by Gary J. Bass
Yahya desperately needed U.S. military supplies, particularly aircraft. On the second day of the war, he begged for U.S. help, adding, “for God’s sake don’t hinder or impede the delivery of equipment from friendly third countries.” That day, Kissinger told Nixon that they had received a desperate appeal from Yahya, saying that his military supplies had been cut off, leaving him acutely vulnerable. Could the Americans help him through Iran, one of Pakistan’s most reliable friends? Nixon and Kissinger swiftly agreed to this, without considering any legal issues. Kissinger was concerned only that the United States would have to replace whatever Iranian weaponry was lost in the fighting. Nixon agreed: “If it is leaking we can have it denied. Have it done one step away.” Kissinger told the president, “If war does continue, give aid via Iran.” Nixon was relieved: “Good, at least Pakistan will be kept from being paral[y]zed.”17
They determinedly kept their actions in the shadows, circumventing normal State Department communications by using a back channel between Nixon and the shah of Iran, Muhammad Reza Pahlavi. Nixon, reassured that the U.S. ambassador in Tehran was oblivious, was delighted: “Good, well we’ll have some fun with this yet. God, you know what would really be poetic justice here is if some way the Paks could really give the Indians a bloody nose for a couple of days.” The next day, the shah agreed to a U.S. request to send Iranian military equipment to Pakistan, with the United States replacing whatever Iran sent.18
Jordan also got a request from Yahya, for eight to ten sophisticated U.S.-made F-104 Starfighter fighter-interceptors. King Hussein seemed keen to move his squadrons, but, fearing congressional wrath, did not want to act without express approval. When he nervously asked the U.S. embassy in Amman for advice, the diplomats balked. Kissinger noted with exasperation that these U.S. officials were lecturing the king of Jordan that it would be immoral to get involved in a faraway war; these diplomats had not conceived of the last-ditch possibility of using Iran and Jordan to provide U.S. weapons to the tottering Pakistani military.19
This was illegal. That fact was driven home to Kissinger by lawyers at the State Department and Pentagon, as well as by the White House staff.
On December 6, in the war’s early days, Kissinger for the first time proposed the operation in a Situation Room meeting—not mentioning that the president had already made up his mind, and that the Iranians were already acting. But a State Department official immediately warned Kissinger that transferring Jordanian weapons to Pakistan “is prohibited on the basis of present legal authority.” Kissinger countered, “My instinct is that the President will want to do it”—his way of saying that Nixon had already decided. “He is not inclined to let the Paks be defeated if he can help it.”20
After this Situation Room meeting, Kissinger walked upstairs to the Oval Office, where Nixon was waiting for the press. Before the cameras arrived, Kissinger told the president that “this military aid to Iran that Iran might be giving to West Pakistan. The only way we can really do it—it’s not legal, strictly speaking, the only way we can do it is to tell the shah to go ahead through a back channel, to go ahead.” Nixon did not flinch at breaking the law. Kissinger continued, “He’d sent you a message saying that he’s eager to do it as long as we don’t—the damn press doesn’t know about it and we keep our mouths shut.” Nixon’s only concern was that the shah did not inform the U.S. ambassador in Tehran: “I don’t want that son of a bitch to know.” “Oh no, no, no, no,” Kissinger assured him.
