Being Nixon: A Man Divided

by Evan Thomas

As so often in the past, Nixon felt isolated, unable to trust his closest advisers. He was getting foot-dragging excuses from the Pentagon, and he continued to wonder about Kissinger’s divided or ambivalent loyalties—to him, to his liberal friends, to the Jewish state.10 Nixon himself was constantly weighing competing interests—access to cheap Arab oil, the Jewish vote at election time, worries about provoking a conflict with the Soviet Union over primacy in the Middle East. Along with Kissinger, he had a tendency to delude himself with the presumption that America could cold-bloodedly calibrate the fate of other peoples as part of some grand global “geostrategy.”11 And yet, in a critical moment in the history of Israel, Nixon—who could so casually utter ethnic slurs—decisively and forcefully came to the rescue of the people of Israel. When Kissinger told him that the Pentagon had authorized three C-5A transports to fly to Israel—any more would “cause problems” with the Arabs and Soviets—Nixon was exasperated. “We’re going to get blamed just as much for three planes as for 300,” he told Kissinger.12 The president called Secretary of Defense James Schlesinger and told him that he was aware of the gravity of his decision and that he would accept the responsibility if the Arabs cut off oil to America.