passed from the Black Sea into the Mediterranean
on May 31,(114) the Soviet eskadra in the Mediterranean consisting of 40
battle units, including 10 submarines, was put on battle alert on June
1.(115) On June 4, it was given 12 hours to reach full battle alert.(116)
The head of Israeli SIGINT (signal intelligence) in 1967 told the present
writer that his unit tracked radio messages from 43 Soviet vessels in the
eastern Mediterranean but was unable to crack their code.(117) In any event,
these signals would not have given away the Soviet desant operation, as
orders to raise a landing party on each ship were given orally to the
captains on board the flagship.(118) The Soviet military interpreters into
Arabic, who were confined to the Soviet Embassy in Cairo since May 11, were
transferred at some point to Alexandria. There they were supposed to be
embedded with the landing forces "for liason with Israeli Arabs."(119)
As these preparations could not have been detected by U.S. or Israeli
intelligence unless revealed in signals, this belies subsequent Soviet and
Russian attempts to present this operation as purely deterrent. The same
applies to the combat alert ordered, according to Pyrlin, for Soviet land
and air forces "in the Transcaucasus,...in the Transcaspian, all the
districts oriented at the Middle East. It was publicly known that these
military districts are responsible for the situation... in the Middle East
region." Pyrlin claims "the fact that they were raised to alarm--it was
well known, and from that various conclusions could be drawn: either we are
about to initiate some military steps or whether it was going to be the
demonstration of force....It was meant as a demonstration of power."(120)
There is, however, no evidence that U.S. or any other Western intelligence
was aware of this.
On Sunday [June 4], in Ukraine, oral orders were also given to deploy a
"regiment" of strategic bombers to vantage points on the USSR's southern
fringe, "from where they could reach Sinai." With the possible exception of
the first order, all the instructions were delivered from Moscow over the
phone to save time over the decoding, according to the Air Force Corps
commander, Col. General (ret.) Vasili Reshetnikov. A day before, the pilots
were assigned pre-determined targets in Israel: "The objects...were named to
us--that strikes had to be delivered against: they were marked by the
geographical terms on the map; and we were particularly interested about the
anti-aircraft defense systems, the Hawk complexes."(121)
This reference to Israel's U.S.-supplied anti-aircraft missiles appears
to connect the Soviet operational plans to one of the USSR's central
concerns regarding Israel--its nuclear capability. The first Hawk batteries
were deployed in 1965 around the nuclear plant at Dimona.(122) The KGB
"resident" in pre-1967 war Israel mentions being ordered to check "the
reliability of existing information about the progress of works conducted in
Israel for producing nuclear weapons."(123) Dimona is known to have been, at
least on two occasions (May 17 and 26, 1967), the target of Egyptian
high-altitude aerial photography sorties which the Hawks either did not
attempt or failed to intercept. A Soviet military historian who has
specialized in the Middle East, Col. Valeri Yaremenko, wrote that: "this
lack of action [response] pushed Nasser and Commander-in-Chief Marshal Amer
to reach, in absolute secrecy, a decision to destroy the Israeli reactor
before it would be able to produce nuclear weaponry. Intensive training
flights were started, with live bombing of a 'full-scale Dimona model' in
the Egyptian desert....In the beginning of June [1967] Amer decided to bomb
Dimona in the period of June 7-10."(124) In defense of Nasser's conduct,
Egyptian diplomat Tahsin Basheer said he "miscalculated badly, but he
defended the area against atomization."(125)
Yaremenko states that "Moscow remained a passive observer" of this
activity, but adds, "according to the opinion of the then foreign minister,
nuclear war in the Middle East could have been beneficial for the
USSR."(126) Gromyko himself is recorded as telling his subordinates 14 years
later that "Amer--a decisive and even aggressive person--gave an order to
bomb Dimona and other important objects on Israeli territory. But at our
behest Nasser cancelled this order." According to the source of this
account, former Soviet diplomat Oleg Grinevski, Gromyko claimed that:

the Soviet leadership did not know then about the Egyptians' plan to
liquidate Israel's nuclear potential. We knew only about the intent to
strike a sudden blow upon important objects on Israeli territory in general
without any concretization. This is why we sent a note to Nasser, in which
we very insistently advised not to start this war....I think that if we had
clearly envisaged then that the main goal of this strike [was] to destroy
the nuclear potential of Israel, we would not have chosen to convince Nasser
to avoid it.(127)

However, Akopov relates that Badran, when questioned by Kosygin, did
disclose the details of Amer's proposed targets.(128) Given that in
following years all such deep-penetration reconnaissance of Israel was
performed on behalf of Egypt by Soviet aircraft and personnel,(129) it seems
unlikely that the Soviets were totally unaware of the Dimona missions. In
this context it is noteworthy to mention that in April 1967, 15 Soviet SU-7
bombers were delivered to Egypt, but "the Egyptian pilots did not have time
to master them."(130) Gromyko's statement may actually indicate there was an
active Soviet interest in taking out Dimona--as Reshetnikov's account
appears to suggest.
