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CHAPTER TEN: FUTURE HEADLINE

GLOBAL TENSIONS SOAR AS RUSSIA TARGETS ISRAEL

In the spring of 2006, I came across a headline on an Internet news site that read “Russia Would Never Harm Israel: Olmert.” Curious, I clicked onto the link and found a story from Agence France-Presse, which began, “Israeli leader Ehud Olmert said he had been assured by President Vladimir Putin that Russia would ‘never do anything to harm Israel’ despite his invitation to Hamas for talks in Moscow.212

“‘President Putin told me that he had previously given a commitment to Ariel Sharon that Russia would never do anything to harm the state of Israel and that that commitment applies to me as it did to Ariel Sharon,’” Olmert explained. The Israeli prime minister’s official Web site later noted that “Russian President Putin emphasized several times [in his call with Olmert] that Russia would not take any step directed against Israeli interests and would not harm Israel’s security.”213

If only we could take such assurances to the bank. Unfortunately, we cannot.

While it may be tempting to believe that the Russian Bear is dead and buried and poses no threat to Israel, the U.S., or anyone else, Ezekiel makes it clear that the Bear is only hibernating and will soon be back with a vengeance.

Ezekiel 38:8 says that in the latter years Russia “will come into the land that is restored from the sword, whose inhabitants have been gathered from many nations to the mountains of Israel” (NASB). Ezekiel 38:12 says Russia will target Israel, the epicenter, the people who live “at the center of the world” (NASB). Ezekiel 38:14 says Russia will target “My people Israel” (NASB). Ezekiel 38:18 says Russia “comes against the land of Israel” (NASB). Ezekiel 39:2 says Russia will come “against the mountains of Israel” (NASB). Ezekiel 38:10 makes crystal clear that the Russian dictator in charge of this operation will be executing “an evil plan” (NASB).

Despite such specificity, however, there will be those who misunderstand the nature and threat of this “evil plan” and thus will be at risk of being blindsided by it.

“THE FINAL THRUST SOUTH”

While Putin has not yet tipped his hand about any specific designs on Israel, there are men around Putin who have. One such leader is the current deputy speaker of the State Duma, one of the highest-ranking political leaders in the Russian government and a strategic ally of Putin.

Consider excerpts from a book written by this Russian leader in 1993, in which he details his plans for expanding the Russian empire to the south—toward and ultimately through Israel:

The author of this book, titled The Final Thrust South, is Vladimir Volfovich Zhirinovsky, the bombastic, often ridiculed, but influential ultranationalist founder of the woefully misnamed Liberal Democratic Party of Russia (LDPR). In 1994, when few intelligence analysts in Moscow or Washington took him seriously, Zhirinovsky triggered a political earthquake when his LDPR won a quarter of the seats in the Russian parliament, just a year after laying out this Fascist and imperialist vision of Russia’s future.

A 1994 Time magazine cover story titled “Rising Czar?” noted:

Zhirinovsky is no ordinary politician. [He] has slugged fellow lawmakers in the halls of parliament, hobnobbed with ex-Nazi storm troopers in Austria and posed, au naturel, for photographers while cavorting in a steam bath in Serbia. He has been kicked out of or denied access to nearly half a dozen European countries. He has threatened to restore Russia’s imperial borders, annex Alaska, invade Turkey, repartition Poland, give Germany “another Chernobyl,” turn Kazakhstan into a “scorched desert,” and employ large fans to blow radioactive waste across the Baltics. To Western eyes, the incendiary rhetoric and exuberant loutishness of this barnstorming Bonaparte have marked him as something of a buffoon. But to many Russians, Zhirinovsky offers a kind of touchstone for their deepest yearnings and frustrations.215

Indeed he does, and that is his danger. As Heritage Foundation Russia expert Ariel Cohen wrote in 1994, “It is tempting to dismiss Zhirinovsky’s outrageous book as political polemic. But a failed Austrian painter and former army corporal was similarly ignored when he published his own tract: Mein Kampf. The tendency to dismiss Zhirinovsky as a buffoon and to assume that his supporters did not know what they were voting for may be a naïve, even dangerous, response to his election and his position as de facto opposition leader gives him influence that cannot be ignored.”216

THE MAN BEHIND THE MAN

When I last visited Moscow, I sought a meeting with Zhirinovsky. In The Ezekiel Option, after all, I was writing about a Fascist, anti-Semitic ultranationalist who rises to power in Moscow, becomes a czar, and leads the Russian army south to the Mediterranean. Why not meet such a person in real life?

