The_Info_Web/10 - PEOPLE/(A-G)/Meir Amit.md

aliases	category	relations	tags	summary	born	died	location
Meir Amit	Intelligence & Government	type with fn head_of Mossad 2 type with start end role fn participant_in Six-Day War 1967-05-31 1967-06-05 Mossad chief; Washington visit and meeting with McNamara before the war 2	Person	Meir Amit was the former chief of the Mossad, Israel's national intelligence agency.	1921-03-17	2009-07-17	Tiberias, Mandatory Palestine

Meir Amit was the former chief of the Mossad, Israel's national intelligence agency. He was one of the high-profile Israeli figures who met with Uri Geller, with reports indicating that Geller bent a spoon for him¹.

Washington visit, May 31 to June 2, 1967

Major General Amit, then head of the Mossad, visited Washington from May 31 to June 2, 1967. On the afternoon of June 1 he met Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara. Vice Admiral Rufus Taylor, the Deputy Director of Central Intelligence, wrote the memorandum of the conversation, which carries the handling caption "Personal and Eyes Only for the Secretary of Defense and the Director of Central Intelligence."² The memorandum records that Amit described the blockade of the Strait of Tiran as "window dressing" for a Soviet-backed grand design he called the "Domino Effect," said that time was against Israel, that Israel had mobilized 100,000 people and that a pre-emptive air attack by the United Arab Republic was a main worry, said "there were no differences between the U.S. and the Israelis on the military intelligence picture or its interpretation" and that the Russian story of a planned attack on Syria was "a sheer fabrication," and said his remarks were informal and not an official representation of the Israeli government. McNamara told him he would be seeing the President shortly and would convey his views. After the meeting Amit wondered aloud whether he should have tried to see the President and whether he should stay longer; Taylor told him to go back to Israel as soon as possible.²

At a conference on the war in June 1992, Amit said his objectives had included "to tell the Americans, I, Meir Amit, am going to recommend that our government strike," and said that McNamara told him "it was all right, the president knows that you are here and I have a direct line to the president," and asked how long a war would last, to which Amit answered "Seven days."³ David S. Robarge, the CIA's chief historian, writes that Richard Helms met a senior Israeli official on June 1 who hinted that Israel could no longer avoid a decision, that the official left the United States on June 2, and that Helms wrote an "Eyes Only" letter to Johnson that morning forewarning that Israel would probably start a war within days.⁴

On June 5, 1967, Amit met Ambassador Walworth Barbour and the presidential special counsel Harry C. McPherson, Jr. in Tel Aviv. Walt Rostow told Johnson that Amit argued there had been artillery fire on three Israeli villages and air incursions, and that the Israelis had then "punched all the buttons," and added: "At least that's his story."⁵

Footnotes

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1. Jacobsen, Annie. Phenomena: The Secret History of the U.S. Government's Investigations into Extrasensory Perception and Psychokinesis. Little, Brown and Company, 2017. ↩︎

2. Foreign Relations of the United States, 1964-1968, vol. XIX, Document 124, Memorandum for the Record by Vice Admiral Rufus Taylor, June 1, 1967 (prepared June 2). https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1964-68v19/d124 ↩︎

3. Foreign Relations of the United States, 1964-1968, vol. XIX, Document 124, Memorandum for the Record by Vice Admiral Rufus Taylor, June 1, 1967 (prepared June 2), with the editors' note quoting Amit at the conference of June 3 to 5, 1992, in Richard B. Parker, ed., The Six-Day War: A Retrospective (University Press of Florida, 1996), pp. 139-140. https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1964-68v19/d124 ↩︎

4. Robarge, David S. "Getting it Right: CIA Analysis of the 1967 Arab-Israeli War." Studies in Intelligence 49, no. 1 (March 2005). https://www.cia.gov/resources/csi/static/CIA-Analysis-1967-War.pdf For the June 1 to 2 meeting Robarge relies on published accounts, among them Michael B. Oren's, which rest on Amit's interviews and writings. ↩︎

5. Foreign Relations of the United States, 1964-1968, vol. XIX, Document 158, editors' note on telegram 3937 from Tel Aviv, June 5, 1967. https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1964-68v19/d158 ↩︎