While Moscow itself treated the forthcoming war in the Cold War
context, it took pains to present it as a local conflict, and to camouflage
its participation. "There was serious warning against any losses and
casualties, because every loss of any plane could unfold the essence and the
meaning of our race [raids], our Soviet aviation." To prevent formal
identification of the Soviet air intervention, "all the documents were taken
from the pilots and the crew in case some plane is burning in the
desert."(131) The idea was to "let others guess who fell down and why they
were there, what happened."(132) Reshetnikov notes that "we had to work
under the colors of the Egyptian flag."(133) There was a logistic problem
with repainting the planes in Egyptian markings, because "no one knew what
these signs should look like;" being Sunday, it was very difficult to obtain
from closed factories the needed paint, and "...we needed time to let it
dry,...but in fact we were putting the colours on and flying straight away,
flew immediately, and new planes were ready to take off as well."(134) When
"the first group was [at] the launching airfield," Reshetnikov was
instructed to await further orders.(135) "In 1967 and in 1973 he [Grechko]
was not able to issue the order without Brezhnev's decision," stated Pyrlin,
equating the Politburo with the secretary-general.(136)
The Politburo, then, had to approve the preparations and preliminary
stages of the operation up to the actual implementation, and its mid-May
resolution approving the transmission of a warning to Egypt was but the
continuation of a series. It certainly had to approve Brezhnev's major overt
move in Mediterranean naval matters: his demand, at Karlovy Vary on April
24, for removal of the U.S. Sixth Fleet. As it happened, this was almost
achieved at the the outset of the war, when the Sixth Fleet was withdrawn
westward in order to disprove Arab charges that its aircraft were assisting
Israel's air offensive. From then until June 10, the Soviet navy enjoyed a
virtual monopoly on the eastern Mediterranean--the best conditions Brezhnev
might have desired for the projected intervention.
The scope of this paper cannot include the sequence of events that
prevented the activation of the Soviet operation on behalf of Egypt in the
opening days of the war, and then brought about its restart as a declared,
deterrent move to stop Israel's subsequent onslaught on Syria. But it merits
mention that Brezhnev's speech confirms, for the first time in an official
Soviet document, that the latter action was undertaken--and hence that it
had been prepared: "On June 10...all Soviet warships in the Mediterranean,
including missle launchers, were given an order to turn and under escort of
submarines [steam] to the Syrian coast."(137)
While there is as yet no direct evidence that Brezhnev and Grechko were
personally involved in the planning of a naval landing, their joint
authorship of such a scheme appears very much in character. Consider the
following account of such an operation:

Landing from the sea...would be an absolute surprise...a plan that is
deciphered by the opponent, as is known, is half-destined to fail.
Therefore, the first task was to ensure absolute secrecy. We forbade any
correspondence in connection with the operation being prepared. For its
development only a severely limited circle of people was drafted....In order
not to disclose our intentions its [intelligence gathering] was conducted
across a broad front. Work upon the disinformation of the opponent was
conducted, suggesting the 'desant' would take place [elsewhere].(138)

This description corresponds exactly to the preparation of the Soviet
Mediterranean operation in 1967: all orders for the landing were delivered
orally, only ship captains were informed until the actual implementation,
and total radio silence was observed--not to mention the use of
disinformation. But the quotation actually refers to a landing at
Novorossisk on the Black Sea during World War II. It is taken from
Brezhnev's memoirs, which describe his service as the political officer of
the 18th Army as a lifelong defining experience, and take credit for this
successful operation together with the Army's commanding
officer--Grechko.(139)
These two old comrades-in-arms appear to have reverted in 1967 to the
victorious tactic of their joint heroic memories. Brezhnev's tendency to see
the two conflicts in the same context is further indicated by his use, in
the June 1967 speech, of the term "treacherous" to describe Israel's
pre-emptive attack--an epithet usually reserved in Soviet parlance for the
German attack on the USSR in 1941.(140) A landing operation would in any
case not seem far-fetched to Soviet brass: as late as 1969, such an assualt
(in this case a paratroop drop) was proposed in order to take Beijing
following the Soviet-Chinese border clashes.(141)
As for Grechko's input, his characterization by Yegorychev as a
soldafon (rough soldier) is borne out by accounts that his "self-will,
capriciousnes, roughness and rudeness" went as far as suggesting a conquest
of Western Europe as revenge for the Cuban debacle of 1962. He was
reportedly moderated somewhat by promotion to ministerial rank, but still
"would not hesitate to demonstrate the superiority and might of the Soviet
armed forces."(142) Considering another of Grechko's defining youthful
experiences--his service, during the Civil War and after, in the notoriously
and murderously anti-Semitic army of Semyon Budyonny--it is hardly
surprising that even as minister "sometimes he would wave his fists,
threatening to liquidate imperialism and Zionism."(143) According to a
former Soviet officer, who in 1967 was in the graduating class of cadets:

In the second half of May 1967...the Middle Eastern situation was
deteriorating, war between the Arab states and Israel was considered