Zhirinovsky’s personal support among Russians had slipped since he had landed on the cover of Time. In the December 2003 elections, the LDPR received only 11.6 percent of the vote and 38 seats in the Duma. But he was still a player. Zhirinovsky and his colleagues represented the third-biggest political force in the country, behind Putin’s United Russia Party (222 seats) and the Communist Party (53 seats).217 What’s more, several Russia experts I trust suggested that the LDPR’s drop in the polls had nothing to do with Russians becoming less nationalist but with Putin becoming more so. Why vote for “Mad Vlad,” they argued, when Putin was the real deal—a tough-as-nails leader, a czar in the making, without any of Zhirinovsky’s rhetorical baggage? The more authoritarian Putin has become, they explained, the more votes he has siphoned off of the nationalist and ultranationalist parties into his own camp.

“Actually, the guy you want to see,” one of my Russian friends told me, “is not Zhirinovsky himself. I mean, he’s fun to talk to. You’d get some great quotes. But the guy you really want to talk to is the man behind the man, Zhirinovsky’s brain.”

“Who’s that?” I asked.

“Alexei Mitrofanov,” he said. “He’s the number two guy in the LDPR. For years he was the chairman of the Geopolitical Committee of the Duma, roughly the equivalent of the [U.S.] House Foreign Relations Committee. He’s Zhirinovsky’s chief strategist. But far more importantly, he’s a guy who is quietly, carefully helping shape Putin’s direction, and thus Russia’s.”

My father and I met Mitrofanov for coffee at the Hotel National, across the street from Red Square and the Kremlin, on Wednesday, September 1, 2004. We had never met a Fascist before, and certainly not one with real political power. We didn’t even know what Mitrofanov looked like and weren’t quite sure what to expect. But soon a large, plump man not much older than myself (he was born in 1962, I in 1967) arrived with several bodyguards who took up positions by the doors of the restaurant.

In manner, he was the complete opposite of Zhirinovsky—well educated, soft-spoken, almost shy—and was clearly intent on putting a “kinder, gentler” face on his boss’s vicious brand of politics. But it soon became readily apparent that this was indeed “Zhirinovksy’s brain.” They think exactly alike.

“We are pragmatic people,” Mitrofanov began, speaking of himself and his party. “But Russia is in danger of collapsing within ten years. . . . Gorbachev made foolish decisions. He lost the whole empire for nothing. But it just proves that if the leader will be weak, Russia will be ruined. . . . Russians want a strong dictator.”218

“What about Putin?” I asked. “Is he a czar?”

“Putin is a nationalist, a pragmatic nationalist,” Mitrofanov replied. “I had many private conversations with him before he became president and I know that he is close to our party in his heart. . . . But he is not a strong leader. He has too many limitations.”

Well, that was a twist, I thought, someone who thinks Putin isn’t czarlike enough. “What about your boss? Is he the next czar?”

“Zhirinovsky wants to be like Stalin,” he said, “like Lenin. He wants to have power and make Russia number one in the world again.”

“Does he have a chance at succeeding Putin?”

“I think yes,” Mitrofanov explained. “Not in the next elections, in 2008. But in 2012, I think Zhirinovsky will be the president of Russia. He will be sixty-six. He will have been in politics for twenty years. People will know his name, his brand, like Marlboro, like Coca-Cola. . . . Besides, Zhirinovsky will be very quiet [until then]. He is changing.”

“Changing how?” I asked.

“Changing his style and his ideas, gaining experience. . . . He is the man Russia needs.”

“What would he do as president, in foreign policy, for example?”

“He would build a coalition,” Mitrofanov replied without hesitation. “Russia must control four countries in order to have quiet borders—Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, and Pakistan.” Then, after a moment’s pause, he added, “And Turkey.”

“Why these?”

“Zhirinovsky wants to rebuild the Byzantine Empire,” he said matter-of-factly.

I just stared at him, trying to process what he was saying and why he was being so open about his party’s ambitions. The Byzantine Empire? I thought. That would include a lot more land than just those five countries. It would include Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt . . . and Israel.

