Early U.S.

policy towards
Israels nuclear development programme
and the origins of
Israeli nuclear ambiguity

Colette Austin

Supervisor, Dr. M. Sewell

Thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the

requirements for the degree of

Master of Studies in
International Relations

at the

University of Cambridge
Selwyn College
2014
 For my proud father,

who would have loved to see this.

With thanks to Dr. Mike Sewell,

Dr. David Smith and Linda Fisher

for their generous help.

 CONTENTS

1. Introduction ....................................................................................................................1
1.1 Significance ..............................................................................................2

1.2 Focus and scope ........................................................................................3

1.3 Sources and evidentiary standards ............................................................4

1.4 Historiography ..........................................................................................7

1.5 Historical background.............................................................................11

1.6 Structure..................................................................................................12

2. The Fourth Country Problem .....................................................................................15

2.1 Eisenhowers irreconcilable nuclear aims ..............................................16

3. U.S. policy towards Israeli nuclearization ................................................................21

3.1 Strategic costs of a nuclear-armed Israel .................................................22

3.2 Potential Countermeasures to Israeli Nuclearization...............................26

4. Aerial photography of Dimona and other clues ........................................................31

4.1 Early clues ...............................................................................................31

4.2 Photo-intelligence revelations .................................................................38

4.3 Secrecy is itself a clue .............................................................................42

4.4 Intelligence estimates of Israels nuclear activity....................................45

4.5 U.S. intelligence kept Dimona close hold .............................................48

5. Strategy or Ad Hockery? ..........................................................................................51

5.1 General explanations for inaction against proliferation ..........................51

5.2 U.S. motives for secrecy ..........................................................................52

5.3 U.S.-Israeli relations as a motive for acquiescence .................................54

5.4 A complement to U.S. power ..................................................................61

5.5 The odds of mounting a successful challenge .........................................63

5.6 Missed opportunities................................................................................66

5.7 Israeli exceptionalism as U.S. foreign policy precedent .........................69

6. Conclusions: Hidden hand or benign neglect? .....................................................71

ACRONYMS

A.E.C. U.S. Atomic Energy Commission

C.I.A. Central Intelligence Agency

C.I.A.-P.I.D. Central Intelligence Agency, Photo-Intelligence Division

D.C.I. Direct of Central Intelligence

D.D.I. C.I.A. Deputy Director for Intelligence

HUMINT Human intelligence

I.A.E.A. International Atomic Energy Agency

I.A.E.C. Israel Atomic Energy Commission

I.S.C.A.P. The Interagency Security Classification Appeals Panel

M.W. Megawatt

N.A.T.O. North Atlantic Treaty Organization

N.I.E. National Intelligence Estimate

N.S.C. National Security Council

O.N.E. C.I.A. Office of National Estimates

O.T.A. Office of Technology Assessment, an office of the U.S. Congress (1972-95)

U.N. United Nations

 CHAPTER ONE

Introduction

This thesis will examine the Eisenhower administrations response to Israels early nuclear

development programme and how it shaped Americas ongoing policy of acquiescence in Israels

ambiguous nuclear status. A detailed consideration of the geopolitical and political motives for

Washingtons muted reaction to early signs that Israel was surreptitiously developing a nuclear

capability will provide valuable insight into the degree of rational intention, as opposed to merely

deft ad hockery, involved in the origin and evolution of Americas policy towards Israeli nuclear

ambiguity. These findings may offer a useful perspective on what has become a time-honoured

and seemingly incontestable U.S. policy.

This dissertation is a political history of the origins and early evolution of the U.S.

acquiescence in Israels nuclear ambiguity. Its thesis is that, contrary to the interpretation of much

of the academic historiography, senior decision-makers within the Eisenhower administration,

including the President himself, were confronted with detailed evidence of Israels covert nuclear

development project as early as spring 1958 but, for a variety of reasons which have not previously

been examined in detail, chose not to reveal evidence of its existence, even within the wider U.S.

intelligence community, for at least two years. Only when the Eisenhower administration became

aware, in December 1960, that President de Gaulle of France was pressuring the Israeli

Government to make its own announcement, did U.S. intelligence agencies leak details of Israels

nuclear project to the press, and only then to distance the U.S. government from international

perceptions of complicity in the project.

Israels nuclear ambiguity is not, nor could it be, a unilateral policy; it has required a bargain

with the United States. This study analyses how and why Americas part in that bargain came

about and what this means for the treatment in modern scholarship both of American support for

Israels opaque nuclear posture and of foreign policymaking in the Eisenhower White House.

1
 1.1 Significance

The Eisenhower administrations disinclination to challenge, or even to reveal, Israeli

nuclearization, which is commonly attributed to the U.S. atomic intelligence bureaucracys self-

professed failures of data dissemination and interpretation, is among the most significant factors

contributing to the evolution of Israels policy of nuclear ambiguity.1

As has been astutely observed, Opacity is a condition affecting both the practice of

proliferation and the study of that practice.2 This might explain why the early history of the Israeli

atomic project has received limited scholarly attention and, recent declassification notwithstanding,

why few historians have explored Americas initial response to it. There remains disagreement as

to whether the Eisenhower administration demonstrated an attitude of benign neglect or whether

it adopted a conscious policy of ignoring reality.3 This paper aims to address a notable

shortcoming in the historiography by providing a perspective on the extent to which U.S. collusion

in Israeli nuclear opacity evolved as a deliberate strategy, or whether it is a story of flawed

assumptions, suppressed intelligence, dual loyalties and missed opportunities.

The answers to these questions also contribute to a greater appreciation of how Israels

atomic history has affected the wider U.S.-Israeli relationship and of Eisenhower as a decision-

maker. How we understand the past invariably shapes our understanding of the present. Insight

into how the U.S. came to acquiesce in Israels atomic programme and opaque nuclear posture may

influence calculations as to whether it should still.

1
Post-mortem on Special National Intelligence Estimate (S.N.I.E.) 100-8-60, Implications of the
Acquisition by Israel of a Nuclear Weapons Capability, 31 January, 1961 (D.N.S.A.WM00046), 2;
Avner Cohen, Israel and the Bomb (1998a), 84; Avner Cohen, Israel and the Evolution of U.S. Non-
Proliferation Policy, The Non-proliferation Review, (1998b) 4; Alexander Montgomery and Adam
Mount, Misestimation: Explaining U.S. failures to predict nuclear weapons programs, Intelligence and
National Security (2014) 13-15.
2
Avner Cohen and Benjamin Frankel, Opaque Nuclear Proliferation (1987-88), in Opaque Nuclear
Proliferation, (1991) 15, emphasis added; Cohen (1998a), 2.
3
Seymour Hersh, The Samson Option (1991), 319.

2
 1.2 Focus and Scope

In order to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons, it is important to respond decisively to the

earliest indications that a state is developing them, since it is more difficult to compel a state to

relinquish weapons it already possesses. Once the development phase has passed, even

superpowers must recognize the proliferators newfound nuclear status as a fait accompli.4 Clearly,

what is important is the very earliest U.S. response to the discovery of Israels covert nuclear

programme, as this may have been the last opportunity to pressure Israel to abandon it, yet the

occasion was not exploited.5 By the time Eisenhower left office, the development phase was

complete, the window of diplomatic opportunity had closed and photo-intelligence confirmed that

the distinctive steel reactor dome at Dimona was already shimmering dramatically in the

heat of the Negev.6 By then, Israel was conclusively and, as it turned out, irrevocably committed

to achieving its activist defence policy based on independent nuclear deterrence.7

The focus of this study will be Eisenhowers apparent inaction when confronted with early

evidence of Israels nascent nuclear venture, and the extent to which his subdued response can be

construed as tacit support for the programme, based on geopolitical calculations of vital national

interests and trammelled by political constraints on the Presidents foreign policymaking latitude in

matters concerning Israel. It will also be instructive to consider how closely Eisenhowers

response to first evidence of Israels nuclear endeavours aligns with the approach to foreign

policymaking portrayed in Eisenhower revisionist historiography.8

While it is recognized that the U.S. foreign policymaking machinery is not a unitary actor,

the focus throughout will be on the actions and inaction of the Eisenhower White House, where the

power to articulate and pursue U.S. foreign policy towards Israel was largely centred. It is

4
Matthew Kroenig, Force or Friendship? Security Studies (2014) 21n38.
5
Cohen (1998a) 85.
6
State Department Memorandum of Conversation, 1 December, 1960 (D.N.S.A. NP00707); Andrew and
Leslie Cockburn, Dangerous Liaison (1991) 88.
7
Cohen (1998a) 48, 85.
8
Robert Divine, Eisenhower and the Cold War (1981); Fred Greenstein, The Hidden Hand Presidency:
Eisenhower as leader (1982); Robert Bowie and Richard Immerman, Waging Peace: how Eisenhower
shaped an enduring Cold War strategy (1998); Stephen Ambrose, Eisenhower: soldier and president
(2003); Stephen Graubard, The Presidents (2004); Peter Boyle, Eisenhower (2005); Fred Greenstein,
The Presidential Difference (2009); Jim Newton, Eisenhower: the White House years (2011); Evan
Thomas, Ikes Bluff: President Eisenhowers secret battle to save the world (2012).

