Nation: The Mid East: Search for Stability

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The first urgent intelligence that the region was on the brink of convulsion arrived in Washington on the night of Sept. 15, as many of the Administration's highest officials gathered in Virginia's Airlie House to honor Defense Secretary Melvin Laird, who was given a "Statesman in Medicine" award. Henry Kissinger, the President's adviser on national security, received word that Hussein had marshaled his troops for a showdown with the fedayeen, that civil war in Jordan was imminent, and that the British Foreign Office was on the London-Washington line asking what the U.S. planned to do about it. Kissinger quietly but swiftly tapped those of the dinner guests who are members of the Administration's crisis-management team, the Washington Special Action Group: Admiral Thomas Moorer, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; Deputy Secretary of Defense David Packard, CIA Director Richard Helms and Joseph Sisco of the State Department (the only missing member was Under Secretary of State U. Alexis Johnson). Their black limousines reached the White House by 10:30 p.m. They conferred past midnight in the first of at least a dozen meetings on Jordan.

The group considered some possible outcomes of Hussein's move: a clear-cut routing of the guerrillas; a smashing fedayeen victory and Hussein's fall; a prolonged stalemate. They outlined U.S. options to deal with each eventuality. Far more ominous, however, was another possibility: that the Iraqis and Syrians, long sympathetic to the commandos, might intervene. That could tempt Israeli troops, armor and airpower to plunge in too. Then Egypt might respond—and Soviet pilots and technicians have become an integral part of Gamal Abdel Nasser's military forces. The first aim of U.S. strategy had to be to confine the fighting to the initial parties. The U.S. also hoped that Hussein would survive as a check on commando extremists. Finally, if the need arose, Americans trapped by the fighting would have to be rescued. The planning time for all that was short. Nixon insisted on a summary of his options by morning.

He got it just an hour before he took off to deliver an Alfred M. Landon Lecture at Kansas State University. Nixon went on to Chicago, where he, Kissinger and Sisco spent 90 minutes discussing the memo. Nixon's deepest worry was that the Israeli troops perched on the Golan Heights and the West Bank of occupied Jordan might not resist the temptation to attack the commandos. Kissinger learned that full civil war had indeed erupted. He awakened Nixon at 3 a.m. with the bad news. Nixon decided not to inflate the crisis at that point by cutting his trip short and returning to Washington.