inevitable, indeed imminent. The war's result was predetermined, as everyone
in the USSR believed...In order to prevent the West coming to Israel's
defense, combat readiness was raised...for this to be better understood by
officers and upper-class cadets, they were read a statement by Minister of
Defense Marshal Grechko: "The fiftieth year of the Great October Socialist
Revolution will be the last year of the existence of the State of
Israel."(144)

While the destruction of Israel was not an officially stated goal of
Soviet policy, there are numerous other instances indicating that the idea
pervaded Soviet thought and parlance, particularly among the military. One
example of many for this indoctrination is provided in the memoir of an
officer who was dispatched to Egypt shortly after the war: "The Arabs had
decided to reestablish Palestine on the area that had already been captured
by Israel. With this purpose, led by the UAR under the leadership
of...Nasser, [they] deployed armed forces, leaning on the assistance of the
Soviet Union."(145) Ambassador Chuvakhin, while proclaiming to Eshkol the
USSR's peaceful intent if Israel did not attack, was evidently more candid
with the leader of Israel's Communist party (MaKI), Dr. Moshe Sneh: "The war
will last 24 hours only and no trace of the State of Israel will be
left."(146)
Akopov, however, recalls his diplomatic colleagues demurring at least
from the feasibility of this aim: "If we put the task of an
offensive...liberation of earlier occupied territories--then we estimated it
differently: we [at the Foreign Ministry] thought that the Egyptian army is
not capable of such operations....Our military believed, thought that the
Egyptian army could fulfil these tasks."(147) "Earlier occupied territories"
might apply to all of pre-1967 Israel, or at least to those parts not
included in the Jewish state by the 1947 Partition Resolution. Official
Soviet foreign policy did not accept the 1949 armistice lines as final
borders between Israel and its neighbors.(148)
Restoring the Partition borders might well be "the unavoidable
weakening of Israel's positions" which Pyrlin mentions as the expected
outcome of the war, while qualifying that "of course there could not be any
consideration of its absolute liquidation, as called for by some hot Arab
heads." Such a result, "could have constituted according to this [Soviet]
way of thinking a serious blow to the prestige of the USA, Israel's main
ally which was at that period getting bogged deeper and deeper in the
Vietnam war."(149)
It also might have been a fitting gift for November 7, 1967. The
approaching anniversary of the revolution provides an element of timing and
motivation for the Soviet initiative that merits further investigation.
Several references from other sources indicate that Grechko was not alone in
seeking a dramatic deed to mark the event, such as a blow on the
"imperialist forces" which would crown Soviet leaders with an historic
Leninist achievement. "Brezhnev," according to his speechwriter at the time,
"began by May [1967] to show his interest in the 50th anniversary...at the
beginning of June [before the war] we met at Gor'ki's dacha and were
improvising the approximate plan for celebrations."(150)
The KGB-Stasi meeting in Moscow in mid-April specifically stressed the
importance of "active measures" for commemorating the jubilee.(151) At the
height of the Middle Eastern crisis, an unnamed Soviet diplomat at the UN
appeared to betray this preoccupation in an inverted form, by "saying they
would...not get involved in a war on their 50th anniversary."(152)
Ironically, when the timing, character and success of Israel's
pre-emptive strike surprised the Soviets and obviated their planned
intervention, it also put a damper on the festive occasion: "This interest
[in celebrations] waned with the Six-Day War,"(153) which instead
necessitated a meticulous cover-up that continues to this day.

*The author, a Fellow of the Harry S. Truman Research Institute for the
Advancement of Peace at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, thanks the
Institute for a research grant on the Soviet military involvement in the
Arab-Israeli conflict, which facilitated the research for and writing of
this paper. She thanks Dr. Stefan Meining of Munich for granting access to
Stasi documents he uncovered; Brook Lapping Productions for permission to
quote from material relating to "The 50 Years War: Israel and the Arabs," a
six part television documentary made by Brian Lapping Associates, 1998; and
the Trustees of the Liddell Hart Centre for Military Archives, King's
College, London for granting of access to, and permission to quote,
interview transcripts from this material (henceforth referred to as
"transcripts;" spelling and grammar reflect the text of the original English
translation). She is also the author of "The Russians Were Coming: The
Soviet Military Threat in the 1967 Six-Day War" which appeared in the
December 2000 issue of MERIA.

NOTES
1. Josephine Tey, The Daughter of Time (London: Arrow Books, 1997), p. 111.
2. Michael B. Oren, Six Days of War (New York: Oxford University Press,
2002), p. 55.
3. Nadav Safran, From War To War (New York: Pegasus), p. 274n, quoting
deposed Egyptian Minister of War Shams al-Din Badran at his trial, according
to al-Ahram, February 25, 1968. Also Jerusalem Post, February 28, 1968. The
United Nations Truce Supervision Organization also "reported to the
Secretary-General that there was no evidence of any Israeli build-up" [F.T.
Liu, at the time Senior Advisor to UNTSO, in Richard B. Parker, ed., The
Six-Day War: A Retrospective (Gainsville: University Press of Florida,
1996), p. 99.]
4. For a comprehensive overview of all these theories see Richard B. Parker,
The Politics of Miscalculation in the Middle East (Bloomington: Indiana
University Press, 1993), Chapter 1: "The Soviet Warning," pp. 3-20.