3
acknowledged, however, that presidential primacy in U.S. foreign policy towards Israel has never

been entirely free of Congressional and wider influences.

1.3 Sources and Evidentiary Standards

There is a dearth of primary evidence and there exist few historical accounts of Israels

nuclear development programme since so many details of the story remain classified or suppressed

by Israeli military censorship and so little direct evidence has come to light.9 The Israeli military

censor is authorized to require that all newspapers, periodicals and books be submitted for approval

prior to publication and anything authored by anyone, which may possibly affect the states

security in any way is subject to preventive censorship. 10 For many years after its disclosure,

Israeli media would still refer obliquely to the countrys nuclear capability as the sensitive issue.11

Israels Freedom of Information Law of 1998 still exempts from declassification information

relating to what is euphemistically termed atomic energy, although Israel derives none of its

energy from nuclear power.12 Ongoing secrecy surrounding Israels nuclear capability is such that,

even today, estimates of Israels nuclear capability are strikingly imprecise and estimates range

from as few as eighty stockpiled warheads, with only modest increases projected to the year 2020,

to as many as 300 devices.13

U.S. government records demonstrate a similarly secretive approach to what was known in

Washington about Israels nuclear development and when. During the late 1950s, when only the

United States, the Soviet Union and Great Britain had declared and tested atomic weapons, there

was considerable concern about proliferation to a fourth and further countries between 1958 and

9
Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi, The Israeli Connection (1987), 132; Avner Cohen, The Worst-kept Secret (2010),
xxix.
10
Hillel Nossek & Yehiel Limor, Fifty Years in a Marriage of Convenience, Communication Law and
Policy, (2001) 16; Israel Shahak, Open Secrets (1997), 16, 21; Daniel Williams, Israeli High Court
Rules Against Censor, Los Angeles Times, 12 January, 1989.
11
Avner Cohen and George Perkovich, The Obama-Netanyahu Meeting: nuclear issues, 14 May, 2009.
12
Nossek and Limor (2001), p.10; C.I.A. World Factbook: Israel [online].
13
Telegram: U.S. Embassy Israel to Secretary of State, 21 December, 1960 (D.N.S.A.:NP00722); United
States Defense Intelligence Agency (1999) A Primer on the Future Threat, the Decades Ahead: 1999-
2020, cited by the Federation of American Scientists [online]; Stockholm International Peace Research
Institute, World Nuclear Forces, January 2013 [online]; Hans Kristensen and Robert Norris, Global
Nuclear Weapons Inventories, 1945-2013, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists [online], 76; Uri Bar-
Joseph, Why Israel Should Trade its Nukes, Foreign Affairs [online], 25 October 2012.

4
1968 at least a dozen U.S. National Intelligence Estimates (N.I.E.s) addressed the likelihood and

consequences of fourth country and nth country proliferation. From this trail of Intelligence

Estimates, the veil of secrecy appears to have descended some time after July 1958 over U.S.

assessments of Israels nuclear progress, and only Israels.14

At that time, U.S. intelligence estimated that Israel would almost certainly attempt to

achieve nuclear capabilities if it could obtain fissionable material and the necessary financing, and

it would probably seek to develop a limited weapons production programme within the

decade.15 Almost all mention of Israeli nuclear activities has been excised from intelligence

assessments dated September 1960 before release; a level of secrecy unparalleled in respect of any

other potentially proliferating state.

Almost half the A.E.C. papers of Chairman John McCone remain locked in the vaults of the

Eisenhower library.16 Meetings for the Presidents consideration and approval of particular U-2

surveillance overflights were considered so sensitive that no official, permanent records were ever

written up.17 While correspondence between President Kennedy and Prime Minister Ben-Gurion

has been published extensively, the equivalent EisenhowerBen-Gurion exchanges, in which the

president reportedly raised the issue of the ominous construction at Dimona more than once, were,

according to Staff Secretary Andrew Goodpaster very close held and remain undisclosed in their

entirety.18 In short, no issue is more sensitive in U.S.-Israeli relations than Israels nuclear

capability and U.S. archive material relating to no other nuclear power or potential proliferator is so

comprehensively censored.

Sources

This analysis is based to a large extent on U.S. government archives, particularly on the U.S.

Department of State series Foreign Relations of the United States (F.R.U.S.) and on digital records,

14
National Intelligence Estimates (N.I.E.s) 100-6-57, 18 June, 1957 and N.I.E. 100-2-58, 1 July, 1958, were
approved for release in 2001 and 2004, respectively, without redaction. N.I.E. 100-4-60, 20 September,
1960, and subsequent estimates are extensively redacted in relation to Israels nuclear progress.
15
N.I.E. 100-6-57, 7; N.I.E. 100-2-58, 2.
16
Jacob Hogan, Democracy, Duplicity and Dimona (2012) 30.
17
Oral history interview with General Andrew Goodpaster, 26 June 1975, for Eisenhower Library,
transcript, 15-16.
18
Hersh (1991) 55.

5
including the electronic briefing books, at the Digital National Security Archives at George

Washington University (D.N.S.A.), the Public Papers of the Presidents at the American Presidency

Project (P.P.P.U.S.), The Electronic Reading Room at the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency

(C.I.A.), The National Archives and Records Administration (N.A.R.A.), the British National

Archives and presidential libraries from Eisenhower to Nixon, many through the Declassified

Documents Reference System (D.D.R.S), to the limited extent that these records have been

declassified. It also leans on a number of audio records and transcripts, available through the

Presidential Recordings Program at the University of Virginias Miller Center, as well as published

oral testimonies from individuals directly involved in covert aerial reconnaissance and other early

U.S. intelligence operations, some of which fail to square with the historical orthodoxy in

important respects.

Since the governments of Israel and the United States have gone to great lengths to maintain

secrecy in matters related to Israels nuclear capability, there is a marked shortage of documentary

evidence in the public realm which might otherwise settle questions related to U.S. knowledge and

opinion of Israels nuclear efforts. Intelligence documents have been released only after extensive

redaction, if at all. Biographical accounts of senior Eisenhower administration officials are

similarly reticent: Richard Bissell, who led the U-2 project, reveals in his autobiography that the

C.I.A. aerially mapped virtually all of Israel by the end of 1956, yet he omits any mention of the

subsequent discovery of Dimona.19 Where archival evidence remains classified, or has been found

to be too heavily redacted or simply missing, the facts in issue have been deduced and the historical

record has been reconstructed from the accumulation of published testimonies, press reports and

memoirs.20 Until many more documents, such as the C.I.A.s own heavily redacted account of U-2

aerial surveillance of the Middle East, are declassified in their entirety, any attempt to trace the

U.S. role in the evolution of Israeli nuclear ambiguity will necessarily be incomplete, interpretative

and open to the possibility of further revision. 21

19
Richard Bissell, Reflections of a Cold Warrior (1996) 120.
20
For example, records of two private Nixon-Meir meetings of September 1969 which gave rise to the so-
called Nixon-Meir accord were, despite Nixons express instructions, never circulated within the U.S.
administration. Letter from Barbour to Sisco, 19 November, 1969. Records of these meetings are also
inexplicably absent from both U.S. and Israeli government archives.
21
Gregory Pedlow and Donald Welzenbach, The C.I.A. and the U-2 Program, 1954-74 (1998).

