Word: airlifters
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Once over its second thoughts, our Defense Department put on the sort of performance no other country can match, carrying an average of about 50 tons of equipment each hour over a distance of 6,000 miles. In the first full day of the airlift, we had more than matched what the Soviet Union had put into Egypt, Syria and Iraq combined in all of the four previous days...
...Ismail sent a message in which?amazingly?he invited me to visit Egypt for talks "within the framework of two principles?that Egypt cannot make any concessions of land or sovereignty." There could be no doubt that Ismail was speaking in Sadat's name. Sadat could have used the airlift as a pretext to unleash the mobs in the Arab world against us, as Nasser had done with far less provocation in 1967. But Sadat was willing to forgo posturing for attainable progress. He had taken the measure of Soviet support: always enough to keep tensions high, never enough...
...meantime, as we pressed on with the airlift and urged a cease-fire linked to U.N. Resolution 242, which in the wake of the 1967 war called in vague terms for a withdrawal from occupied territories and for "secure and recognized boundaries," Watergate again approached one of its climaxes. Much of Nixon's attention during the week of the airlift was absorbed with the court of appeals decision on the Watergate tapes. On Oct. 17 Attorney General Elliot Richardson transmitted a White House proposal to Archibald Cox, the Watergate special prosecutor, that Nixon would allow John Stennis, a prestigious Senator...
There was no question in my mind that we would have to reject the Soviet proposal. And we would have to do so in a manner that shocked the Soviets into abandoning the move they were threatening?and apparently planning. The CIA reported that the Soviet airlift to the Middle East had stopped early on the 24th, though ours was continuing; the ominous
...Wednesday morning, Oct. 10, we awoke to the ominous news that some 20 Soviet transport aircraft were on the way to Syria via Hungary and Yugoslavia. An airlift of such magnitude must have been organized for several days...