1967 When USA's CIA Involvement With Israel and Jordan's "West Bank" Was Routine

President Lyndon B. Johnson of USA during Israel's Six Day War

Nadene Goldfoot                                            

Prime Minister of Israel during Six Day War, Levi Eshkol
June 5th to June 11th, 1967 when Egypt, Jordan, Iraq and Syria's armies
attacked Israel.  

Back in 1967, the USA was "big brother" to Israel.  Israel had to keep them informed before they did anything  defensively when under attack.  It was like they had to ask permission before they acted.
                                                                       

Richard Helms, Director of CIA from 1966 to 1973
under Johnson and Nixon.  

For the past 10 years, there had been a UN Emergency Force standing between Egypt and Israel to keep the peace after the 1956 War.  Clashes continued along Israel's frontiers, but the frontier with Egypt remained the quietest.  The Gulf of Eilat was open to ships going to and from Israel, but all this was illusionary.  Underneath the Arabs were plotting again.

Arab hostility and hatred never slackened.  Egypt was again their leader in wanting to get even since Israel had won wars against them from the Arabs in 1948, and 1956 and all the attacks in between.
                                                                     

President Gamal Abd el Nasser of Egypt wrote letters to his co-conspirators such as:
WE BELIEVE THAT THE EVIL WHICH WAS PLACED IN THE HEART OF THE ARAB WORLD SHOULD BE ERADICATED !  This was sent to King Hussein of Jordan on March 13, 1961.

THE PROSPECTS ARE FOR WAR WITH ISRAEL.  IT IS WE WHO WILL DICTATE THE TIME.  IT IS WE WHO WILL DICTATE THE PLACE.  Nasser said this from Cairo on February 24, 1964.

THE ARAB NATIONAL AIM IS THE ELIMINATION OF ISRAEL. Nasser published this with President Aref of Iraq on May 25, 1965.
                                                                         

Nureddin al-Atassi President from 1966 to 1970 of Syria
born in Homs, Syria in 1929

1967 came and there was much tension between Syria and Israel because of this active policy of hostility towards Israel.  By the middle of May, the tension was exploited by the USSR, Egypt and Syria to produce the escalation which led to the Six-Day War of 1967.
                                                                               

Leonid Brezhnev, Chairman of Presidiuim of USSR Oct 1964 to November 1982
 shared power with Premier Alexei Kosygin 

 Egypt, Syria and the Soviet Union spread false reports of Israeli forces being on the Syrian frontier.  The UN gave out on the spot reports that they were not and that this was false reporting that was ignored.  The Arabs did this on purpose in order to have reason to menace Israel's borders.

Israel had launched a preemptive strike in the Sinai in 1956 without Washington's direct approval, and the CIA was angry about it.  Imagine-it was strike or be killed and Israel didn't have the time to waste to defend itself to have to call and wait for approval.  Now the CIA had been briefed from the Israeli embassy in Washington about Israel's plans to preempt an Arab invasion that was seen from their binoculars.  Egypt had already closed the Straits of Tiran on any ship trying to get to Israel.  The Arabs had formed a war pact against Israel and their soldiers were sitting along the frontiers with Israel.  Jordan's army was among them, being led by an Egyptian officer.  The Arabs were busy making speeches, and they publicly proclaimed that they were going to destroy Israel.

WE ARE RESOLVED, DETERMINED AND UNITED, TO ACHIEVE OUR CLEAR AIM OF WIPING ISRAEL OFF THE MAP...THIS IS THE DAY TO WASH AWAY THE STAIN.  GOD WILLING, WE SHALL MEET IN TEL AVIV AND HAIFA.  This was said on Radio Baghdad by President Aref of Iraq on June 1, 1967.  It was only one of other threatening comments.

Every major facet of the impeding campaign of the Israelis was first discussed in advance with the CIA including a strike against Syria.  The US government knew that Israel planned to attack the Golan Heights before it happened and gave them the OK.  Syria, who held it, was in thick with the Russians and was not a friend of the USA.  Jordan was different.  A CIA agent in Amman, Jordan leaked word to Jordan's King Hussein about the secret Israeli briefing, thinking this was good news.  He told Jordan that the Israelis would  counterattack only in the north and south against Egypt and Syria and not Jordan.

Israel had been under USA pressure to not send the IDF into Judea and Samaria (West Bank) which was their eastern border.  They would not do this as long as Jordan didn't attack Israel.  That way, Jordan would not lose the provinces of Judea, Samaria and the old city of Jerusalem that they held even though they had stolen these from Israel in 1948 as they had been part of the planned Jewish National Home being they were the Jewish original lands.

However, as many plans go astray, it turns out that of course Jordan was under pressure from the other Arabs to join in the attack against Israel, so they had to make a showing.  It was only about 9 miles from Israel to the ocean.  A Jordanian armored column could cut the country in half, King Hussein thought.

Hussein then sent Jordanian troops to attack from Syria while he promised the CIA that not a single Jordanian soldier would attack Israel from the West Bank.  Thus, the CIA told Israel that Jordan would not attack from the east..  Well, Israel does have Mossad and Mossad has spies, just like the CIA.  They found out quickly about the deal with Hussein and were furious!  This was a big deal to the safety plans for Israel.