6
 1.4 Historiography

In the historiography of the U.S.-Israeli relationship, many authors exclude any mention of

the circumstances in which the U.S. discovered that Israel was constructing a nuclear facility in the

southern desert of the Negev, if indeed they refer to Dimona or the nuclear issue at all.22 Certain

accounts examine the dynamics of the bilateral relationship, including Israeli military procurement,

but say little about the Dimona project beyond acknowledging that the United States was

concerned about Israeli nuclear activities.23 Others, while weighing the value of Israel as a U.S.

strategic asset acknowledge Israels significant nuclear capability but stop short of examining its

discovery or its role as one of the most important facets of the bilateral relationship and offer

instead only a passing nod to the stimulus provided by Israeli nuclearization to Arab nuclear

aspirations.24 Still others chronicle the development, with French assistance, of an extensive Israeli

nuclear weapons programme, but, like most accounts, sidestep the issue of when or how the U.S.

government discovered it or responded.25 In some cases, the United States first tentative

inclinations as to the nature of Israeli nuclear activities are dated to 1960 and only confirmed by

much later revelations by Dimona technician Mordechai Vanunu in October 1986.26

In these general works, constraints on U.S. latitude in the Middle East are often discussed

with scant reference to the toll taken on U.S.-Arab relations by presumed U.S. connivance in

Israels nuclearization, beyond Eisenhower was worried about Arab reactions to the nuclear

program.27 Considerable attention is devoted to Israels military strikes against other Middle East

nuclear facilities, with only parenthetical references such as, It should perhaps be added that Israel

had been developing its own nuclear capacity in its facility at Dimona.28 While the Eisenhower

administration is not always portrayed as entirely innocent in relation to Israels weapons

22
Nadav Safran, Israel, the Embattled Ally (1981); Bernard Reich, The United States and Israel (1984);
George Ball and Douglas Ball, The Passionate Attachment (1992); Abba Eban, Personal Witness
(1993); Isaac Alteras, Eisenhower and Israel (1993); Michael Thomas, American Policy Toward Israel
(2007).
23
Gabriel Sheffer (Ed.), Dynamics of Dependence (1987), 97.
24
Cheryl Rubenberg, Israel and the American National Interest (1986), 2, 6, 330, 376.
25
Cockburn (1991) 86-92.
26
George Lenczowski, American Presidents and the Middle East (1990), 256; Cockburn (1991) 86-90, 89;
Zaki Shalom, Israels Nuclear Option (2005), 11.
27
Cockburn (1991) 89.
28
Rubenberg (1986) 266, 415n31; Lenczowski (1990) 257.

7
programme, most general accounts of the special relationship date its discovery to the

Eisenhower-Kennedy transition, in December 1960, and tend to portray Dimona as Kennedys

problem.29

Even though Israels nuclear project was extensively financed by wealthy and politically

influential American Jewry, numerous accounts of the U.S.-Israel foreign aid relationship and the

Israel lobbys influence in bilateral relations ignore the nuclear issue entirely, or claim that the

story of the Jewish lobby only really began with the Kennedy administration because, as they

interpret it, Eisenhower shut the White House off from the leaders of the Jewish community, kept

Israel at arms length, and courted Arab states.30 Very few accounts even acknowledge the

American aid contribution to Israels clandestine weapons development, let alone Eisenhowers

blind eye to it.31

Among the specialized historiography of the security aspects of U.S.-Israel relations, one of

the most significant accounts comes from Avner Cohen, senior research fellow at the National

Security Archives. He professes neither to support nor to contradict any orthodox interpretation of

U.S.-Israeli nuclear relations because, he maintains, none exists.32 Yet, in respect of the

circumstances surrounding the U.S. discovery of Israels nuclear project, it is difficult to conclude

other than there is indeed an orthodoxy, which Cohens archival survey does much to contest,

namely that the U.S. discovered Israels secretly-constructed Dimona reactor complex only in late

1960, the twilight of the Eisenhower presidency.33

29
Cockburn (1991) 89; Warren Bass, Support Any Friend (2003) 47; Steven Spiegel, The Other Arab-Israeli
Conflict (1985) 113; Camille Mansour, Beyond Alliance (1994) 83; David Schoenbaum, The United
States and the State of Israel (1993) 126; Abraham Ben-Zvi, The United States and Israel (1993) 84;
Edwin Cochran, Israels Nuclear History, Israel Affairs (2000) 136; Arlene Lazarowitz, Different
Approaches to a Regional Search for Balance, Diplomatic History (2008) 28; Zachary Goldman Ties
that Bind, Cold War History (2009) 26.
30
Edward Tivnan, The Lobby (1987); A.F.K. Organski, The $36 Billion Bargain (1990); Paul Findley, They
Dare to Speak Out (2003); James Petras, The Power of Israel in the United States (2006).
31
John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, The Israel Lobby (2007) 35.
32
Avner Cohen, Stumbling into Opacity: the United States, Israel, and the atom, 1960-63, Security Studies,
(Winter 1994), 197.
33
Paul Findley, Deliberate Deceptions (1993) 131; Abraham Ben-Zvi, Decade of Transition (1998) 93;
Stephen Green, Taking Sides (1988) 153; Dan Raviv and Yossi Melman, Friends in Need (1994) 95-96;
Makreeta Lahti, Security Cooperation as a Way to Stop the Spread of Nuclear Weapons? (Ph.D. thesis,
2007) 138.

8
 Among the general biographical literature on Eisenhowers presidency, certain accounts

acknowledge U-2 overflights of Israel, beginning during the Suez crisis, but all neglect his

administrations knowledge and treatment of Israels burgeoning nuclear programme.34 Even

among the more specialized accounts of Israeli nuclearization and U.S.-Israeli nuclear diplomacy,

the December 1960 discovery date, during the Eisenhower-Kennedy transition, is the orthodoxy:

two years too late to kill the project.35 Some earlier accounts date the discovery later still,

while others are conspicuously vague on this point.36

The versions authored by Seymour Hersh and Cohen were the first to square with the

documentary record, sparse and heavily sanitized as it is.37 Only these accounts consider, for

example, the detailed testimonies of veterans of the C.I.A.s Photo-Intelligence Division (C.I.A.-

P.I.D.), which went on to identify the various stages of missile site construction on Cuba in 1962,

and whose photo-analysts confidently reported in early 1958, to Director of Central Intelligence

(D.C.I.) Allen Dulles and to President Eisenhower, that they had identified and were observing the

construction of a nuclear reactor in the southern Negev, modelled on Frances reactor facility at

Marcoule, near Avignon.38 Only Hershs account doubts the sincerity of A.E.C. Chairman John

McCones apparent displeasure in December 1960 that the U.S. government had been deceived up

to that point about Israels nuclear intentions; a line which was taken up and circulated in U.S.

newspaper reports at the time but which now appears to contradict known facts.

Finally, in his 2010 book, Eyes in the Sky: Eisenhower, the C.I.A. and Cold War aerial

espionage, Dino Brugioni, a former senior photo-intelligence analyst at the C.I.A.-P.I.D., confirms

and elaborates his earlier oral testimonies to both Hersh and Cohen, which appear to have been

34
Ambrose (2003) 448; cf. Boyle (2005); Graubard (2004); Newton (2012); Thomas (2012) 216; Greenstein
(1982); Bowie and Immerman (1998); Divine (1981).
35
Shalom (2005), 11; Michael Karpin, The Bomb in the Basement (2006), 146; Yair Evron, Israels Nuclear
Dilemma (1994) 4, 149; Frank Barnaby, The Invisible Bomb (1989) 6; Honor Catudal, Israels Nuclear
Weaponry (1991) 30; Cochran (2000) 136.
36
William Bader, The United States and the Spread of Nuclear Weapons (1968) 88; Peter Pry, Israels
Nuclear Arsenal (1984), 11; Fuad Jabber, Israel and Nuclear Weapons (1971) 34; Sylvia K. Crosbie, A
Tacit Alliance (1974) 161.
37
Hersh (1991); Cohen (1998a),(1998b).
38
Christopher Andrew, Intelligence and International Relations in the Early Cold War, Review of
International Studies (July 1998), 327; Hersh (1991) 43, 56; Brugioni (2010) 273.

