298. Transcript of a Telephone Conversation Between the President’s Assistant for National Security Affairs (Kissinger) and the President’s Deputy Assistant for National Security Affairs (Haig)1
K: Al, I think you ought to call Rabin. Or should I do it?
H: No, I can do it.
K: And tell him this is a matter of such importance that we have decided to get the senior people together so that they could be sure that they had a united government backing them.
H: Yes.
K: Put it in a positive way.
H: Absolutely.
K: And that I have asked you to communicate that to him.
H: Right.
K: And that otherwise we didn’t want to go through the Cambodian exercise again.
H: Right.
K: So that the meeting is at 8:30 and they won’t get the answer much before 10:00.
H: Okay, sir. I think that is alright. He said they would hope to have an answer in two or three hours so we will make it alright.
K: We won’t make it because he called you at 5:00 am.
H: Yes.
K: They will decide not to decide.
H: Well, that could happen but—
K: Let him hear his goddamned Secretary of State. I have called Laird and Rogers2 and that is aboard.
H: Good. Everyone else is being called right now.
K: Now do something about Moorer for Christ’s sake. And tell him this is the goddamned ball game. We are going to be dead. This is worse than Cambodia.
H: Oh, by far. Especially in the light of the other thing.
[Page 830]K: We will be dead—if we decide to do nothing and the Israelis go, we will be worse off. The only hope we have of preventing a disaster is to let them go and be tough as nails.
H: That’s right.
K: If there is a collapse and the Israelis do not go and then our world position is finished because they will be finished, don’t you think?
H: Right. Oh, I think they’ll go. They know in their own minds they have a couple of days because they can clean that thing out. So I’m not too concerned about that.
K: Frankly, I think they want the King to fall and then they will clean it up.
H: Yes. They want it to deteriorate a little more. And I think in either event they have control of that no matter what position we take.
K: Right.
H: Okay.
K: Okay. I’ll get a car. What time is it?
H: It is about 7:10.
K: Okay, I will come in as quickly as possible and I suppose you will too.
H: Yes.
K: Good. But talk to Robbie,3 will you?
H: Yes.
K: I don’t know what I’d do without you. We will be snapping at each other all afternoon we’ll be so tired.
H: Chuckle.
K: Except that we don’t snap on big things. It takes little ones.
H: Right.
K: Okay. Goodbye.
- Source: National Archives, Nixon Presidential Materials, Kissinger Telephone Conversations, Box 30, Chronological Files. No classification marking. The time is handwritten.↩
- See Documents 295 and 296.↩
- Not further identified.↩