“We need it,” Mitrofanov explained, “or we will have instability.”

“Doesn’t such a position run the risk of having the LDPR be accused of being anti-Semitic and anti-Israel?”

“Russia is very quiet towards the Jews today,” he said. “There’s no anti-Semitism here. Not like in Europe. . . . I know people in the Russian military—very nationalistic people—who have ideas that Jewish people have ruined Russia, and they have an idea to attack Israel. Colonel [Pavel] Chernov of the FSB, for example. He believes we should say to the Muslim world, ‘We have the power, the land, and the nuclear weapons. You have one billion people, living bombs. Let’s work together.’ He said Russia must be Muslim, not Orthodox Christian. . . . He wanted to push Jews out of all leadership positions in Russia.”

“What’s Chernov doing now?” I asked.

“He used to be in the LDPR,” Mitrofanov freely admitted. “He played an important part in the party for a while. He was number two, in fact, until Zhirinovsky fired him. He drank too much. Fired off a machine gun. But he had lots of supporters.”

I looked at my father, and he looked back at me. He didn’t say anything then; nor did I. But we were thinking the same thing. We were sitting with a man who believed that an ex-FSB officer’s offense was getting drunk and blowing off some steam, not his desire to form a nuclear alliance with Iran and the rest of the Muslim world to blow up Israel. And as evil as that was, this was no crank we’d met at the Moscow circus. Mitrofanov is a respected member of the Russian parliament. He was a senior advisor to the deputy speaker of that parliament. And he had no hesitation to tell two Americans that he and his party want Russia to build an empire and launch the “final thrust south.”

We thanked him for his time, paid our bill, and left as quickly as we could.

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1982: THE THREAT FROM THE NORTH

Since the times of Czar Peter the Great, Russian leaders have had designs on central Asia and the Near East, and for nearly half of the twentieth century, Moscow armed Israel’s enemies and encouraged them to attack and destroy the Jewish state. But now a fuller and more disturbing picture is emerging. Previously classified White House, CIA, and State Department documents, as well as interviews with top U.S. and Israeli leaders and historians, reveal that Moscow has on more than one occasion planned direct Russian invasions of Israel.

In the summer of 1982, for example, then–Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin went public with a story that prior to that time had been known only to the upper echelons of Israeli and U.S. intelligence. The Israeli Defense Forces, he explained, had uncovered a secret but massive cache of Soviet weaponry in deep underground cellars and tunnels in Lebanon that had caught him and his top advisors completely off guard. The weapons appeared to have been pre-positioned by Moscow for the launching of a full-scale invasion of Israel and the oil-rich nations of the Middle East.

Begin said Israel had found “ten times more Russian weapons than were previously reported.” The haul, he told reporters, included 4,000 tons of ammunition, 144 armored vehicles and tanks, 12,500 pieces of small arms, 515 heavy weapons, 359 sophisticated communications devices, and 795 “optical instruments” (including night-vision goggles and field glasses). It was enough, Begin believed, to equip at least five Russian combat brigades and required, according to one report, “a fleet of 10-ton trucks, working day and night for six weeks, to haul them back to Israel.”219

“I can now tell you,” the Israeli prime minister continued, “that only yesterday . . . we found other arms depots containing fully ten times as many weapons as we had found before, enough to equip not five brigades, but five or six divisions. We shall need literally hundreds of trucks to evacuate these weapons from Lebanon, where we shall undoubtedly find more arms.”

Begin said that Israeli intelligence had badly underestimated the Russian threat from the north. Israel certainly knew the Soviets were arming Yasser Arafat and the Palestine Liberation Organization for their terrorist attacks against Israel. That was why Israel had invaded Lebanon in the first place. But Begin conceded that neither he nor his colleagues had any idea of the extent to which Moscow was preparing for a massive future ground assault against the Jewish state.

“Something happened which nobody knew,” Begin admitted. “In fact, the evidence at hand points to a conspiracy, that pre-positioning by the Soviet Union of such massive quantities of arms—and I mean modern, highly sophisticated weapons—could only be in preparation for some indeterminate future date to overrun Israel, then Jordan, and then Saudi Arabia and other Persian Gulf States. Otherwise, there is no explanation for the quantities of weapons we have found. The [Palestinians] couldn’t have used them, having neither the necessary manpower nor the skills.”