9
overlooked by surprisingly many commentators on the U.S.-Israel security relationship.39

Accounts which post-date Hersh, Cohen and Brugioni fall into two schools: some, in the absence of

subsequently declassified material, rely almost exclusively on these authors to date the discovery to

the spring of 1958; the remainder cling to a December 1960 or later discovery date by either

ignoring or discounting the early 1958 photo-intelligence or by avoiding mention of its timing.40

This paper takes full account of Brugionis testimony, as did Hersh and Cohen, but it doubts

Cohens conclusion that the departing Eisenhower administration determined the true purpose of

Dimona only in December of 1960.41 It also goes further, to examine the political and geopolitical

considerations which might have played a part in the Eisenhower administrations decision not to

act on unambiguous aerial intelligence, and to note the impact of this inaction, including the

precedents it established for subsequent administrations, on the evolution of Israels strategic

nuclear ambiguity. In short, this thesis builds on Hershs and Cohens revisionist accounts of

Eisenhowers response to Dimona, by going on to explore the Whys?

It supports an interpretation based on Eisenhowers preference to look the other way.42 By

demonstrating that an Israeli nuclear capability could potentially benefit U.S. interests in the

Middle East and that ignoring it would circumvent potentially damaging political confrontation,

this thesis endorses a purposeful construction of Eisenhowers blind eye as a conscious policy of

ignoring reality, based on rational calculations of U.S. security interests in an independent Israeli

nuclear deterrent capability and what was politically possible in all the circumstances.43 It

recommends an evidence-based alternative to earlier interpretations: Israeli nuclearization was

39
Karpin (2006); Raviv and Melman (1994); Shalom (2005); Cochran (2000) 136.
40
Jeffrey Richelson, Spying on the Bomb (2006) 248-49; Warner Farr, The Third Temples Holy of Holies:
Israels nuclear weapons (1999), 5; Peter Lavoy, Predicting Nuclear Proliferation, Strategic Insights
(2004) [online]; Gawdat Bahgat, Nuclear Proliferation in the Middle East, Contemporary Security
Policy (2005) 37; Hogan (2012) 29-30; cf. Douglas Little, The Making of a Special Relationship,
International Journal of the Middle East, (1993) 567; Schoenbaum (1993) 126; Evron (1994) 4; Raviv
and Melman (1994) 95-96; Ben-Zvi (1998) 93; Karpin (2001) 153-54; Abraham Ben-Zvi, John F.
Kennedy and the Politics of Arms Sales to Israel (2002); Bass (2003) 47; Michael Engelhardt A Non-
proliferation Failure, The Non-proliferation Review (Fall/Winter 2004) 57; Shalom (2005) 11;
Lazarowitz (2008) 28; Matteo Gerlini, Waiting for Dimona, Cold War History (2005) 9; Goldman
(2009) 26.
41
Cohen (1998b) 1.
42
Hersh (1991) 58; Cohen (1994) 204; Alteras (1993) 146; Ben-Zvi (1998) 93.
43
Hersh (1991) 319.

10
more the consequence of a shrewd Presidents hidden hand than the unwitting result of his

benign neglect.44

1.5 Historical Background

Since the earliest days of the state of Israel, Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion considered a nuclear

weapons capability essential to its survival in a hostile neighbourhood, for the dual purposes of

deterrence and what Shimon Peres would later call compellence.45 In a doomsday scenario, faced

with annihilation by either nuclear or all-out conventional attack, Israel might invoke the

Samson Option as a last resort and bring the temple down upon itself and its enemies.46

Promising young Israeli scientists were sent abroad to study nuclear physics and nuclear

chemistry in British, American, Swiss and Dutch universities.47 As early as 1948, the Science

Corps of the Israeli Defense Force conducted geological explorations of the Negev for phosphate

deposits containing natural uranium. Within a year, a department of isotope research was founded

at the Weizmann Institute of Science at Rehovot, south of Tel Aviv and, with a singular aim in

mind: Israel made its first high-level contacts with Frances community of nuclear scientists in the

nascent Commissariat lnergie Atomique.48 In 1952, Israels own Atomic Energy Commission

was established, portentously, under the auspices of the Ministry of Defense.49

French origins

In the wake of a 1954 strategic accord, cemented by Israeli intelligence on Egypts role in Algerias

liberation movement, and while still some years from having a nuclear weapons production

capability, Israel and France signed a formal agreement to cooperate in nuclear research.50 In the

closing moments of the October 1956 conference at Svres, and after concluding a tripartite

agreement with Britain to attack Egypt within a matter of days, Director General of the Israeli
44
Hersh (1991) 319.
45
Green (1988) 151.
46
Hersh (1991) 137; Dmitri Adamsky, Why Israel Should Stop Worrying and Learn to Love the Bomb,
Foreign Affairs (2012) 2.
47
Green (1988) 151; Cohen (1998a), 26; Cochran (2000) 131.
48
Cochran (2000) 131.
49
Jabber (1971) 51; Green (1988) 151; Cockburn (1991) 89; Cohen (2010) 90-91.
50
Evron (1994) 2.

11
Defense Ministry Shimon Peres discussed with French Prime Minister Guy Mollet a deal to build a

nuclear reactor in Israel.51 The deal was upgraded and concluded the following month. After the

Suez venture incurred the ire of both superpowers, Shimon Peres and Israeli Foreign Minister

Golda Meir flew secretly to Paris to bargain for French nuclear assistance in return for Israeli

withdrawal from the Sinai.52 The so-called Paris Agreements, technical contracts for the

provision, not just of a reactor capable of producing at least 24 megawatts, but also of a chemical

reprocessing facility necessary for the production of weapons-grade plutonium, were signed after

almost another year of negotiations, in October 1957, and remain classified today.53

Construction began at Dimona in late 1957 or early 1958; some time after the Paris

Agreements of 2 October 1957 and before 27 March 1958, the date when officials of the C.I.A.s

Office of Scientific Intelligence (O.S.I.), having been presented with aerial photographs of the site,

made a written request to the State Department for follow-up information.54 As part of the covert

U-2 reconnaissance programme, U.S. spy-planes were already routinely overflying an Israeli Air

Force practice bombing range in the Negev.55 It was only a matter of months before the

appearance of a massive security fence, a new road and a large concrete-lined hole, six-storeys

deep and sited in the middle of barren desert, raised critical questions in Washington.56

1.6 Structure

Chapter Two will set out early U.S. policy towards nuclear proliferation, in the context of the wider

security and geopolitical goals of the United States, in order to assess the extent to which

Eisenhowers treatment of Dimona represented a departure from declared policy. Chapter Three

will review the likely strategic costs to America of Israeli proliferation in particular, and measures

available to the U.S. government to impede it. Chapter Four will explore the circumstances

51
Evron (1994) 3.
52
Nigel Ashton, Eisenhower, Macmillan and the Problem of Nasser (1996)116; Pan (1991) Ce dernier
[Abel Thomas] affirme que le problme nuclaire a t officiellement voqu pour la premire fois,
aprs Suez, quand on a parl des guaranties donner Isral contre son retrait du Sina. Il semble bien
que cette premire fois se situe le 7 novembre. [Kindle edition, location 1443]
53
Cohen (1998a) 55; Hersh (1991) 43; Evron (1994) 2; Post-mortem on S.N.I.E. 100-8-60, 10.
54
Brugioni (2010) 272. It is suggested that work began toward the end of 1957, Karpin (2006) 108 and that
the subterranean digging began early in 1958, Hersh (1991) 52; Post-mortem on S.N.I.E. 100-8-60, 9.
55
Brugioni (2010) 271.
56
Brugioni (2010) 272; Richelson (2006) 248-49; Cockburn (1991) 88.