5. Brutents is one of several Soviet officials active in 1967 who still
vehemently defend the USSR against "American and Israeli writers [who] tried
to prove that the Soviet Union blessed, so to speak, the events that led to
the Six-Day War" and accuse them of "attempts... to justify the provocative
Israeli behavior by the actions of the Soviet side that on May 12 informed
Nasser about dangerous concentration of Israeli troops on the border with
Syria." See Karen Brutents, interview on CNN, August 1997; and Yevgeni
Pyrlin, Trudny I dolgiy put' k miru (Russian: The Difficult and Long Road to
Peace) (Moscow: ROSSPEN (Rossiiskaya Politicheskaya Entsiklopediya), 2002),
p. 56.
6. Oren, op. cit., p. 54.
7. Galia Golan, Soviet Policies in the Middle East from World War Two to
Gorbachev (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), p. 58; Mohamed
Heikal, 1967--Al-Intifijar (Arabic), Cairo, 1990, p. 447, cited in Parker,
Politics, p. 6-7, p. 247 n.9.
8. Maj. Gen. Vladimir A. Zolotaryov et al, Rossiya (SSSR) v lokal'nykh
voynakh I vooruzhennykh konfliktakh vtoroy poloviny XX veka (Russian: Russia
(USSR) in Local Wars and Military Conflicts in the Second Half of the 20th
Century) (Moscow: Institute of Military History, Ministry of Defense of the
Russian Federation, 2000), p.181. This first official history of the Soviet
involvement in local wars does not mention passing the information to Egypt
at all, starting its chronology of the Middle Eastern crisis on May 18,
1967, with the removal of UNEF by Egypt.
9. A vague and sparse chapter in the official history of the Foreign
Intelligence Agency of the Russian Federation on its website states: "In the
[1960s], foreign intelligence received information about Israel's
preparations for new aggression against Arab countries, including the date
for it to attack Egypt and Syria in 1967. This intelligence was passed on to
the leaderships of Arab countries, who, however, undervalued it and
overvalued the military potential of their countries."
(Russian), n.d. Gromyko recalled
years later that during the "worrying days of May 1967... our military was
apprehensive that Israel any moment would attack Syria"; Oleg Grinevski,
"Atomnaja bomba I Blizhnij Vostok" (Russian: "The A-bomb and the Middle
East"), Dipkur'er (supplement to Nezavisimaya Gazeta, Moscow), March 1 2001;

Grinevski: Stsenarii dlya tret'ey mirovoy voyny (Russian: The Script for
World War III) (Moscow: Olma-Press, 2002), p. 112.
10. The KGB "resident" in Israel in 1967 stated as recently as five years
ago: "From the regularly incoming information it transpired that a war in
the Middle East was approaching and could break out at the end of the 1966
or in the first half of 1967.... Our efforts and means were concentrated in
gathering reliable secret information." Ivan Dedyulya: "Na Zemle
Obetovannoy: dejatel'nost' sovetskoj rezidentury v Izraile v 60-x godax"
(Russian: "In the Promised Land: the Activity of the Soviet Residentura in
Israel in the '60s"), NVO (military supplement of Nezavisimaya Gazeta) Vol.
20, Moscow 1998.
11. Leonid Mlechin: Mossad: sekretnaya voyna (Russian: Mossad: The Secret
War) (Moscow: Centrpoligraf, 2000), pp. 246-247. According to this source,
the KGB resident in Cairo warned about up to 12 brigades concentrated on the
Syrian border.
12. MfS-S.d.M-1465, Protokoll ueber Verhandlung zwischen Vertretern des MfS
der DDR und des KfS beim Ministerrat der UdSSR ueber gemeinsame aktive
Massnahmen fuer das Jahr 1967 (German: Protocol of Negotiation between
Representatives of the MfS of the GDR and the KGB at the Council of
Ministers of the USSR over Common Active Measures for the Year 1967), pp.
8-9.
13. Parker, Politics, p. 21.
14. Isabella Ginor, "Adayin oneh bizehirut" (Hebrew: "Still Answering
Cautiously"), Ha'aretz, July 5, 1991.
15. Parker, Politics. p. 248 n12. This characterization of Semynov was
presented in 1992 during a conference on the 25th anniversary of the June
War convened at the Center for the Study of Foreign Affairs at the
Department of State's Foreign Service Institute by former Deputy Foreign
Minister Georgy Korniyenko and Vitaly Naumkin of the Oriental Studies
Institute. It also appears to conform with the attempts to downgrade the
echelon involved in the disinformation incident and the motivation behind
it.
16. Pavel Akopov, transcript, p. 4.
17. Oleg Grinevski, Sekrety sovetskoy diplomatii (Russian: Secrets of Soviet
Diplomacy), (Moscow: Vagrius, 2000), p. 6; Korniyenko was also a member of
this delegation and so must have known the position of trust that was
conferred on Semyonov.
18. Mlechin, op.cit., pp. 246-247.
19. Michael Bar-Zohar: Embassies in Crisis, (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.:
Prentice-Hall, 1970), p. 1. In a telephone interview from his home in
Tel-Aviv on November 1, 2002, Bar-Zohar confirmed this quotation and gave
his source as "probably a British intercept."