Nixon and Kissinger then plotted to conceal what they were doing. “We’ll have to say we didn’t know about it,” Kissinger said, “but we’ll cover it as soon as we can.” “Shit, how do we cover it?” Nixon asked. Kissinger explained, “By giving him”—the shah—“some extra aid next year.” “Do it,” said Nixon. He gave his official line: “I don’t know anything about it.” Then he laid out how they could publicly justify increasing military aid to compensate Iran, without mentioning the real reason. “Let’s put it this way: if I go to the Mideast, I think we need a stronger anchor in that area, and I determine, at this moment, that aid to Iran should substantially be increased next year.” Kissinger agreed.21
The State Department, sensing the impending scandal, quickly drew up a legal memorandum to stop Kissinger. Pakistan was still formally under a U.S. arms embargo. So, the State Department’s lawyers explained, the president could only consent to the transfer of U.S. weapons to Pakistan from another country if the United States declared it would be willing to directly provide the stuff itself. Nixon and Kissinger knew that that kind of presidential declaration was politically impossible—an overt step that would never be tolerated by the infuriated Congress. Such a White House action would also, as the State Department noted, be in conflict with the ban on military assistance and arms sales to Pakistan in pending foreign aid legislation that had been approved by both the Senate and the House of Representatives. After quoting from the relevant public law, the State Department emphatically warned, “Under the present U.S. policy of suspending all arms transfers to Pakistan, the U[nited] S[tates] G[overnment] could not consent to such a transfer.”22
The Pentagon’s lawyers agreed. They repeated all of the State Department’s legal analysis, chapter and verse, and helpfully sent along copies of each of the laws to the White House. As the Pentagon’s legal experts pointed out, the law “prohibits ‘third-country transfers’ to eligible recipients where simple direct transfers would not be permitted for policy reasons.” Leery of White House skullduggery, they warned that “if simple subterfuge is the only reason for preferring a ‘third-country transfer,’ then that is the type of ‘abuse’ which the Congress intended to prohibit.”23
Harold Saunders, Kissinger’s staffer at the White House, echoed these legal alarms. He had actually floated the idea of looking away while Iran and Jordan snuck weapons into Pakistan, but soon after prominently highlighted the legal “serious problem” for Kissinger—leaving his adventurous boss in no doubt that any U.S. weapons that found their way from Iran or Jordan to Pakistan would stand as a stark violation of U.S. law.24
Understanding clearly that what they were doing was illegal, Nixon and Kissinger did it anyway.
In the Oval Office, Nixon explained to Haldeman that they had told “the Iranians we’re going to provide arms through third countries and so forth and so on.” He casually added, “We’re trying to do something where it’s a violation of law and all that.” The White House chief of staff did not object—or even comment—when the president said that he and Kissinger were planning to break U.S. law.25
On December 8, in a Situation Room meeting, Kissinger laced into State Department officials for trying to stop him. “I have reviewed the cables to Jordan which enthusiastically tell Hussein he can’t furnish planes to the Paks,” he said. “We shouldn’t decide this on such doctrinaire grounds”—that is, obeying U.S. law. “The question is, when an American ally is being raped, whether or not the U.S. should participate in enforcing a blockade of our ally, when the other side is getting Soviet aid.” After a Pentagon official reminded him about the law, Kissinger blew up at the group: “We have a country, supported and equipped by the Soviet Union, turning one half of another country into a satellite state and the other half into an impotent vassal. Leaving aside any American interest in the subcontinent, what conclusions will other countries draw from this in their dealings with the Soviets?”26
Kissinger urged the president, “I would encourage the Jordanians to move their squadrons into West Pakistan and the Iranians to move their squadrons.” When Nixon asked what effect these squadrons would have, Kissinger replied, “Enough. Militarily in Pakistan we have only one hope now. To convince the Indians that the thing is going to escalate. And to convince the Russians that they’re going to pay an enormous price.” Nixon wanted to “immediately” tell the Jordanians to act. Kissinger said, “I’d let the Jordanians move another squadron to Pakistan simply to show them some exclamation and let the Iranians move their two
squadrons to Jordan if they want to.” Nixon agreed. Kissinger pressed him: “right now we’re in the position where we are telling allies not to assist another ally that is in mortal danger.”27
Nixon and Kissinger worried about getting caught. The president warned that if Kissinger raised these weapons transfers in a Situation Room meeting, “the whole damn thing will get out in the papers.” When Kissinger doubted that the Jordanians could move squadrons of planes without reporters finding out, Nixon said they would pretend that the Jordanians had acted on their own. Kissinger told Pakistan’s ambassador to “stop all cable traffic with respect to help on ammunition and so forth. We are doing what we can and we will send a coded message. It’s getting too dangerous for you to send it.” Kissinger cautioned him that “we are working very actively on getting military equipment to you—but for God’s sake don’t say anything to anybody!”28
Even Kissinger’s own White House staffers, who suspected something was up, were kept in the dark. Samuel Hoskinson denies knowing about the operation. “This would have been in a channel outside of us,” he says. “Covert action was in a separate vein.” Later, Kissinger grew sufficiently nervous about this illegality that he had Alexander Haig, his deputy, gather evidence fixing the blame on Nixon. Haig wrote to Kissinger, “Here are three telcons [telephone conversations] all of which confirm the President’s knowledge of, approval for and, if you will, directive to provide aircraft to Iran and Jordan.”29
Nixon and Kissinger made no appeal to theories of executive power, and drew up no legal briefs supporting their actions; they simply acted. For their crucial meeting on the Iranian and Jordanian arms transfers, on December 8, they were joined in the president’s hideaway office in the Executive Office Building by John Mitchell, the attorney general, who proved as unconcerned about violating the law as they were. (The crucial parts of this meeting are bleeped out on the White House tapes, but the State Department has released a declassified transcript.)