The Washington Post reported the story of the Soviet arms cache on July 7, 1982. But the implications of such an important discovery got lost amid a series of other earthshaking events in the Middle East. Just one month earlier, an Israeli air strike had destroyed the Osirak nuclear reactor and thus Iraq’s entire nuclear-weapons development program. And just two months after the discovery of the Soviet arms, members of the Maronite Phalange militia massacred hundreds of Palestinian men, women, and children in Lebanese refugee camps known as Sabra and Shatila.

The Osirak bombing and the Sabra and Shatila massacres, along with the international outcry over whether Israeli defense minister Ariel Sharon was responsible for letting the massacres happen, dominated worldwide headlines for months. Sharon eventually resigned his post as defense minister. Begin found himself and his entire government on defense in the global public-relations wars. And the Soviets’ plans and preparations for invading Israel and the rest of the Middle East were lost to a world that either never heard the story, did not remember, or did not care.

When I interviewed Caspar Weinberger, who was the U.S. defense secretary in 1982, he both remembered and confirmed Menachem Begin’s story for me. He also admitted that the discovery of the Soviet arms cache “was perhaps larger than most people [in Washington] would have expected.” Weinberger conceded that he and others in the Pentagon were surprised by the “size, scope, and speed”—and secrecy—of the Soviet pre-positioning in the Middle East, given how carefully the U.S. was watching the Soviet military.

But Weinberger said he was not surprised that the Soviets had been preparing for an invasion of Israel, Saudi Arabia, and the Persian Gulf region. To the contrary, these were precisely the concerns that were driving the Reagan administration’s anti-Soviet policy at the time.

“We [in the Reagan White House and the Pentagon] were all concerned about growing Soviet influence and growing Soviet attempts to increase their stature in the whole Mideast,” Weinberger told me. “And the fact that here was confirmation of this by this discovery of a very large stash of weapons was continually disturbing, but not surprising. . . . The fact that they [the Soviets] were building up their weapons and planning to use various Mideast spots as bases for military action was not a surprise—it was the size, scope, and speed with which it was being carried out that was further reason, we thought, why their motives had to be watched quite carefully.”220

I asked Weinberger specifically if he and President Reagan had shared Prime Minister Begin’s concerns that the Soviets might try to overrun Israel, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and the other Persian Gulf states.

He confirmed that they had. “The Soviets were trying to increase their influence in the whole Mideast. They were [targeting] the oil fields. . . . We were taking actions and preparing ourselves to prevent that domination from succeeding.”

Did he believe the discovery of the Soviet arms justified the Israeli invasion of Lebanon and attempts to destroy the PLO? Weinberger said Israel’s move was at first “disturbing” because it was a “unilateral action” and threatened to upset the fragile balance of power in the Middle East, and this was “not good.”

That said, however, he suggested that on balance the Israelis were probably right to go in, especially given what they found and the Soviet invasion they may have stopped. It was a total surprise. It unleashed international condemnation of Israel, including pointed criticism from the Reagan administration itself. But the result was that Israel effectively staved off far more cataclysmic evils that were coming from the Russians.

Then Weinberger warned that the discovery of the secret Soviet arms cache was disturbing evidence “that military actions are being planned” or “made increasingly possible” in the Middle East that can elude the detection of even the world’s best intelligence services.

1973: THE BRINK OF NUCLEAR WAR

On October 6, 1973, combined Arab forces from Egypt, Syria, and numerous other Arab and Islamic countries attacked Israel on Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, the holiest day of the Jewish year.

Tensions had been building for months. Rumors of war were in the air. But both Israeli and U.S. intelligence officials and political leaders were caught almost completely off guard, not believing the war would really come. Israeli prime minister Golda Meir was so sure fighting would not break out that she had refused to order a preemptive strike or even to mobilize the Israeli reserves, not wanting to provoke hostilities if they could be avoided. That hesitation nearly led to the annihilation of the Jewish state.

Over the course of the first week of the war, the Arab coalition made stunning gains. In the north, 1,000 Syrian tanks and 600 pieces of Syrian artillery stormed up the Golan Heights and advanced toward the vulnerable Israeli farmlands of the Galilee region. To the south, some 400 Egyptian tanks crossed the Suez Canal, wiped out Israel’s forward defenses, and began working their way across the Sinai Desert. Meanwhile, Arab air forces shot down three dozen Israeli fighter planes in just the first few days.