12
surrounding the discovery by U.S. intelligence that Israel was constructing a nuclear facility in the

Negev.

Chapter Five will examine why the Eisenhower administration chose to keep Israels nuclear

construction secret for more than two years before leaking details to the press. The focus will be

on the extent to which this course of inaction was the result of purposive policymaking in the

national interest, rather than complacency. It will consider in detail why, despite its avowed

policy of true impartiality towards Israel, the Eisenhower administration was minded to treat the

Israeli project as an exception to declared principles.57

Chapter Six will conclude that the U.S. response to Israeli nuclear proliferation was

tangential to the broader course of U.S. non-proliferation policy and that this demonstration of

Israeli exceptionalism was a conscious strategy grounded in Eisenhowers calculations of national

and political interest, which established an early precedent from which later administrations have

found it politically and diplomatically difficult to retreat.

57
Peter Hahn, The United States and Israel in the Eisenhower Era, in The Eisenhower Administration, the
Third World and the Globalization of the Cold War, Kathryn Statler and Andrew Johns (2006), 226.

13
 CHAPTER TWO

The Fourth Country Problem

In order to comprehend Eisenhowers response to Israeli nuclearization, it is important to consider

his administrations non-proliferation policy and, most importantly, the conditions that were

deemed to warrant departures from it. Eisenhowers sometimes contradictory nuclear thinking

shaped his administrations inconsistent non-proliferation policy. As Supreme Commander of the

North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), Eisenhower had integrated nuclear weapons into U.S.

security strategy.58 As President, he had contemplated their tactical use in the war in Korea and the

Taiwan Straits crises; his national security policy declared that his administration would consider

nuclear weapons to be as available for use as other munitions, and he professed to see no reason

why tactical nuclear weapons should not be used just exactly as you would use a bullet or anything

else.59 Eisenhowers nuclear rhetoric was open to interpretation: according to McGeorge Bundy,

Eisenhower believed that expressions of readiness to employ nuclear weapons would reduce the

chances of needing to resort to their use; Robert Divine maintains that the impossibility of telling

even now whether Eisenhower was bluffing confirms the shrewdness of his rhetoric.60

Nevertheless, Eisenhower developed a strong impulse, shaped by war and the sobering

prospect of Soviet nuclear parity, towards global arms reduction and international control of the

atom. He contended that, since the United States would never contemplate a first strike, and since

the Soviets could not match U.S. industrial capacity in a conventional war, nuclear weapons posed

the greater threat to American security and disarmament could only work to the U.S. advantage.61

Yet he believed the Soviets had more to fear from proliferation and he was not unduly concerned

58
Shane Maddock, The Fourth Country Problem, Presidential Studies Quarterly (1998) 554.
59
Memorandum: Conversation Between President and Secretary of State, 6 March, 1955 (F.R.U.S. 1955-57,
vol.2, doc.141); Newton (2011) 260; Presidents News Conference, 16 March, 1955 (P.P.P.U.S.
1955/56); Graubard (2004) 375.
60
Richard Neustadt, Presidential Power and the Modern Presidents, (1990) 65, 68; Graubard (2004)
807n95; Divine (1981) 31.
61
Memorandum: President to Special Assistant (Jackson), 31 December, 1953 (F.R.U.S. 1952-54, 2(2),
doc.148); Summary White House Meeting, 16 January, 1954 (F.R.U.S. 1952-54, 2(2), doc.158);
F.R.U.S. 1952-54, 2(1) doc.130.

15
by the risks of proliferation to allies.62 He also deplored the spiralling cost of the arms race and

spoke with passion about the burden of armaments weighing upon the world.63 Once the

colossal development costs of a nuclear deterrent were sunk, Eisenhowers New Look security

policy pronounced that the cost of maintaining a nuclear force represented a cost-effective

alternative to conventional deterrence.64

2.1 Eisenhowers Irreconcilable Nuclear Aims

Recognizing deep divisions within the administration as to how disarmament policy should

develop, in early 1955 the President appointed Harold Stassen to review policy and move the

administration further towards a coherent position with bureaucratic consensus.65 The prospect of

nuclear war was so appalling that the imperative to prevent it imposed drastic limitations on U.S.

policy.66 Nevertheless, by mid-1957, the U.S. Governments top priority objectives were to head

off, by arms-limitation agreements, Soviet attainment of the capability to visit a surprise

thermonuclear attack on the United States and to prohibit nuclear weapons proliferation beyond the

first three nuclear powers to fourth countries.67

2.1.1 The strategic costs of nth-country proliferation

Secretary of State Dean Rusk would later say it is almost axiomatic that no nuclear power has any

interest in seeing others become nuclear powers.68 Even if it posed no direct military threat to the

United States, the development of independent nuclear forces would forfeit the U.S. advantage of

62
Memorandum: 199th N.S.C. Meeting, 27 May, 1954 (F.R.U.S. 1952-54, vol.2(2), doc.220); Memorandum:
Conference with the President, 11 September, 1956 (D.N.S.A. NP00274, 14 September, 1956);
Memorandum: Conference with the President, 23 April, 1957 (F.R.U.S. 1955-57, vol.20, doc.185);
Lahti (Ph.D. thesis, 2007) 115.
63
Presidents address The Chance for Peace, 16 April, 1953 (P.P.P.U.S. 1953/50).
64
Graubard (2004) 375-76; Greenstein (2009) 50-51.
65
Bowie and Immerman (1998) 226, citing Dwight Eisenhower, The White House Years: Waging Peace:
1956-61 (1965) 469; Maddock (1998) 559; Memorandum: 225th N.S.C. Meeting, 24 November, 1954
(F.R.U.S. 1952-54, vol.2(1), doc.135); Maddock (1998) 557; Robert Williams and Philip Cantelon
(eds.), The American Atom (1984) 179; David Tal, The Secretary of State versus the Secretary of
Peace, Journal of Contemporary History (2006), 721-23; Boyle (2005) 78.
66
Report to the President by Committee on International Information Activities, 30 June, 1953 (F.R.U.S.
1952-54, vol.2(2), doc.368).
67
Memorandum: 324th N.S.C. Meeting, 23 May, 1957 (F.R.U.S. 1955-57, vol.20, doc.201).
68
Shane Maddock, The Nth Country Conundrum, 1945-1970 (Ph.D. thesis, 1997) 1.

16
nuclear weapons possession, restrict its conventional military power-projection (or protection)

capability, hamper its capacity for coercive diplomacy and diminish the overall U.S. strategic

position.69 Fourth-power nuclear capabilities would also make it more difficult to keep wars

limited in size and scope, which would mean an increased risk of general war.70 Every new

instance of proliferation, even among allies, would multiply the chances of nations acting

recklessly, increase the risks of mistake or miscalculation, amplify the potential costs of conflict

escalation and complicate efforts to build international consensus against further proliferation.71

Having most to lose in terms of strategic position, superpowers are normally at the forefront of

attempts to establish a non-proliferation order and to limit the size of the nuclear club.72

Despite such a compelling case for a robust anti-proliferation policy, and despite explicit

recognition that it would be adverse to U.S. security to have many fourth countries attain a

nuclear weapons capability, Eisenhower considered it more important to share nuclear technology

in pursuit of civilian-industrial nuclear power, and to maintain flexible nuclear deployment within

NATO to strengthen combined defence, than to inhibit the spread of nuclear weapons.73 Whether

such variability in non-proliferation policy is interpreted as studied ambiguity or as incongruity,

attempts to reconcile conflicting objectives within a coherent nuclear strategy would ultimately

prove unworkable and this was nowhere more evident than in the Presidents Atoms for Peace

initiative and his NATO first policy.74

2.1.2 Atoms for Peace and NATO first

Trumans Atomic Energy Act of 1946 was rolled back to facilitate Atoms for Peace, to establish a

supra-national atomic agency to control energy development, to integrate tactical nuclear weapons

69
Maddock (1998) 562; Matthew Kroenig, Exporting the Bomb: why states provide sensitive nuclear
assistance, American Political Science Review (2009) 115-16.
70
N.I.E 100-2-58, 18.
71
Notes: Meeting of N.S.C. Planning Board, 21 December, 1955 (F.R.U.S. 1955-57, vol.20, doc.89); Office
of Technology Assessment (O.T.A.), Proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction: assessing the risks,
(1993), 26.
72
Kroenig (2009) 115.
73
F.R.U.S. 1955-57, vol.20, doc.89; Progress Report by Special Assistant (Stassen), 26 May 1955 (F.R.U.S.
1955-57, vol.20, doc.33); State of the Union message, 7 January, 1954 (P.P.P.U.S. 1954/3); Cohen
(1998b) 3; Bader (1968) 26.
74
Saki Dockrill, Eisenhowers New-Look National Security Policy, 1953-61 (1996) 66, 202.