Then Israel found out more.  The CIA had also made a deal with the Egyptians.  As it turns out, the CIA was actually acting like the messenger boy for others because the deal this time was made in the White House, Aramco and the other big players in the oil business who were concerned that American aid to Israel would alienate the Arab oil producers.

It wasn't enough that the White House was withholding military assistance to Israel in this coming war.  The Moslem world knew that the USA was still neutral but still  favored  Israel.  The oil men wanted some under-the-table help for the Arabs.
                                                                                 

At this time, Lyndon B. Johnson was President of the USA.   The oil producers got to LBJ or his closest person and asked if the president could throw the Arabs a bone.  They wanted to keep the oil flowing no matter what was going to happen.  So the White House approved a contingency plan to send the Arabs a little intelligence about the IDF; not too much, nothing that would change the balance of the war.  Their plans fell through and the small-scale contingency plan just expanded!  Only some of the staff in the WHITE HOUSE, the NATIONAL SECURITY AGENCY AND THE CIA knew what had happened, and they all accused each other of the leaks.  

The CIA had had few positive experiences  by 1967.  They were successful in 1949 with a Syrian coup, and installed the Shah of Iran in 1953, but they failed in rolling back communism and in keeping the Middle East safe for the oil companies.  They were failures with Egypt even though Kermit Roosevelt and Miles Copeland had worked on them for a long time to get Nasser to be their tame puppet.  Nasser was favoring the Soviets instead.  
                                                                       

USS Liberty, American ship attacked by Israel on June 8th, 1967
that had been spying on Israel with information for her enemies.  Israel apologized for the attack, saying that the USS Liberty had been attacked in error after being mistaken for an Egyptian ship
In May 1968, the Israeli government paid US$3,323,500 (US$22.9 million 2017) in compensation to the families of the 34 men killed in the attack

  It was back 1957, Roosevelt had sent CIA agents to bribe Nasser.  Roosevelt had left the CIA to head up Gulf Oil and had worked with Copeland in anti-Israel operations!  His CIA agents built Nasser a sophisticated communications tower in Cairo-right downtown.  Nasser took the CIA money and laughed as he called the tower "Kermit's phallic symbol" and kept on bringing in more Soviet advisers.  The CIA then bowed out to let in the National Security Agency.  They had in their basket of goodies, the ship:  USS Liberty.  This ship picked up 2 non-Jewish but Hebrew translators who were NSA employees from Spain and they headed for the eastern Mediterranean.  They were to spy on Israel and betray its secrets, all planned in advance.  The Liberty was a giant magnet for electronic intelligence.  The US embassy in Beirut could monitor all the radio traffic in all of Israel.  This embassy taped the Israeli pilots talking back and forth when the hit the Liberty.  The Egyptian embassy in Jordan could listen to radio traffic and they were closer than the Liberty was.  The Liberty was there in order to make a war map.  The ship could hear an IDF soldier on his walkie-talkie, record his voice and index it on  map.  It's called doing "raw intelligence take."   With such friends, who needs enemies?  It wasn't done to help out Israel.  In 1967, the British had planned to hand the Liberty's intelligence report to the Egyptians!  

Israel waited for 3 weeks from May 15th for international intervention to stop the escalation and remove the threat from its frontiers.  They were all incapable of effecting any change.  On June 5th, War broke out.

On June 4th, King Hussein had called Nasser to tell him that the CIA had just alerted him that the Israelis would attack in the morning.  Again, Nasser laughed off the CIA's betrayal of Israel's plans.  The Americans had called Wolf once too often.   The Egyptians stopped laughter on June 5th.

King Hussein was angry with the CIA, ignoring the fact that he had lied to them about not attacking.  Jordan had also been shooting in Jerusalem before Israel had fired one shot at Jordan.  The Jordanians had also had an air attack on Israel before the war even started.

Israel destroyed the armies along its frontiers and were menacing its vital centers.  Cease-fire lines were established along the Suez Canal, the Jordan River and the Golan Heights.  The Straits of Tiran were open to navigation and Jerusalem was finally re-unified like it was in 1947-48.

In 6 days Israel had won, despite all the conniving against her from her "friends."  Which tells  you something;  Israel as been rightly needing its friends but must rely on itself also, as it has done, knowing it has G-d's help.  And as we know, G-d helps those who help themselves.
                                                                     

Levi Shkolnik in 1920's Palestine

Israel's Prime Minister was Levi Eshkol, originally Shkolnik, born in Kiev, Ukraine in 1895-part of the Pale of Settlement.  His father's family were from Vilnius, Lithuania and mother was from a Hasidic family.  He had made aliyah in 1914 to Palestine.  He died in 1969 at age 73.  I believe this was one of the tensest of times in Israel's history.  The decisions he had to make and at the same time to make sure the USA was kept in the loop must have been horrendous to most of us.  He was there at the right time to see it through.

Resource:  p. 46 Facts About Israel, Division of Information, Ministry for Foreign Affairs, Jerusalem, Israel
Book:  The Secret War Against the Jews" by John Loftus and Mark Aarons:  How western espionage betrayed the Jewish people.  1994
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levi_Eshkol
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Presidents_of_Syria#/media/File:Nureddin_Atassi.jpg
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Liberty_incident