Operation “Azalea” had not succeeded in blocking all channels of communication, so the night of December 12–13, about 1:30 a.m., when the Council of State was still in session, the Warsaw correspondent of Agence France-Presse sent an urgent dispatch to Paris (via Vienna) about the worrying events in Warsaw. At 2:10 a.m., the press attaché at the United States Embassy, Steve Dubrow, and the embassy's political advisor, John Vaught, sent an encoded dispatch to Washington by satellite, which arrived at the Eastern European Desk at the Department of State and the National Security Council around 8:15 p.m. EST (on December 12). In it, they said that telephone communications had been cut, Solidarity activists in Warsaw had been arrested, the militia had occupied the trade union's Mazowsze Region headquarters, and convoys of military vehicles had been observed on the streets. And, most importantly for public opinion in the West and for American politicians, no Soviet military presence had been noted. In Washington, it was Saturday evening, and no authority figures were present who could have made any decisions: President Ronald Reagan was spending the weekend at Camp David, Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger was in a plane flying from London to Washington, and Secretary of State Alexander Haig was in Brussels, about to embark on a long trip to North Africa, the Near East, and South Asia.

In the situation room at the White House, a group of people gathered who could only analyze the situation. John Davis, director of the Eastern European and Yugoslav Affairs Office in the Department of State, organized the meeting. (Later, he was ambassador to Poland for many years.) Vice President George Bush attended, along with the White House chief of staff James Baker and admirals Nance and Poindexter. Among those present, the person who was best informed about Polish affairs was the well-known historian Richard Pipes, who had been born in Poland and was a Harvard professor specializing in Russian history. He was also an advisor to the National Security Council on matters concerning Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. The news that “something” was happening in Poland was already making the rounds of the press agencies. After consultation with Haig, who had been awakened in the middle of the night at the Hyatt Hotel where he was staying, it was decided that the Department of State would issue a short communiqué.