17
into NATO defence, and to share weapons technology with Britain.75 Atoms for Peace aimed to

pool and control the release of nuclear material and data for research in contributing states in order

to develop the commercial uses of nuclear power, a goal of national importance, to divert foreign

stockpiles to benign uses, and to institute a system of automatic inspection.76 The United States

also entered into bilateral Agreements for Cooperation to fund research reactors in twenty-six

allied and non-aligned partner states, and equipped and trained 13,000 foreign research scientists.77

American preeminence in peaceful nuclear technology was deemed an important element of

U.S. national security policy and Atoms for Peace was expected to deliver political and

psychological advantages in a critical sector of the Cold War struggle, namely the U.S.-Soviet

race for technological prestige in the contest to secure the allegiance of non-aligned states.78 Some

maintain that, by satisfying the peaceful nuclear aspirations of participating nations, Atoms for

Peace could have succeeded in retarding proliferation, had the Soviets accepted it, and regard the

proposal as a measure of Eisenhowers genius.79 What Atoms for Peace aspired to achieve was

one thing; what recipient states intended would turn out to be quite another.80

As Truman administration officials had recognized, familiarity with nuclear technology can

contribute to military as well as peaceful goals.81 Prime Minister Winston Churchill was one of

very few to warn Eisenhower that Atoms for Peace might open the door to proliferation.82 By

removing technical hurdles, Atoms for Peace may have accelerated nuclear programmes in India,

Pakistan, Taiwan, South Korea, South Africa and Israel, and spurred other states with little prior

75
Ashton (1996) 135, 138; Bowie and Immerman (1998) 35, 226; Williams and Cantelon (1984) 73-4;
P.P.P.U.S. 1953/50; U.N. Address on Peaceful Uses of Atomic Energy, 8 December, 1953 (P.P.P.U.S.
1953/256); Boyle (2005) 43.
76
Shai Feldman, Israeli Nuclear Deterrence (1982) 196-97; Presidents News Conference, 16 December,
1953 (P.P.P.U.S. 1953/265); P.P.P.U.S. 1953/256; P.P.P.U.S. 1953/50; Report to the N.S.C by the
A.E.C, (NSC-145) 6 March, 1953 (F.R.U.S. 1952-54, vol.2(2), doc.76).
77
Statement of Policy on Peaceful Purposes of Atomic Energy, NSC-5507/2, 12 March, 1955 (F.R.U.S.
1955-57, vol.20, doc.14); Green (1988) 155; Richard Hewlett and Jack Holl, Atoms for Peace and War
(1989), 581; Cochran (2000) 135.
78
N.S.C. Report, NSC-5725/1, 13 December, 1957 (F.R.U.S. 1955-57, vol.20, doc.315); F.R.U.S. 1955-57,
vol.20, doc.14.
79
Ambrose (2003) 355; John Hall, Atoms for Peace, or War, Foreign Affairs (1965) 614.
80
Raviv and Melman (1994) 102; State Department telegram offering press guidance to U.S. embassies, 22
December, 1960 (D.N.S.A. NP00726).
81
O.T.A. (1993) 22; Maddock (1998) 554; Stephen Meyer, The Dynamics of Nuclear Proliferation (1986) 1;
Pry (1984) 6; Bader (1968) 23; Hall, (1965) 602; Maddock (1998) 555.
82
Walters Minutes, 4 December, 1953 (F.R.U.S. 1952-54, vol.5(2), doc.339.

18
interest in acquiring nuclear weapons to develop latent nuclear weapons capabilities.83 There are

no two atomic energies, admitted Dr. Ernst Bergmann, chair of Israels Atomic Energy

Commission, by developing atomic energy for peaceful uses, you reach the nuclear option.84 The

United States supplied Israel with a small 1-megawatt swimming pool type, light-water research

reactor at Nahal Soreq near Tel Aviv and provided fifty-six Israeli scientists with hands-on

experience that prepared them for Israels more ambitious nuclear project at Dimona.85

A second Eisenhower initiative which was prioritized above, and incompatible with, his

administrations non-proliferation aims, was the NATO first scheme, which involved nuclear

weapons sharing within the NATO alliance. To dissuade members from developing independent

nuclear forces, the U.S. released control of tactical nuclear weapons stockpiled in Europe to NATO

commanders and encouraged NATO allies to incorporate them into their own war plans.86

After the spring of 1958, the whole idea of nuclear sharing began to plague the

administration when it became clear that Eisenhowers Atoms for Peace bid to halt the nuclear

spread was not only having little effect, but was actually spurring participating states towards the

nuclear threshold.87 In retrospect, it is easy to see how naively inconsistent were the twin

objectives of the spread of nuclear technology and the limitation of nuclear weapons

proliferation.88 Interestingly, the timing of this retreat coincides with the Eisenhower

administrations first sight of evidence that Israel was constructing a second undisclosed reactor in

the Negev.

In order to appreciate Eisenhowers disposition towards Israeli nuclearization, the following

chapters will look behind administration rhetoric to establish that the President and his senior

policymakers were much less hostile to the prospect of proliferation to smaller allies, including

Israel, than is often assumed. The best clues to the Presidents calculations might lie in

83
Maddock (1998) 555; Stephen Meyer, The Dynamics of Nuclear Proliferation (1986) 1; Pry (1984) 6.
84
(British) Intelligence Brief on Atomic Activities in Israel, 17 July, 1961, JIC/1103/61; Hersh (1991) 126.
85
Pry (1984) 6, 8, 13; Matteo Gerlini, Waiting for Dimona, Cold War History 10(2), 145; Matthew
Kroenig Exporting the Bomb (2010) 69; Richelson (2006) 242.
86
Bader (1968) 39; Maddock (1998) 560-61; Cohen (1998a) 80; State Department Paper, 15 November,
1954 (F.R.U.S. 1952-54, vol.2(1), doc.130); Draft Policy Statement by N.S.C. Planning Board, 13
December, 1954 (F.R.U.S. 1952-54, vol. 2(1), doc.137).
87
Bader (1968) 40.
88
Green (1988) 155.

19
reconstructing the alternatives open to his administration at that time and to weigh the advantages

and disadvantages of each, as he might have.

20
 CHAPTER THREE

U.S. Policy Towards Israeli Nuclearization

Commentators recognize a triad of American Cold War interests in the Middle East: denying the

area to Soviet domination, ensuring Western access to affordable oil and preserving the

independence of Israel.89 In reality, President Eisenhower recognized only the first two as

bedrock objectives and explicitly relegated the security of Israel to the status of a secondary

aim.90

To Washington, the issue of Israeli nuclear proliferation was complex, at a time when the

United States had still only roughly sketched its non-proliferation policy. Despite its broad

aversion to fourth-country proliferation, Washington did not regard the Israeli case as clear-cut.

