Office of the Historian

202. President’s Daily Brief1

Washington, June 8, 1967.

Arab States-Israel (As of 5:00 AM EDT)

The UN’s ceasefire order is being disregarded. Egypt has officially announced it will not comply, and Nasir has personally so informed most other Arab governments. The Israelis may have broken their ceasefire agreement with Jordan.

Early this morning the Jordanian prime minister told our embassy that Israeli tanks were moving into northwestern Jordan. The ultimate aim of such a movement might be to attack Syria. The embassy also says fighting on the Israeli-Jordanian front picked up during the night. [3 lines of source text not declassified]

On the Sinai Peninsula, the Israelis have apparently accomplished most of their military objectives. Yesterday the Israelis approached the Suez Canal so rapidly that they probably cut off the major portion of the retreating Egyptians.

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Embassy Cairo believes that public realization of the Arab defeat has generated strong feeling against Nasir, and foreign diplomats in Cairo consider the Egyptians are in a state of panic over the military debacle. [3 lines of source text not declassified] Senior Iraqi officials in New York are said to believe Nasir is desperate and might do almost anything to maintain his position.

Mobs in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, have damaged US installations, and our consulate in Aleppo has been attacked and burned. As the extent of the defeat sinks into the Arab countries, danger to US citizens still there may increase. Refugees from the fighting in Jordan’s West Bank are already streaming into Amman, where they could cause disorder directed at Americans.

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Arab States-Israel (As of 5:30 AM EDT)

The Israelis have just announced (according to the press) that Egyptian armored forces have counterattacked “in force” in an effort to fight their way out of the Sinai Peninsula. This could refer to Egyptian troops trapped in the rapid Israeli advance.

  1. Source: Johnson Library, National Security File, NSC Histories, Middle East Crisis, Vol. 6, Appendix A. Top Secret; [codeword not declassified]. Regarding the release of this PDB, see footnote 1, Document 151.↩