Kissinger candidly said, “it’s illegal for them to move them.” A little later, Nixon said, “You say it’s illegal for us to do, also for the Jordanians.” Kissinger explained that “the way we can make it legal is to resume arms sales through—if we, if you announce that Pakistan is now eligible for the purchase of arms.” That would be a massive policy shift, and Nixon balked: “That would be tough, Henry, to go that way.” Kissinger concurred: “you would do more if it were not for this goddamn Senate.”
Instead, Kissinger, unfazed by the presence of the attorney general, said, “the way you get the Jordanian planes in there is to tell the King we cannot give you legal permission. On the other hand, we’d have to figure out a message, which says, ‘We’ll just close our eyes. Get the goddamned planes in there.’ ” Similarly, Kissinger said, the shah of Iran did not dare to act without a “formal commitment from us.” To safeguard their secret, Nixon and Kissinger agreed to covertly send a “special emissary”—probably either the CIA director or an Israeli—bearing that message to King Hussein. “We’d have to do it that way,” said Kissinger. “We cannot authorize it.”
None of this elicited protest from the chief law enforcement officer of the United States. Mitchell waited patiently through the meeting, occasionally jumping into the conversation to disparage “the goddamn Indians” and to slam Ted Kennedy as “stupid.” When Nixon wanted to keep the State Department in the dark, Mitchell immediately concurred. When Kissinger pointed out that the State Department had to know about the movement of the Jordanian planes, Mitchell proposed a cover-up: “Well, you’ve got to give them the party line on that or all a sudden the Secretary of State will say that’s illegal.” Kissinger insisted that the Jordanians had to be told that they would not be punished “if they move them against our law.” Nixon agreed.
The president said, “All right, that’s an order. You’re goddamn right.” In front of the attorney general, Nixon asked, “Is it really so much against our law?” Kissinger admitted that it was. Referring to the Iranians and the Jordanians, he explained again, “What’s against our law is not what they do, but our giving them permission.” Nixon said, “Henry, we give the permission privately.” “That’s right,” agreed Kissinger.
“Hell,” said the president, “we’ve done worse.”30
“WE GO BALLS OUT”
This was a radical set of steps. They could ignite a border war between China and India, set up a confrontation with the Soviet Union, cause a domestic firestorm, and get the administration dragged through U.S. courts. If Nixon stood his ground, the crisis could escalate out of control; if he did not, then the United States would lose credibility—always a big concern for Nixon’s team.
Nixon momentarily got cold feet. “The partition of Pakistan is a fact,” he told Kissinger, who conceded as much. Nixon said, “You see those people welcoming the Indian troops when they come in. Now the point is, why is then, Henry, are we going through all this agony?” Kissinger stiffened the president’s resolve. “We’re going through this agony to prevent the West Pakistan army from being destroyed,” he crisply replied, after a pause to consider the question. “Secondly, to maintain our Chinese arm. Thirdly, to prevent a complete collapse of the world’s psychological balance of power, which will be produced if a combination of the Soviet Union and the Soviet armed client state can tackle a not so insignificant country without anybody doing anything.”