20. Richard B. Parker, ed., The Six-Day War: A Retrospective (henceforth
SDW), (Florida: University Press of Florida, 1996), pp. 37, 40, 42. This
book presents the proceedings of the 25th anniversary conference (see note
16). In June 1967, Bassiouny was a special assistant in the office of
Undersecretary Feki. The Russian participant quoted is Naumkin; a similar
view was presented by Korniyenko.
21. Karen N. Brutents: Tridtsat' let na Staroy ploschadi (Russian: Thirty
Years on the Old Square), (Moscow: Mezhdunarodnye Otnoshenija, 1996), p.
230.
22. Telephone interview with Brutents (Moscow), October 17, 2000.
23. Emphasis added. Der Rede Von L.I. Breschnev auf dem Juniplenum des ZK
der KpdSU, Uber die Politik der Sowjetunion im Zusammenhang mit der
Agression Israels im Nahen Osten, 20.06.1967 (German: The Speech of L.I.
Brezhnev at the June Plenum of the CP of the USSR in Connection with the
Israeli Aggression in the Middle East). SAPMO=NA ZPA IV 2/1/362. The
authenticity of Brezhnev's reference to a Politburo resolution is confirmed
by a Polish report of the same speech (AAN KC PZPR 2632), which was found
and partly published by Uri Bar-Noi, Notes from the Chaim Herzog Center for
Middle East Studies and Diplomacy (Beersheba: Ben Gurion University), Vol.
6, May 2001. Bar-Noi, however, considers that Brezhnev's speech "does not
shed light on the controversial information about concentration of Israeli
troops,"and appears to attach no significance to the mention of the
Politburo -- a conclusion disputed by the present writer.
24. Uri Ra'anan, "Not Just Six Days, Not Just a War," Bostonia (Boston
University), Fall 2002.

Ra'anan and Bar-Zohar (in Embassies in Crisis, p. 2) were among the first
who pioneered the hypothesis of a deliberate disinformation maneuver on the
part of the USSR. However, Ra'anan suggested that the Soviets believed the
Egyptian response would not cause an actual war, and Moscow could then take
credit for preventing an Israeli attack on Syria that was never going to
occur anyway. "Soviet Global Policy in the Middle East," Naval War College
Review, September 1971, pp. 25-26.
25. Victor Israelyan, Inside the Kremlin During the Yom Kippur War
(University Park, Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1995),
pp.29-30.
26. Kosygin was away for the UN General Assembly's extraordinary session and
his meeting with President Johnson in Glassboro--where he was evidently
constrained by collective instructions. Johnson was very frustrated when
"each time I mentioned missiles, Kosygin talked about Arabs and Israelis."
Lyndon B. Johnson, The Vantage Point: Perspectives of the Presidency,
1963-1969 (New York: Henry Holt, 1971), p. 483.
27. Brutents, Thirty Years, p. 374.
28. Parker, Politics, p. 130.
29. On June 13, 1967. Solomon M. Schwarz, Sovetskii Soyuz i
arabo-izrail'skaya voyna 1967 goda (Russian: The Soviet Union and the
Arab-Israeli War 1967) (New York: American Jewish Workers' Committee, 1969),
p. 72, quoting Security Council minutes S/PV, 1358 p. 147-150. On Tarabanov
as a mouthpiece for Fedorenko, see Arthur Lall, The UN and the Middle East
Crisis, 1967 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1968), p. 88.
30. Pyrlin, transcript, p. 5.
31. Telephone interview with Brutents.
32. In a speech on May 22, 1967, Nasser said: "On 13 May we received
accurate information that Israel was concentrating on the Syrian border huge
armed forces of about 11 to 13 brigades. These forces were divided into two
fronts, one south of Lake Tiberias and the other north of the Lake." Radio
Cairo, May 22, 1967, quoted by BBC, May 24. Middle East Record (henceforth
MER) 1967, p. 190. More detail on the "intelligence" provided by the Soviets
was apparently disclosed to a U.S. Embassy official in Paris by a
"well-connected Arab diplomat": "top secret Israeli plans for [an] 8 brigade
'retaliation' attack on Syrian frontier position" on May 15, which Nasser
"had foiled" by moving troops into Sinai. Here too the purported scope of
Israeli action is wildly disproportionate. Department of State incoming
telegram 023378, Embassy Paris to Secretary of State, secret, May 23, 1967.
33. Arab sources quoted in MER, p. 17.
34. Al-Gumhuria and Al-Akhbar dailies in Arabic, both from November 26 1966,
cited in Avraham Ben-Tzur, Gormim Sovietiim ve Milhemet Sheshet-Ha'yamim
(Hebrew: Soviet Factors and the Six-Day War) (Tel-Aviv: Sifriyat Poalim,
1975), pp. 161-162. According to a former GRU Major-General, Grechko was
considered "acting" Minister of Defense as early as November 1960 when he
hosted an Egyptian delegation headed by Marshal Amer. Sergei Krakhmalov
Zapiski voyennogo attashe (Russian: Notes of a Military Attache), (Moscow:
Rosskaya Razvedka, 2000), p. 76.
