ABSTRACT
In the summer of 1967, relations between Cairo and Washington hung by a thread. President Gamal Abdel Nasser had wildly ambivalent and sharply contradictory feelings about the United States. In the physics of American politics and diplomacy, it is a rule that whenever a void occurs on the official side private emissaries come forward to volunteer their services. The June 1967 war propelled relations between Cairo and Moscow to heights they had never before attained. The Arab defeat created big opportunities for the Soviets. The Egyptians moved with a calculated absence of haste to establish their own Interests Section in Washington. To fill this post Foreign Minister Mahmoud Riad chose Ashraf Ghorbal, Harvard educated and then a mid-ranking officer in the Egyptian diplomatic service. In April 1968, Egypt and the Soviet Union signed a secret five-year agreement granting the Soviet fleet “maintenance facilities.” At about that same time the USSR began deploying long-range reconnaissance aircraft in Egypt.