Kissinger then went apocalyptic. “I would keep open the possibility that we’ll pour in arms into Pakistan,” he said angrily. “I don’t understand the psychology by which the Russians can pour arms into India but we cannot give arms to Pakistan. I don’t understand the theory of non-involvement. I don’t see where we will be as a country. I have to tell you honestly, I consider this our Rhineland.”
Kissinger direly warned that “the rape” of Pakistan, an ally of the United States, would have terrible consequences in Iran, Indonesia, and the Middle East. When this did not sway Nixon, he added that if the Soviet Union grew too confident after an Indian victory, there could be a Middle East war in the spring. Nixon nervously said, “We have to know what we’re jeopardizing and know that once we go balls out we never look back.” Kissinger agreed that the president was gambling his relationship with the Soviets, but hoped that the very willingness to bet such big stakes would scare them.
This doomsday argument persuaded Nixon. He went forward on all the interlocking parts of Kissinger’s plan: moving a U.S. aircraft carrier and asking China to deploy its troops toward India’s border. And the president again approved the illegal movement of Jordanian warplanes. Kissinger said, “I’d let the Jordanians move some of their planes in,” and added, “And then we would tell State to shut up.” Nixon agreed to that. Kissinger continued, “we would have to tell him”—King Hussein—“it’s illegal, but if he does it we’ll keep things under control.” Once again, neither Nixon nor Kissinger flinched at breaking the law. Nixon said, “with regard to the Jordanians, no sweat.” Soon after, he ordered, “Get the planes over.”31
Nixon and Kissinger laid their relationship with the Soviet Union on the line, deliberately risking the cancellation of an upcoming summit of the two superpowers. That afternoon, Nixon hauled the visiting Soviet agriculture minister into the Oval Office for a beating. The startled minister was said to be a close personal friend of Brezhnev, but he was beyond his brief and out of his depth. Nixon—sending a message to Brezhnev—warned that the war could “poison” his relationship with the Soviet Union and cause “a confrontation.”32
Afterward, Nixon said, “I really stuck it to him.” “Well, but you did it so beautifully,” Kissinger replied. He predicted that the war would end now, with the United States coming out damaged but not as badly as it could have been, and with India thwarted from launching an onslaught against West Pakistan.33
Kissinger told a Soviet diplomat that the United States was moving some of its military forces: as he explained to Nixon, “in effect it was giving him sort of a veiled ultimatum.�
�� Nixon sternly wrote to Brezhnev, urging him to use his influence to restrain India, and telling him that he shared responsibility for India’s actions.34
Soon after, Kissinger told the Soviets that they had until noon on December 12, or “we will proceed unilaterally.” With vague menace, he said that “we may take certain other steps.” Nixon privately said that the Soviet Union was abetting Indian aggression. Kissinger, who called the situation “heartbreaking,” agreed: “now that East Pakistan has practically fallen there can no longer be any doubt that we are dealing with naked aggression supported by Soviet power.”35
Meanwhile, the illegal transfers of U.S. weaponry to Pakistan went ahead. As Kissinger frankly told Nixon, “Four Jordanian planes have already moved to Pakistan, 22 more are coming. We’re talking to the Saudis, the Turks we’ve now found are willing to give five. So we’re going to keep that moving until there’s a settlement.”36
Kissinger pressed a Situation Room meeting: “What if Jordan should send planes to Pakistan? Why would this be such a horrible event?” A senior State Department official again explained the legal problem. Kissinger’s insistence sparked suspicions. Harold Saunders, the White House staffer, warily wrote that Jordan might have already delivered F-104s.37
The CIA spotted the covert operation, reporting that a squadron of Jordanian F-104s had gone to Pakistan, totaling twelve warplanes. En route the planes stopped in Saudi Arabia, with some of them flown by Jordanian pilots and others allegedly guarded by Pakistanis. The State Department, too, observed eleven of these Jordanian F-104s in Saudi Arabia, and surmised they were bound for Pakistan. While the U.S. embassy in Amman was never notified, its staffers did notice a conspicuous absence of Jordanian fighter pilots at their favorite bars.38