Harry McPherson was a Washington lawyer who had been Deputy Under Secretary of the Army for International Affairs. Now he was serving as Special Counsel to President Johnson. As war broke out between Egypt and Israel, McPherson was wrapping up a fact-finding visit to Vietnam. At Johnson's request, McPherson diverted to Tel Aviv to assess the situation there and to make contact with the Israeli leadership. Arriving in the morning of June 6, McPherson met with Moshe Bitan of the Foreign Ministry's North America department. Bitan explained what the government of Israel wanted from the United States. As related by McPherson, “they just wanted us to keep the Russians off their backs,” and they wanted “two or three days to finish the job.” So Bitan was asking the United States to resist the call for a troop withdrawal.

Journalist Alan Hart spoke with General Chaim Herzog on June 6. Retired from the IDF, Herzog at the time was doing military commentary on Radio Israel. As reported by Hart, General Herzog took the occasion to give his take on the hostilities: “If Nasser had not been stupid enough to give us a pretext to go to war, we would have created one within a year or 18 months.”