Office of the Historian

129. Minutes of the Secretary of State’s Staff Meeting1

Washington, February 26, 1975, 8 a.m.

[Omitted here is material unrelated to the boycott or U.S.-Saudi relations.]

MR. ROBINSON: We have the Saudi Arabian Commission meeting starting here in a few minutes. We have run into a problem. The problem is developing over the exclusion of Jews from any of these contractual arrangements. We are going to have to try to work it out. And I think there are solutions. But it is going to create—

SECRETARY KISSINGER: Like what? Like Faisal converting? That way he can also go to Jerusalem.

MR. ROBINSON: We think perhaps if we exclude any reference to religion in soliciting contracts, and let the Saudis make their own decisions.

SECRETARY KISSINGER: How about race?

MR. ROBINSON: Race and religion.

SECRETARY KISSINGER: Both?

MR. ROBINSON: I don’t know.

SECRETARY KISSINGER: Get that word around, will you, McCloskey. We are against discrimination on the grounds of race and religion.

MR. ROBINSON: It is going to be a problem.

SECRETARY KISSINGER: Does anyone seriously believe that we are going to change the Saudis?

MR. ROBINSON: I don’t. But I think that perhaps in the way we handle it on this end, we can avoid the kind of criticism that is building up.

One other issue—

SECRETARY KISSINGER: The criticism that is building up is the same kind as with the Jackson amendment—people who want to interrupt the Saudi relationship. There is nothing new about what the Saudis are doing.

[Page 459]

MR. ROBINSON: Just that we are expanding our relationship with them, a government-to-government relationship, that brings the issue into focus.

MR. SISCO: The other side of the coin, Henry, is the boycott that the Arabs are making a matter of importance publicly themselves.

SECRETARY KISSINGER: That is a different problem. The problem of boycotting in the United States—that is one thing. That we should resist. The question of whom they take into their country is another matter.

MR. SISCO: I realize they are two different problems. But I happen to believe that is part of the overall problem. And it is being played as such. Sure they are two different problems.

SECRETARY KISSINGER: I know what is being played.

[Omitted here is material unrelated to the boycott or U.S.-Saudi relations.]

  1. Summary: Kissinger, Sisco, Robinson, and other Department principals discussed the Arab boycott of companies doing business with Israel as it pertained to U.S. companies performing work on Joint Commission projects.

    Source: National Archives, RG 59, Transcripts of Secretary of State Kissinger’s Staff Meetings, 1973–77, Entry 5177, Box 3, Secretary’s Analytical Staff Meetings. Secret. Kissinger chaired the meeting, attended by the Department’s principals or their designated alternates.

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