Israel was the United States smallest and closest ally in the region, a fellow pioneer nation with

disproportionately strong popular and political support in the United States. Although Eisenhower

recognized a great difference between NATO countries and others, and could conceive of

nothing worse than permitting Israel and Egypt to have a nuclear capability, strategic

considerations such as the desire to strengthen the free world may have inclined the Eisenhower

administration to treat Israel as an informal associate of NATO, or at least as part of a free world

coalition, and thus to regard Israeli nuclearization as a special case in the Middle East.91 That is to

say, despite professing in his Second Inaugural Address to pursue the equality of all nations, as

well as what Secretary Dulles called friendly impartiality in the Middle East, considerations of

amity may have ranked alongside those of strategy for the Eisenhower administration.92

89
William Quandt, New U.S. Policies for a New Middle East? in D.W. Lesch (ed.) The Middle East and
the United States (2006) 109; Boyle (2005) 51.
90
Memorandum: 377th N.S.C. Meeting, 21 August, 1958 (F.R.U.S. 1958-60, vol.12, doc.43).
91
The U.S. had blocked Israels admittance to NATO but agreed to include Israel in the NATO offshore
procurement programme. Memorandum: 415th N.S.C. Meeting, 30 July, 1959 (F.R.U.S. 1958-60, vol.3,
doc.69); F.R.U.S. 1952-54, vol.2(1), doc.137; Memorandum: Joint Chiefs to Defense Secretary
(Wilson), 17 December, 1954 (F.R.U.S. 1952-54, vol.2(1), doc.140); Shai Feldman, Israeli Nuclear
Non-proliferation Policy, in Gabriel Sheffer, U.S.-Israeli Relations at the Crossroads (1997) 189;
Cohen (1998b), 17; Ian Bickerton, Dwight Eisenhower and Israel, Australasian Journal of American
Studies (1988) 5.
92
Boyle (2005) 116; Alteras (1993) 315; Hahn (2006) 226.

21
 3.1 Strategic Costs of a Nuclear-armed Israel

In June 1957, a C.I.A. estimate that, with access to the necessary funding and fissionable material,

Israel would almost certainly attempt to achieve a nuclear capacity, was submitted to the White

House and distributed to senior intelligence officials across the Departments of State and Defense,

the N.S.C. and the A.E.C.93 By 1958, the U.S. national security bureaucracy regarded this instance

of fourth-country proliferation as more risky than others since Israel was already deeply involved

in a controversy of worldwide significance and any irresponsible actions on the part of a nuclear-

armed Israel would be more likely to lead to a general conflagration.94 The Gilpatric task force

would conclude in 1965 that even allied proliferation posed a grave threat to U.S. security; Paul

Warnke, Assistant Secretary of Defense from 1967, would warn that Israels nuclear programme

represented the single most dangerous phenomenon in an area dangerous enough without nuclear

weapons and future Defense Secretary Melvin Laird would warn in 1969 that such developments

were damaging to U.S. interests and should, if at all possible be stopped.95 Stricter censorship of

Eisenhower era deliberations on the matter creates the uncertain impression that Eisenhower aides

voiced no equivalent objections to Israeli nuclearization at the time.

In addition to the general risks of fourth-country proliferation, U.S. officials recognized a

number of far-reaching unfavourable effects associated with Israeli nuclearization in particular.96

The first concern was that U.S. influence in the Middle East would suffer a major setback.97 A

nuclear-armed Israel would constrain U.S. freedom of military action in the region; confer greater

security independence on Israel; insulate the government of Israel from U.S. influence, such as it

was; and prompt Israel to disregard U.S. Middle Eastern policy and interests.98

Most ominously, a nuclear arsenal would endow Israel with what Shimon Peres and others

have called the power of non-conventional compellence; that is, a weapon of leverage, a polite

form of blackmail, to ensure continued diplomatic support, to extract security guarantees, to

93
N.I.E. 100-6-57, 7.
94
N.I.E. 100-2-58, 19.
95
N.S.A.E.B.B., No. 485, Israel Crosses the Threshold II; Cohen and Burr (2006) 2.
96
Memorandum: Chairman Policy Planning Council (Owen), Impact on U.S. Policies of an Israeli Nuclear
Weapons Capability, 7 February, 1969 (N.S.A.E.B.B., No. 189, doc.5)
97
N.S.A.E.B.B., No. 189, doc.5.
98
Kroenig (2014) 28; Kroenig (2009) 115; Feldman (1982) 194; Gerlini (2010) 146.

22
secure conventional weapons supplies and to elicit help in critical situations.99 Later examples of

Israeli thinking on employing nuclear blackmail against the United States came when Golda Meir

threatened during the 1973 war that Israel would use every means at its disposal to ensure its

survival in order to press Nixon to resupply Israel on a massive scale.100 Amos Rubin, economic

advisor to Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir, warned in 1987 that the U.S. must continue to

assist Israel to field massive conventional forces, lest Israel should find itself with no option but

to resort to a riskier defence which will endanger itself and the world at large, by which Rubin

explained he meant nuclear defence.101

Of perhaps greater concern to Eisenhower than Israeli nuclearization itself were likely Arab

and Soviet reactions.102 This emphasis on perceptions over realities established a precedent that

exerted an observable influence on Kennedys and, later, Kissingers thinking on Israels nuclear

status. In his May 1961 meeting with Ben-Gurion at New Yorks Waldorf-Astoria, Kennedy

emphasized the importance of the international appearance of virtue in respect of Israels nuclear

endeavours.103 Similarly, in 1969, Kissinger opined that public knowledge of Israels possession of

nuclear weapons might prove as dangerous as possession itself, and argued that U.S. efforts should

be directed away from halting Israeli nuclearization, towards preventing it from becoming an

established international fact.104

Washington feared that Arab states would regard and resent the United States as an

accomplice in developing Israels nuclear-weapons capability and as the only power which could

have prevented it.105 Frustration could propel Arab leaders closer to the Kremlin in search of

countervailing conventional military aid, assurances of support or, worse still, assistance to develop

their own nuclear capabilities, all of which would inevitably undermine American influence in the

99
Hersh (1991) 39; Green (1998) 151; Robert Tucker Israel and the United States: From Dependence to
Nuclear Weapons? Commentary (1975) 29, 34, 40-41; Helena Cobban Israels Nuclear Game: the
U.S. stake, World Policy Journal (1998), 423, 425; Beit-Hallahmi (1987), 130-132; Mansour (1994)
233.
100
Mansour (1994) 110; Safran (1981) 483.
101
Cobban (1998) 423. emphasis added.
102
Gerlini (2010) 145.
103
Memorandum: Conversation between President Kennedy and Prime Minister Ben-Gurion, 30 May, 1961
(F.R.U.S. 1961-63, vol.17, doc.57).
104
Memorandum: Review Group Meeting, 30 June, 1969 (N.S.A.E.B.B.189, doc.9).
105
N.I.E. 4-63, 28 June 1963, 14; Ben-Zvi (1998) 124.

23
region.106 If Israel were to develop nuclear weapons, Nasser would later declare, the United Arab

Republic would obtain the same at any price, and by January 1961 the U.S. had received

indications that Nasser had indeed requested Soviet assistance to build a comparable reactor in

Egypt.107 Arab governments, particularly the U.A.R., might resort to preventive military strikes to

derail the Israeli programme, which could precipitate regional war.108 Any confrontation in a

nuclearized region where both superpowers were intensely involved would increase the likelihood

of escalation to a superpower nuclear exchange.109 In any event, Arab reaction to the Israeli facility

was expected to be particularly severe and there would be a strong likelihood of severe

repercussions in the Middle East and elsewhere.110

The Soviet Union could be expected to exploit the issue to the utmost on the international

stage; incurring the enmity of Israel would be a cheap price to pay for the gains in the Arab world

to be derived from an anti-Israeli policy.111 However, Moscow might also accede to pressure to

extend security guarantees and augment arms supplies to its Arab clients, perhaps even to station

atomic weapons in Egypt, all of which could precipitate a perilous regional arms race and trigger

further nuclear proliferation.112 Indeed, in March 1960, Moscow warned that if the U.S. gave

nuclear weapons to its allies, Russia would do the same.113 Since Israeli nuclear weapons could

endanger, not just its Arab neighbours, but also the southern Soviet Union, Moscow might also be

