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The military branch responsible for this sickening business has a huge department in the Defense Ministry. It has rejected any kind of international control. Several times I asked officials there why they were so adamant. The response: control (in the Soviet context, this word usually means on-site inspection) was out of the question because it could reveal the extent of the development of these weapons and Soviet readiness for their eventual use. There is no question that the U.S.S.R. is much better prepared than the U.S. for this type of warfare.
Because of my U.N. work, Gromyko regarded me as something of a Middle East expert. He ordered me to follow events in the area. Analysts in the Middle East Department were worried. "Things are bad," one of them told me early in 1971, referring to the fact that the Egyptians were stalling Moscow on concluding a long-sought treaty of friendship designed to bind Cairo firmly into an alliance. A friend told me, "Opinions are beginning to solidify in the leadership that we have to be rid of (Egyptian President Anwar) Sadat. Sadat is a scoundrel. The only problem is that we don't have a really strong figure to take over from him. But there are some possibilities."
I must have showed my surprise. "Are people really planning something? How do you know about this?"
"I don't know all the details myself," he admitted. "But I have my own contacts with the KGB. They've gone far enough in thinking this out so that they have a general plan to take care of Sadat--to liquidate him. Of course, not by their own hands. They have people, though, who are getting ready to act."
A friend on the Central Committee staff also remarked to me that Sadat should go "one way or another." In a short time, however, the option vanished: Sadat moved against his domestic opposition, arresting his Vice President, Ali Sabry, whom we favored, and six other Cabinet members, and eventually charging them with high treason.
NIXON, KISSINGER AND DETENTE
I was extensively involved in preparing for Richard Nixon's visit to Moscow in May 1972. In a pre-summit meeting in Gromyko's office, as we were trying to think of a suitable gift for Nixon, Gromyko remarked, "Almost all Americans have some kind of hobby. Does anyone know what Nixon's is?" After a moment of head shaking around the table, Gromyko said dryly, "I think what he'd really like is a guarantee to stay in the White House forever." Soviet leaders did find in Nixon's behavior definite similarities to their own, and concluded that it might be possible to deal with him in the world of realpolitik.
When Henry Kissinger had begun his triangular diplomacy by secretly visiting Peking the year before, it was a shock to the Soviet leadership. Gromyko went about for weeks with a black expression. His deputy Makarov said that Brezhnev had given Gromyko a thorough dressing-down for not anticipating the American-Chinese rapprochement.
At the same time, the Americans were able to put in place the Soviet side of the triangle by promising to accept the principle of equality between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. This was the most powerful boost to Soviet egos, suffering for years under an inferiority complex. Moscow would have been happy if the summit meeting with Nixon had produced nothing more than a declaration of principles including equality.