35. Vladimir Solovyov and Elena Klepikova: Zagovorschiki v Kremle (Russian:
The Kremlin Plotters), (Moscow: Aktsionernoe Obschestvo 'Moskovskii Tsentr
Iskusstv', 1991), pp. 20-21. Andropov's promotion to candidate-member of the
Politburo was the first for a KGB chief since Stalin's appointee, Lavrenty
Beria.
36. Nasser's speech at UAR Advanced Air HQ, May 25, 1967, cited in Walter
Laqueur, The Road to War (London: Penguin Books, 1969), Appendix Three, pp.
371-376. This contention was repeated by Mahmoud Riad to Parker as late as
1989: "The proof of Israel's intentions, if any was needed, was a statement
by Yitzhak Rabin...on May 12 threatening to occupy Damascus and overthrow
the Syrian regime." Parker, Politics, p. 14, p.249 n35.
37. MER, p. 187.
38. Protokoll, loc. cit.
39. Pyrlin, Road, p. 56.
40. Aleksandr Khaldeev, "Nesostoyavshiisya Desant" (Russian: "The Landing
That Did Not Occur"), Okna (Tel-Aviv), Sept.14, 2000.
41. Israelyan, op.cit., p. 192.
42. Isabella Ginor, "The Russians Were Coming: The Soviet Military Threat in
the 1967 Six-Day War," Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA)
Journal, Vol. 4., No. 4 (December 2000).
43. Pyrlin, Road, p. 56.
44. Pyrlin, transcript, pp. 1, 4.
45. Anwar el-Sadat: In Search of Identity: an Autobiography (New York:
Harper & Row, 1977), pp. 171-172.
46. Parker, SDW, p. 65.
47. Brezhnev, Rede.
48. Zolotarev, p.182, citing I.I. Latynin, Opyt primeneniya boevykh
takticheskikh grupp v lokal'nykh voynakh na Blizhnem Vostoke (1967-1991)
(Russian: The Experience of Using Tactical Battle Groups in Local Wars in
the Middle East (1967-1991), PhD dissertation, Moscow, 1997, p. 49.
49. Pyrlin, transcript, pp. 5-6.
50. Brezhnev, Rede.
51. Laqueur, op. cit., p. 97.
52. Department of State Memorandum G/PM:RLGarthoff:pep:5-29-67,
confidential. Brezhnev had spoken at a conference of Communist parties at
Karlovy Vary, Czechoslovakia.
53. Department of State incoming telegram 029229, Embassy Moscow to
Secretary of State, secret, May 27, 1967; the source is identified as
"Voslensky," probably Mikhail Voslenski, a historian and interpreter who
later defected to the West.
54. Cited in Joseph Govrin, The Six-Day War in the Mirror of Soviet-Israeli
Relations--April-June 1967 (Jerusalem: Hebrew University, Soviet and East
European Research Centre Research Paper No. 61, December 1985), p. 10.
55. Pyrlin, Road, p. 59
56. Parker, SDW, p. 114. Georgy Korniyenko, The Cold War: Testimony of a
Participant (Moscow: Institute of International Relations, 1994), pp.
129-33, cited in translation by James. F. Leonard; Parker, SDW, p. 72.
57. Testimony of Shams Badran at his trial. Al-Ahram, February 25, 1968,
cited in Ben-Tzur, op.cit., p. 165.
58. Ben-Tzur, op.cit., p. 169. While Ben-Tzur's study was published only in
Hebrew and drew little direct attention outside Israel, its thesis has been
endorsed by leading Israeli actors at the time such as Maj. Gen. Meir Amit,
then Head of the Mossad, who cited it both at the 25th anniversary
conference and in an interview with the present writer, August 9, 2002.
59. Oren, op.cit., p. 40.
60. Tanjug (Yugoslav Press Agency), cited in Laqueur, Road, p. 53; Moshe A.
Gilboa, Shesh Shanim, Shisha Yamim (Hebrew: Six Years, Six Days) (Tel Aviv:
Am Oved, 1968), p. 86.
61. Department of State Incoming Telegram 029479, Ambassador Moscow to
Secretary of State, confidential, May 28, 1967. Ambassador Llewellyn
Thompson qualified the credibility of this information, pointing out the
source's "dislike of both Nasser and the Soviets."
62. Akopov, transcript, p. 16.
63. Mohammed Heikal, The Sphinx and the Commissar (New York: Harper & Row,
1978), p. 169.
64. Telephone interview with Nikolai G. Yegorychev (Moscow), November 11,
2000; Christopher Andrew and Oleg Gordievsky, KGB, No location, Nota Bene,
1992 (Russian translation of same title in English, London: Hodder and
Stoughton, 1990), p. 503; Yefim Segal and Zinovi Dubrovski, "Ne dolzhny
Molchat'" (Russian: "Must Not Keep Silent"), Novosti Nedeli, Tel Aviv,
March 2, 2000.
65. Laqueur, op.cit., pp. 98-99.
66. Aleksandr Bovin: XX vek kak zhizn' (Russian: The XX Century as a Life)
(Moscow: Zakharov, 2003), p. 160.
67. Brezhnev, Rede.
68. Department of State incoming telegram 027005, US Mission UN to Secretary
of State, confidential, May 25, 1967.