It was clear to the general public at the time that the Soviet Union was providing the weaponry, ammunition, intelligence, and military training to help the Arab and Islamic coalition destroy Israel, a key ally of the United States. What was not known publicly was the extent to which the Soviets were orchestrating the war from behind the scenes and preparing to enter it directly.

By the second week of the war, the momentum had begun to shift. The Israelis had retaken the Golan Heights and were bombing Damascus. They had also retaken most of the Sinai Peninsula, crossed the Suez Canal, and had ground forces within a hundred kilometers of Cairo. By the third week, Moscow was under tremendous pressure from the entire Arab world not to let the Israelis humiliate Syrian president Hafez al-Assad or Egyptian president Anwar Sadat, so Moscow began to move. The Soviets began a massive airlift of arms and ammunition to their allies. The U.S., in turn, began a massive, round-the-clock airlift of arms and supplies to Israel.

On October 24 at around 10:00 p.m. eastern time, the Soviet ambassador to Washington, Anatoly Dobrynin, telephoned Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and dictated the text of a top secret message from Russian general secretary Leonid Brezhnev to President Richard Nixon. In the message, Brezhnev accused Israel of refusing to abide by a ceasefire called by the UN Security Council and then issued a chilling threat: “I will say it straight: that if you find it impossible to act jointly with us in this matter, we should be faced with the necessity urgently to consider the question of taking appropriate steps unilaterally. We cannot allow arbitrariness on the part of Israel.”221

It was cloaked in the language of diplomats, but there it was: if the Nixon administration did not stop the Israelis from advancing and agree to send a joint Soviet-American ground force to the region to act as peacekeepers, the Soviets would send ground forces in “unilaterally.”

Top U.S. officials in the White House and National Security Council were stunned as Brezhnev threatened to turn an already dangerous regional confrontation into an overt global showdown between East and West. What’s more, they knew they would have no choice but to match any move by the Soviets to escalate the situation. Washington had to defend Israel or send a devastating message to her allies that the U.S. could not be counted on in a direct showdown with Russia.

And then the Soviets began to escalate. At least seven Soviet combat-ready airborne divisions in East Germany and elsewhere in Eastern Europe were put on alert and mobilized for immediate departure for the Middle East. Soviet transport planes were positioned and prepped to insert these forces into the fight with Israel. Soviet warships moved into the Mediterranean.

The U.S., in turn, ordered its own military forces on alert. The Pentagon ordered U.S. nuclear forces to DEFCON 3, the highest state of peacetime readiness. The Joint Chiefs of Staff also ordered the 82nd Airborne Division to prepare to head to the Middle East. Additional U.S. naval forces—including another aircraft carrier—moved into the Mediterranean, all out of a real and rising concern that the Soviets were about to make an unprecedented military move against Israel.222

Kissinger drafted for President Nixon (who was deeply embroiled in the Watergate scandal at the time) a reply that was sent to General Secretary Brezhnev on October 25. In the letter Nixon bluntly said to the Soviet leader that the U.S. had “no information which would indicate that the ceasefire is now being violated on any significant scale.” He agreed to “take every effective step to guarantee the implementation of the ceasefire” and said the U.S. was working closely with Israel to bring about a peaceful resolution to the crisis.

But he also warned that “in these circumstances, we must view your suggestion of unilateral action as a matter of the gravest concern involving incalculable consequences. . . . [W]e could in no event accept unilateral [Soviet] action. This would be in violation of our understandings, of the agreed Principles we signed in Moscow in 1972, and of Article II of the Agreement on Prevention of Nuclear War. . . . Such action would produce incalculable consequences which would be in the interest of neither of our countries and which would end all we have striven so hard to achieve.”223

Nixon’s firm letter, combined with the heightened American military posture, soon made it clear to Moscow that any move they made against Israel would be met with the full force of the United States. Within days, the Soviets backed off. Tensions began to defuse, and a full cease-fire was eventually achieved. Not since the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 had the U.S. and Soviet Union come so close to the brink of nuclear war, and this time the motivating factor was a Russian leader’s threat to attack Israel directly.

