FOREIGN RELATIONS: The Kissinger Tilt

KISSINGER: The President is blaming me, but you fellows are in the clear. SISCO: That's ideal.

That fleeting moment of levity during the secret deliberations of the elite Washington Special Action Group enlivened the classified documents released last week by Columnist Jack Anderson (see THE PRESS). While providing a rare, fascinating glimpse of uncertainty and candor among the President's top advisers as India waged its swift war to dismember Pakistan, the papers revealed nothing new of substance and fell far short of proving the columnist's assertion that the Administration had grossly deceived the public about its pro-Pakistani stance. They did discredit Henry Kissinger's claim during the action that the U.S. was not "anti-Indian," but the Administration's lack of neutrality had been evident all along.

While not comparable in scope or substance to the Pentagon papers, the Anderson revelations similarly constitute more an embarrassment to Government than a threat to national security. They include the minutes of three meetings of the Special Action Group, a unit of the National Security Council, which were attended by up to 19 representatives of such agencies as the CIA, AID, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the State and Defense departments. The dialogue at the meetings turned out to be coolly colloquial. Ambassador U. Alexis Johnson referred to the emerging nation of Bangladesh as "an international basket case," while Henry Kissinger argued that at least it need not be "our basket case." Pakistanis were always called "Paks," and the two sections of that nation were the East and West "wings." An impending U.S. decision became "the next state of play."

Twelve Days. More substantially, even on the second day of fighting the highest experts seemed to know little more about the action than they could have read in their newspapers. The minutes note that CIA Director Richard Helms "indicated that we do not know who started the current action." Kissinger asked the CIA to prepare a report on "who did what to whom and when." The military representatives stuck their necks out when asked how long it would take the Indian army to force a Pakistani surrender in the East. Admiral Elmo Zumwalt, Chief of Naval Operations, estimated one or two weeks; Army Chief of Staff William Westmoreland said as many as three. It took twelve days.

As reported widely last month, President Nixon was furious at Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi because during her visit to Washington in November, she gave no indication that India intended to go to war with Pakistan. The Anderson papers illustrate the intensity of Nixon's anger at New Delhi: "I am getting hell every half-hour from the President that we are not being tough enough on India," Kissinger told the meeting on Dec. 3. "He has just called me again. He does not believe we are carrying out his wishes. He wants to tilt in favor of Pakistan. He feels everything we do comes out otherwise."