Sadat and Saudis tried to prop up failing Nixon?
Yet more from the Nixon tapes, which will prove to be, I think, a huge treasure trove. (The Nixon Archives link to the new releases is here.) The WaPo's Walter Pincus evidently spent time poring over them yesterday and came up with a cable to Kissinger from then-US ambassador to Saudi Arabia Jim Akins (mis-spelled by Pincus as Adkins) describing a "secret" letter Pres. Sadat wrote to King Faisal in January 1974 saying that Nixon
- "could easily be impeached" and that "Arabs must do everything they can to strengthen" Nixon...
That was in the middle of the post-1973 War oil boycott. Pincus continues:
- "The one thing they could do which would be most effective," Sadat wrote Faisal, "would be to assure the president that the [oil] boycott would be lifted as soon as disengagement [with Israel forces] could be accomplished." Kissinger traveled to the Middle East in February 1974, and the boycott was lifted the following month.
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