Yet for all that, Kissinger would remark to his top aides that the Soviet military “did not maneuver as provocatively as they did in 1967.”224

1967: THE KREMLIN PREPARES FOR WAR

War clouds had been building for months. The Israelis found themselves increasingly surrounded by Soviet-backed forces of the Arab and Islamic world, all of whose leaders were vowing to “throw the Jews into the sea,” and the Israelis were considering striking first. The element of surprise might be their only hope of survival, they figured. But President Lyndon Johnson had warned Israeli prime minister Levi Eshkol in no uncertain terms that such a move would be a serious mistake.

As historian Michael B. Oren noted in his highly praised book Six Days of War: June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle East, Johnson sent a secret message to Eskhol, saying, “It is essential that Israel not take any preemptive military action and thereby make itself responsible for the initiation of hostilities. Preemptive action by Israel would make it impossible for the friends of Israel to stand at your side.” Oren noted that Johnson specifically “warned of the possibility of direct Soviet intervention.”225

Marshal Andrei Antonovich Grechko, the Soviet deputy defense minister, had told his Egyptian counterparts in Cairo that the Kremlin had dispatched “destroyers and submarines to the waters near Egypt, some armed with missiles and secret weapons” to help wipe out the Zionists.226 One of Israel’s top experts on Soviet foreign policy told Israeli Defense Forces intelligence that “the USSR would muster all its influence and power to maintain its Middle East position.” When asked if the Soviets would intervene directly, the expert replied, “Of course.”227 Soviet premier Aleksey Kosygin, meanwhile, sent a cable to Prime Minister Eshkol, warning, “If the Israeli Government insists on taking upon itself the responsibility for the outbreak of armed confrontation then it will pay the full price of such an action.”228

But at 8:44 a.m. on the morning of June 5, 1967, Eshkol sent an urgent message back to President Johnson informing him that it was too late. War had begun.

Explaining his rationale for the preemptive strike Israel had just launched, Eshkol wrote:

After weeks in which our peril has grown day by day, we are now engaged in repelling the aggression which [Egyptian president] Nasser has been building up against us. Israel’s existence and integrity have been endangered. The provocative [Arab] troop concentrations in Sinai, now amounting to five infantry and two armored divisions; the placing of more than 900 tanks against our southern frontier; . . . the illegal blockade of the Straits of Tiran; . . . the imminent introduction of MiG-21 aircraft under Iraqi command [into the theater]; Nasser’s announcement of “total war against Israel” and of his basic aim to annihilate Israel. . . . All of this amounts to an extraordinary catalogue of aggression, abhorred and condemned by world opinion and in your great country and amongst all peace-loving nations.229

Eshkol also noted that three Israeli towns had been bombed that morning by Arab forces, citing these as the last straws that led to war. He thanked Johnson for America’s support and expressed hope that “our small nation can count on the fealty and resolution of its greatest friend.” But he also had a request: that the U.S. “prevent the Soviet Union from exploiting and enlarging the conflict” at this, Israel’s greatest “hour of danger.”

“Eshkol knew and feared the Russians,” noted Michael Oren. “War with Syria [and Egypt] was risky enough; with the USSR, it would be suicidal.” But Eshkol calculated that without U.S. support, the Soviets would find themselves compelled to get involved directly. Moscow had “invested massively in the Middle East, about $2 billion in military aid alone—1,700 tanks, 2,400 artillery pieces, 500 jets, and 1,400 advisers—since 1956, some 43 percent of it to Egypt.”230

Sure enough, as the Israelis demolished the forces of the Arab coalition over the next three days and captured the Sinai, the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, and the Golan Heights, reunified the holy city of Jerusalem, and began an offensive against Damascus, Moscow saw itself staring into the face of a geopolitical disaster. Those were, after all, Soviet-trained soldiers being defeated. Those were Soviet-made arms being seized or destroyed. Those were billions of dollars in Soviet funding to their Arab client states being poured down the drain. And—it would later be learned by U.S. and Israeli intelligence—the Egyptian war plan itself (code-named Operation Conqueror) had actually been written in 1966 by the Soviets.231 As a result, the Soviets feared their prestige was quickly unraveling.