69. Brezhnev, Rede.
70. Akopov, transcript, pp. 4-8, 10-11.
71. Brezhnev, Rede.
72. Telephone interview with Brutents.
73. Emphasis added. Brezhnev, Rede.
74. Embtel 1517, (Lisbon), Robert Anderson to President Johnson, June 2,
1967, NSF, NSC History, Box 18, LBJL, cited in Avner Cohen: Israel and the
Bomb (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998), p. 26; p. 412S n27.
75. Akopov, transcript, p.6; Brutents mentions receiving excerpts from those
talks for use in preparation of Brezhnev's speech. Thirty Years, p.374.
76. Emphasis in the original. Zolotarev, op.cit., pp. 182-3, citing Latynin,
Experience.
77. Akopov, transcript, loc.cit.
78. Kosygin message to Wilson, May 27, 1967, reproduced in Department of
State Outgoing Telegram 204008, to American Embassy Moscow from Secretary of
State Rusk, Secret, May 28, 1967.
79. Brezhnev, Rede.
80. Ahron Bregman and Jihan El-Tahri: The Fifty Years War (London: Pengiun &
BBC Books, 1998), p. 76.
81. Pyrlin, transcript, pp. 6-7, 28.
82. Department of State incoming telegram 029479, American Embassy Moscow to
Secretary of State, confidential, May 28, 1967.
83. Pyrlin, transcript, pp. 7, 9.
84. Department of State incoming telegram 029479, American Embassy Moscow to
Secretary of State, confidential, May 28, 1967.
85. Pyrlin, transcript, p. 27.
86. Oren, op.cit., p. 65; sources listed in p. 346 n10.
87. Mir Pasha Zeynalov: Nezabyvaemye vstrechi s predsedatelem Arafatom
(Russian: Unforgettable Meetings with Chairman Arafat) (Moscow: Realii,
2002), p. 27.
88. Ben-Tzur, op.cit., p.86; Gilboa, op.cit., p. 85.
89. Laqueur, op.cit., p. 62.
90. Pravda, May 18, 1966.
91. Bovin, op.cit., p. 134.
92. Anatoli F. Dobrynin: Sugubo Doveritel'no (Russian: In Strict Confidence)
(Moscow: Avtor, 1997), p. 134. Dobrynin mistakenly dates the congress in
May.
93. Ben-Tzur, op.cit., p. 72, n13.
94. Israelyan, op.cit., pp. 99-100.
95. V. Kondrashov, interntional commentary, Izvestia, May 8, 1966, cited in
Schwartz, op. cit., p. 24.
96. Schwartz, op.cit., p. 25.
97. Schwartz, op.cit., p. 25. Sovietskaya Rossiya, as noted by Ben-Tzur, was
considered to be Brezhnev's personal organ. op.cit., p. 73, n14.
98. Parker, Politics, p. 11; Gilboa, op.cit., p. 85.
99. Schwartz, op.cit., p. 63.
100. Personal communication from Gideon Remez, a paratrooper then stationed
at sector headquarters.
101. Erwin Wiet: Ostblock intern: 13 Jahre Dolmetscher fuer die polnische
Partei- und Staatsfuehrung (German) (Hamburg: Hoffman und Campe), 1970, p.
165. Weit, Gomulka's interpreter, understood that Brezhnev was alluding to
the war against Israel, into which "Nasser was tempted by the Soviets."
102. Theodore Draper: Israel and World Politics: Roots of the Third
Arab-Israeli War (New York: Viking, 1968), pp. 54-55, quoting several such
blasts in the flagship Soviet organs Pravda and Izvestiya between May 16 and
22.
103. Ginor, MERIA.
104. Professor Kislov, Head of the Center for Research of Peace Problems in
Moscow, was in 1967 "stationed in the Middle East." He makes this statement
"based on personal observation," but disputes the present writer's
contention that Moscow pre-planned an operation against Israel, and holds
that it was to be implemented only "in dire necessity to stop Israeli
aggression." A.K. Kislov, "Ne v ladakh s faktami" (Russian: "The Facts Don't
Add Up"), USA & Canada Journal, (Moscow: Russian Academyof Sciences, USA &
Canada Institute), Vol. 12, No. 396, December 2002, p. 94. This is an
afterword to Isabella Ginor, "'Shestidnevnaya voyna' 1967 g. i pozitsiya
SSSR" (Russian: "The 'Six Day War' and the Position of the USSR"), loc.cit.,
pp. 76-91.
105. Vadim Kirpichenko, transcript, p. 28.
106. Emphasis added. Pyrlin, transcript, p. 10.
107. MER, pp. 10, 22. A visit by the Soviet Minister of Fisheries in March
also included meetings with top Egyptian commanders.
108. Israelyan, op.cit., p. 192.
109. MER, p. 10.
110. Captain (ret.) Yuri Khripunkov, personal communication to author, July
2001; Fleet Admiral (ret.) Ivan M. Kapitanets: Na sluzhbe okeanskomu flotu
1946-1992: zapiski komandujuschego dvumja flotami (Russian: In the Service
of the Ocean Fleet 1946-1992: the Notes of the Commander of Two Fleets)
(Moscow: Andreevski Flag, 2000), p. 174.
