Donald Neff - Warriors at Suez: Eisenhower Takes America into the Middle East

AT

SUEZ

WARRIORS AT SUEZ Eisenhower Takes America into the Middle East

Warriors at Suez reveals for the first time one of the most bizarre events in the history of American foreign affairsthe Suez Crisis of 1956. This obscured and misconceived episode saw Israel, France, and Britain in collusion to overthrow the Nasser regime for their own selfish and sometimes cynical motives, found the United States blissful!} unaware of this conniving until twenty-four hours before the attack on Suez, and prompted Eisenhowers showdown against his longtime allies. Ultimately, it marked the end of Britain and France as colonial giants, the beginning of Israels aggression against the Arabs that laid the foundation for two more wars, and the emergence, almost by default, of the United States as the superpower arbiter in the Middle East.

Don Neff', an award-winning Time correspondent, writes with novelistic urgency as he penetrates the tangled web of archives, diaries, letters, memorandums, transcripts of' phone conversations, and other previously untapped sources to reconstruct this episode almost as it happened day by day, hour by hour.

Here are the giants of postwar history:

Eisenhower at the moral high point of his presidency, yet succumbing to old age and allowing a unique opportunity to slip by

Eden the dashing prime minister who failed to live up to his promise, befuddled by drugs as he takes his country to war

Ben Gurion the warrior lion who deliberately sought war to find security

(continued on back flap)

Eisenhower Takes America into the Middle East

DONALD NEFF

THE LINDEN PRESS / SIMON & SCHUSTER NEW YORK, 1981

COPYRIGHT 1981 BY DONALD NEFF

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

INCLUDING THE RIGHT OF REPRODUCTION IN WHOLE OR IN PART IN ANY FORM PUBLISHED BY THE LINDEN PRESS/SIMON & SCHUSTER A SIMON A SCHUSTER DIVISION OF GULF & WESTERN CORPORATION SIMON & SCHUSTER BUILDING 1230 AVENUE OF THE AMERICAS NEW YORK, NEW YORK IOO2O

THE LINDEN PRESS/SIMON & SCHUSTER AND COLOPHON ARE TRADEMARKS OF SIMON & SCHUSTER DESIGNED BY EVE METZ PHOTO EDITOR: VINCENT VIRGA

MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

10 9876 5 432 I

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING IN PUBI ICATION DATA

NEFF, DONALD, I93O-WARRIORS AT SUEZ.

bibliography: p.

INCLUDES INDEX.

I. EGYPTHISTORYINTERVENTION, 1956. I. TITLE

DTi07.83.N436 962'.O53 81-8465

AACR2

ISBN O-67I-4IOIO-S

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

If you have ever wondered about the practical purpose of presidential libraries, the embarking on a major research project will quickly give you the answer. The Dwight D. Eisenhower Library in Abilene, Kansas, is a magnificent example of the worth of these modern pyramids. The archivists patiently sort through millions of pages of documents, catalogue them, index them, and then take on the load of the tedious process of trying to get them declassified. It is a pleasure to work with these conscientious, caring scholars, in particular Supervising Archivist James Leyerzapf and Kathleen Struts, archivist.

The Freedom of Information Act has received glowing compliments in recent years, but if my experience is any guide the act has now fallen to the inroads of the censors and indifferent bureaucrats. For instance, the CIA. more than two years after my first petition, managed to produce exactly four documents from this period in which it was so active. Similarly. the State Department turned over only a modicum of information after great delay and considerable foot-dragging.

But there arc happier experiences to recount. Jan Schumacher, a veteran official of the United Nations from its birth until 1980. gathered the valuable and. for the most part, previously unpublished documents covering the 1956 period, and also found photographs to illustrate that era. Without his selfless helpfounded upon his unshakable belief that only by the continued existence of a world body that aspires to idealism and rule by law can the world hope to find peaceand the assistance of the

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

U.N. Archivist section, particularly Jack Belwood, the book simply would not be the same.

There were many more who selflessly cheered on the project or in one way or another contributed to its completion: William Brubeck. Ben Gurtizen. Nizar Jwaideh, David Hume Kennedy, William Kirby, Dennis Mullin, Brigid O'Hara-Forster, Richard Emerson Powell, Skip Rosen. Roy Rowen, and Belinda Salzberg; also, Fran Fiorino, Eileen McCarron and Keith Normandeau, for their careful typing of the manuscript: Joelle Attinger and, again, Jan Schumacher, for their patient translation of French; Robbin Reynolds, who believed in the book almost before 1 did, and especially Joni Evans, who not only bought it but skillfully edited what 1 produced into as good a read as it could possibly be made to be; and most of all, Abigail Trafford, who read and reread it, improved it. and tolerated the temperamental vagaries that accompanied it.

FOR

Gertrude Marie Kessler Neff and

The observers and peace-keeping forces of the United Nations who daily risk their lives in alien lands to bring justice to the world

CONTENTS

• chapter 1 Attackers Will Not Get Away

PHOTO SECTION FOLLOWS PAGE 120

chapter vii Without the United States, Britain

chapter ix We Had No Interest in Old-fashioned

chapter xii Nasser Soon Must Take Vigorous

PHOTO SECTION FOLLOWS PAGE 272

CONTENTS

chapter xiv Israelis Have Something to

chapter xv We ll Be Plastered as Assassins and

chapter xix The Law of the Jungle Has

chapter xx We Have These Socialists to Lick/HUMPHREY 424

MAPS

The Gaza Road page 34

The War page 369

The Suez Canal. Strategic Routes front end leaf

Israel and Egypt back end leaf

CAST OF CHARACTERS

America

George V. Allen, assistant secretary of state

Robert Amory, CIA

Robert B. Anderson, emissary of the President

James J. Angleton, CIA

Arleigh Burke, chief of naval operations

Henry A. Byroade, ambassador to Egypt

Miles Copeland, CIA

Allen Welsh Dulles, director, CIA

John Foster Dulles, secretary of state

Dwight D. Eisenhower, President

Wilbur Crane Eveland, CIA

Herbert Hoover, Jr., under secretary of state

Emmet John Hughes, presidential speech writer

George Humphrey, secretary of the treasury

Henry Cabot Lodge, ambassador to the United Nations

Robert Murphy, under secretary of state for political affairs

Richard M. Nixon, Vice President

Arthur W. Radford, chairman, joint chiefs of staff

Kermit Roosevelt, CIA

Britain

Winston Churchill, former prime minister

Anthony Eden, prime minister

Hugh Gaitskell. leader of the Labour Party

Selwyn Lloyd, foreign secretary

Harold Macmillan, chancellor of the exchequer

Lord Louis Mountbatten. First Sea Lord of the Admiralty

Anthony Nutting, protege of Eden

Humphrey Trevelyan, ambassador to Egypt

CAST OF CHARACTERS

Egypt

Mahmoud Fawzi. foreign minister

Ahmed Hussein, ambassador to the United States

Gamal Abdel Nasser, president

Mahmoud Yunis, Suez Canal expert

France

Andre Beaufre, musketeer deputy commander

Maurice Bourges-Maunoury. minister of defense