Special Section: CRISIS AND CONFRONTATION

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official who sat at the nexus of all the cable traffic, it was crucial for Sisco to understand the nuances of White House thinking. First we had to find the President. With the aid of the Secret Service we tracked him to an obscure bowling alley in the basement of the Executive Office Building. Nixon calmly listened to our report and approved the recommendations while incongruously holding a bowling ball in one hand. It was one of the few occasions that I saw Nixon without a coat and tie. He said that whatever was done must succeed; he was determined to stop the Syrian attack.

In Jordan, the northern town of Irbid fell. Kissinger called Israeli Ambassador Yitzhak Rabin to request Israeli reconnaissance and to raise the possibility of air strikes and ground action.

I went home and to bed at 2 a.m., Monday, Sept. 21. At 5:15 a.m., I was awakened by Al Haig [then Kissinger's second in command on the NSC], who had just received a call from Rabin: the Israelis thought ground action might also be necessary. Israel would appreciate the American view in two or three hours.

At 5:35 a.m., I phoned and awakened the President to tell him of Rabin's preliminary response. I urged him to defer a decision and to call a meeting of his senior advisers for 7:30 in the morning. But Nixon soon called back and said: "I have decided it. Don't ask anybody else. Tell him [Rabin] 'Go.' "

I was not about to let the President run the risk of a major confrontation with the Soviet Union without consulting his senior advisers. An Israeli ground operation could produce a Middle Eastern war. I called Sisco, who said he agreed with the President's decision. I next called Secretary of State William Rogers, who had serious reservations, especially in the absence of a formal Jordanian request for ground support. Defense Secretary Mel Laird was ambiguous; he wanted to consider the intelligence. At 7:10 a.m. I urged the President again to call a meeting of his senior advisers in view of the differences of opinion among them. He now reluctantly agreed.

Our Government was united on approving Israeli air attacks; there was a difference of opinion as to Israeli ground operations. I did not think the issue required an immediate resolution. Israeli mobilization would take at least 48 hours. And Israel could not afford not to mobilize because it could not permit a Syrian victory, whatever our reaction. Thus we had a breathing space—if the King could hold on—during which pressures on Syria would mount, perhaps to the point where the crisis resolved itself.

Calculus of Risks

The NSC met at 8:45 a.m., Monday, Sept. 21. Though the discussion concerned mainly our attitude toward ground operations, it really came down again to a philosophical debate on how to handle crises. Those who believed in very slow and measured escalation feared a confrontation with the Soviet Union. Nixon, as well as I, believed that this was the most likely way for a crisis to become unmanageable: if we wished to avoid a showdown with the Soviets, we had to create rapidly a calculus of risks they would be unwilling to confront, rather than let them slide into the temptation to match our gradual moves. Rogers wanted to make the ultimate decision depend on whether the Syrians moved south from the occupied town of Irbid; in my view the crisis