111. Valeri Mustyats: "Oshibka ekipazha" (Russian: "The Crew's Mistake"),
Duel (Moscow) #41(132), October 12, 1999.
112. Yehudit Yeheskeli, "Hikinu lifkuda lishlo'ah til atomi al Yisrael"
(Hebrew: "We Awaited the Order to Launch an Atomic Missile at Israel"),
Yediot Aharonot (Tel Aviv), May 8, 1992. When contacted by the present
writer a decade later, the source (a former crewman on this submarine, K-125
of the Pacific fleet) retracted his version, claiming that the reporter had
misunderstood him (she, however, recorded the interview and stands by its
accuracy). The source's name is withheld here as he also professed fear for
the safety of his family, despite their present domicile in Israel--which,
if well-founded, indicates the even farther-reaching extent of the Russian
cover-up.
113. Zolotarev, op.cit., pp. 186-187. This move was confirmed to the present
writer by Kapitanets. Telephone interview (Moscow), January 11, 2003.
114. List in Turkish attached to secret Israel Foreign Ministry memo,
Minister in Ankara D. Laor to Deputy Director General Y. Tekoa, June 1,
1967.
115. Zolotarev, op.cit., p. 185.
116. Kapitanets, Service, p. 175.
117. Interview with Brig.-Gen. (ret.) Yoel Ben-Porat (Ramat Hasharon), March
8, 2002.
118. Kapitanets, Service, p. 176; Khripunkov, personal communication to
present writer.
119. Khaldeev, loc.cit.
120. Pyrlin, transcript, pp. 10-11.
121. Col. General Vasily V. Reshetnikov, Commander of the Second Corps of
the Strategic Air-Force in 1967, transcript, pp. 5-8; biography at
.
122. Avner Cohen, op.cit., p. 269.
123. Dedyulya, loc.cit.
124. Valeri Yaremenko, "Yadernaya voyna na Blizhnem Vostoke byla by na
pol'zu SSSR," (Russian: "Nuclear war in the Middle East Could Have Been
Beneficial for the USSR"), Vremya Novostei (Moscow), June 5, 2002.
125. Parker, SDW, p. 250.
126. Yaremenko, loc.cit.
127. Grinevski, "A-bomb"; Script, pp. 112-113.
128. Akopov, transcript, p. 5.
129. Isabella Ginor: "'Under the Yellow Arab Helmet Gleamed Blue Russian
Eyes': Operation Kavkaz and the War of Attrition, 1969-70," Cold War History
(London: Frank Cass), Vol. 3, No. 1 (October 2002).
130. Anonymous: "Poslevoennaya voyna Sukhogo" (Russian: The Sukhoy's Postwar
War), Kommersant-Daily (Moscow), July 31, 1999.
131. Reshetnikov, transcript, p. 4. "Race" is clearly a translation error
which appears in the transcript but was corrected to "raids" in the BBC
documentary film, which reflects Reshetnikov's audible words in Russian.
132. Ibid., p. 10.
133. Ibid., p. 4.
134. Ibid., p. 6.
135. Ibid., p. 8.
136. Pyrlin, transcript, p. 10.
137. Brezhnev, Rede.
138. L.I. Brezhnev, Vospominaniya, (Russian: Memoirs) (Moscow: Izdatel'stvo
Politicheskoy Literatury), 1982, pp. 69-70.
139. Grechko was Brezhnev's immediate superior, according to Grechko's
biography in Nikolai Zen'kovich: Samye zakritye ludi: Entsiklopediya
biografiy (Russian: The Most Classified People: Biographical Encyclopedia)
(Moscow: Olma-Press, 2002), pp. 117-120.
140. Brezhnev, Rede.
141. Brutents, Thirty Years, p. 263.
142. Yegorychev, interview; Israelyan, op.cit., pp. 27-28.
143. Biography of Grechko at .
According to Zen'kovich, loc. cit., Grechko was Budyonny's personal prot?g?.
144. Vladimir B. Rezun, affidavit to present writer, Bristol (UK), January
13, 2001.
145. Vladinir A. Ryabukhin, "V Egypte" (Russian: "In Egypt"), in I.V.
Shishchenko, ed., Smolyane-Internatsionalisty (Russian: Internationalists of
Smolensk Region) (Smolensk: Smyadyn', 2000), p. 177.
146. Kol Ha'Am (Hebrew, Tel Aviv; MaKI organ), #14, p. 9, cited in Ben-Tzur,
p. 237.
147. Akopov, transcript, p. 38.
148. Mikhail P. Popov: Tridtsat' sem' let na Blizhnem Vostoke (Russian:
Thirty-Seven Years in the Middle East), Moscow, MGIMO, 2002, p. 20.
149. Pyrlin, Road, p. 54.
150. Bovin, op.cit., p. 160.
151. Protokoll.
152. "Roundup of gossip and attitudes in the UN," Walt Rostow to President,
Top Secret, June 8, 1967, National Security File, NSC Histories "Middle East
Crisis," Vol. 4, Tabs 128-130. The name and position of the Soviet source
were sanitized in the declassified version of this document.
153. Bovin, op.cit., p. 160.