U.S. intelligence was already picking up signs of this fear in the Kremlin. In the “President’s Daily Brief” on June 9, for example, the CIA informed President Johnson that “the Soviets are finding it hard to conceal their shock over the rapid Egyptian military collapse. A Soviet official [identity still classified] could not understand ‘how our intelligence could have been so wrong.’ He asked despairingly, ‘How could we have gotten into such a mess?’”232

So the Kremlin decided to dramatically up the ante.

On June 10, at 8:48 a.m. Washington time, Soviet premier Aleksey Kosygin used the “hotline” to call President Johnson in the White House Situation Room. His message was as blunt as it was unnerving: “A very crucial moment has now arrived which forces us, if [Israeli] military actions are not stopped in the next few hours, to adopt an independent decision. We are ready to do this. However, these actions may bring us into a clash which will lead to a grave catastrophe. . . . We propose that you demand from Israel that it unconditionally cease military action. . . . We purpose to warn Israel that if this is not fulfilled, necessary actions will be taken, including military.”233

The Soviets quickly broke off diplomatic relations with Israel, and the Soviet-bloc governments of Czechoslovakia and Bulgaria soon followed.234

CIA Director Richard Helms would later recall that the conversations in the Situation Room for the next several hours were in “the lowest voices he had ever heard in a meeting of that kind” and that “the atmosphere was tense” as the president and his most senior military, diplomatic, and intelligence advisors contemplated the possibility of a direct Soviet strike at Israel.235

Johnson, a devoted friend of Israel and an ardent anti-Communist, was not prepared to kowtow to Moscow or let Israel be destroyed. He immediately ordered the U.S. 6th Fleet in the Mediterranean to turn around—it was then heading west toward the Strait of Gibraltar—and steam toward Israel as a show of solidarity and to warn the Soviets not to get directly involved.236

He did the right thing, for according to Isabella Ginor, a Russian-born correspondent for the BBC World Service and other international news services, “new evidence now reveals that the Soviets were indeed poised to attack Israel . . . and had been preparing for such a mission all along.”237

On June 10, 2000—the thirty-third anniversary of Kosygin’s ominous hotline threat to Johnson—Ginor published an article in The Guardian (London) entitled “How the Six Day War Almost Led to Armageddon: New Evidence of 1967 Soviet Plan to Invade Israel Shows How Close the World Came to Nuclear Conflict.” In December of that year, she published a longer and more detailed article in the Middle East Review of International Affairs entitled “The Russians Were Coming: The Soviet Military Threat in the 1967 Six-Day War.” In these and other articles, she quoted Soviet military officials who paint a fragmentary but still disturbing picture of the attack that was being prepared.

Ginor noted that “in his recently published memoirs, Nikita S. Khruschev asserts that the USSR’s military command first encouraged high-ranking Egyptian and Syrian delegations, in a series of ‘hush-hush’ mutual visits, to go to war, then persuaded the Soviet political leadership to support these steps, in the full knowledge they were aimed at starting a war to destroy Israel.”238

Soviet acting defense minister Andrei A. Grechko and KGB Chairman Yuri V. Andropov, meanwhile, “were pressing for the immediate dispatch of Soviet forces to the Middle East.” Retired Soviet air force lieutenant Yuri V. Nastenko confirmed in 1998 that bomber and fighter jets, such as the MiG-21s that were under his command, were put on full operational alert on the evening of June 5, 1967, and that he was convinced this was in preparation for “real combat.”239

Yuri N. Khripunkov, a former Soviet naval officer who was serving on one of thirty Soviet warships that had been moved from the Black Sea southward to the Mediterranean in June 1967, told Ginor that he and his colleagues were preparing to unleash Soviet forces onto the Israeli mainland. His own platoon, he said, was “ordered to penetrate Haifa—Israel’s main commercial harbor and naval base.”240 Russian professor Alexsandr K. Kislov, who was stationed in the Middle East in 1967, told Ginor that the strike force the Soviets had prepared for insertion into Israel included “desant [landing] ships with well-prepared marines.”241

Some respected historians and diplomats have disputed the notion that the Soviets were planning to attack Israel in 1967.242 But while the evidence available from declassified documents and interviews with direct participants may not yet be conclusive, it is compelling. What’s more, Soviet premier Kosygin’s threat of direct military intervention into the 1967 war with Israel alone stands as chilling evidence of Moscow’s historic and recent animus toward the Jewish state—and as a warning of things to come.