106
Special N.I.E. (S.N.I.E.) 100-8-60, 8 December, 1960, 2-3; N.I.E. 4-63, 14; Feldman (1997) 189; Cobban
(1998) 418; Hersh (1991) 92; Ben-Zvi (1998) 93; Raviv and Melman (1994) 104. Although President
Nixon would later commit to build a peaceful nuclear reactor for Egypt, believing it was better that it
should come from the U.S. than the Soviet Union Matti Golan, The Secret Conversations of Henry
Kissinger (1976) 214, 216.
107
Hahn (2006) 234; Memorandum of Conversation, 9 January, 1961 (F.R.U.S. 1961-63, vol.17, doc.2).
108
S.N.I.E. 100-8-60, 2; Feldman (1982) 177; Gerlini (2010) 154, 159n73.
109
N.I.E. 4-63, 20; N.S.A.E.B.B.189, doc.5; Feldman (1982) 211; Pry (1984) 1; Bader (1968) 2.
110
Memorandum: 470th N.S.C. Meeting, 8 December 1960 (F.R.U.S. 1958-60, vol.13, doc.177); Gerlini
(2010) 154, 159n73; S.N.I.E. 100-8-60, 2.
111
S.N.I.E. 100-8-60, 2; S.N.I.E. 11-10-56, Soviet Actions in the Middle East, 29 November, 1956
(N.A.R.A. 7326935), 4.
112
Telegram from Delegation at Foreign Ministers Meeting to State Department, 26 October, 1955 (F.R.U.S.
1955-57, vol.14, doc.359); Letter from Special Assistant (Stassen) to Secretary of Defense (Wilson), 18
May, 1957 (F.R.U.S. 1955-57, vol.20, doc.199); Feldman (1982) 177-78; Kroenig (2014) 28; Ben-Zvi
(1998) 124; Cobban (1998) 247; Richelson (2006) 254, Ben-Zvi (1998) 93.
113
The News of the Week in Review, New York Times, 20 March, 1960, Section 4, E1.

24
expected to threaten comprehensive reprisals should Israel use nuclear weapons and might even

envisage a pre-emptive nuclear strike.114

A nuclear Israel, for its part, could be expected to derive a greater sense of security, self-

confidence and assertiveness; to use its nuclear capability as a psychological weapon to press its

interests more vigorously in deep-seated disputes with its Arab neighbours. 115

Beyond the Middle East, Israels atomic project could also complicate the delicate nuclear

equation in Europe, and hinder U.S. attempts to persuade Germany to settle for inclusion in a

proposed sea-based Multi-lateral Force manned by NATO forces, instead of pursuing an

independent nuclear capability.116 Although the U.S. had repeatedly declined to formally guarantee

Israels security, at a time when principal European allies were doubting whether the United States

was really prepared to risk its own cities to extend nuclear protection to theirs, the disclosure of

Dimona might signal Israels lack of confidence that the United States could provide security for its

allies.117

It was understood in December 1960, and it was arguably foreseeable years earlier, that the

disclosure of Dimona would be burdensome for the United States.118 Eisenhower was worried that

his administration would be suspected in some quarters of complicity in the venture, which would

lead to charges of double standards and undermine both U.S. credibility and international

consensus on non-proliferation.119 The State Department expressed concern that the Presidents

Atoms for Peace initiative might be heavily criticized for abetting proliferation.120

It is clear that the potential fall-out from Israeli nuclearization, including possible Arab

emulation and increased Soviet political and military involvement in the region, would make it

114
S.N.I.E. 100-8-60, 2; Feldman (1982) 178, 191.
115
S.N.I.E. 100-8-60, 2; Strategic Analysis of the Impact of the Acquisition by Israel of a Nuclear
Capability, 8 August, 1961 (F.R.U.S. 1961-63, vol.17, doc.95); Raviv and Melman (1994) 103.
116
Cohen (1998b) 10; Maddock (1998) 563.
117
Newton (2011) 261-62; Feldman (1998) 227.
118
S.N.I.E. 100-8-60, 2.
119
Cockburn (1991) 89; Avner Cohen and William Burr, The Untold Story of Israels Bomb, The
Washington Post, 30 April, 2006, 3.
120
Raviv and Melman (1994) 102; Ben-Zvi (1998) 93.

25
difficult for the U.S. to maintain the delicate complex of its interests in the Middle East.121 In the

absence of declassified documentary evidence revealing discussion among senior policymakers as

to how to respond to Israels nuclear development, it will be instructive to consider what measures

would have been available to the U.S. to counter this eventuality in order to appreciate that none

appears to have been invoked.

3.2 Potential Countermeasures to Israeli Nuclearization

The United States refrained from employing several possible measures to deter or prevent Israels

atomic programme. The Eisenhower administration might have considered extending a security

guarantee to reduce Israels perceived need for nuclear weapons; insisting on linkage between

Israeli nuclear abstinence and supplies of U.S. conventional materiel; offering economic

inducements; restricting exports of nuclear technologies; imposing economic or diplomatic

sanctions, and even resorting to sabotage or military strikes. Although Eisenhower reportedly

broached the subject of Dimona at least once in private correspondence with Ben-Gurion, no

verifiable evidence has been uncovered to suggest that any concrete measures to inhibit Israeli

nuclearization were seriously contemplated during the Eisenhower years.122 The Presidents

attitude towards the Israeli nuclear research programme has been described as sphynx-like,

although not for lack of intelligence on Dimona.123

The Israeli leadership tried repeatedly to elicit a formal U.S. security guarantee no fewer

than four times in 1955 alone but their appeals were rebuffed.124 Eisenhower recognized that a

bilateral security treaty with Israel could weaken tenuous Arab perceptions of an even-handed U.S.

Middle East policy, drag the United States into regional disputes, invite comparable Soviet

guarantees to Arab states and thus undermine vital U.S. interests.125 Secretary Dulles regarded

such a commitment as the administrations biggest carrot, which should only be granted in return

121
N.I.E. 4-63, 14.
122
Hersh (1991) 55; Montgomery and Mount (2014) 377.
123
Gerlini (2010) 144.
124
Telegram: U.S. Embassy in Israel to State Department, 5 May, 1955 (F.R.U.S. 1955-57, vol.14, doc.87);
Memorandum of Conversation, State Department, 31 October, 1957 (F.R.U.S. 1955-57, vol.17,
doc.391); Alteras (1993) 127.
125
Hahn (2006) 229-230; Hersh (1991) 22; Alteras (1993) 128.

26
for substantial Israeli concessions towards a comprehensive Middle East peace settlement.126

Although Israeli officials, including Peres, had anticipated that progress towards nuclear

independence might prompt the U.S. to offer Israel a long-sought security pact to induce a nuclear

U-turn, there is no declassified evidence that Eisenhower ever seriously explored the possibility.127

The Eisenhower administration was not unmoved by Israels security concerns. Although

the White House considered them exaggerated and even misplaced, it offered informal, rhetorical

assurances to Israel.128 Dulles alluded to the possibility coming to Israels aid in the event of an

existential threat from without: No attempt to destroy or disrupt Israel would be possible, he

suggested, without a strong, but unspecified, United States reaction.129 When it became clear to

the Israeli leadership that the U.S. had no wish to entangle itself in a formal security pact, the

emphasis changed to more urgent pleas for U.S. arms.130

Tel Avivs repeated requests for American military hardware were a source of U.S.-Israeli

discord throughout Eisenhowers time in office.131 All were declined, based on C.I.A. and State

Department calculations that, even taking into account the $100-million Czech-Soviet arms deal

with Egypt in 1955, Israel maintained a qualitative military edge over any combination of its Arab

rivals, and that the supply of offensive weapons in particular might escalate a regional arms race

and polarize the Middle East into rival Cold War camps.132

The extension of the NATO nuclear umbrella to Norway in 1954 persuaded that country to

renounce its nuclear ambitions and, while Israeli leaders repeated requests in 1957 for NATO to

guarantee Israels security might imply that a similar invitation to Israel may have had similar

effect, the Eisenhower administration foresaw that this approach would create a great many

problems in view of Americas commitment to respect the independence of Middle East countries,

126
Telegram: Secretary of State to Department of State, 12 May, 1955 (F.R.U.S. 1955-57, vol.14, doc.95),
cited in Ben-Zvi (1998) 50.
127
Hersh (1991) 40; Cobban (1998) 425.
128
Alteras (1993) 114.
129
Alteras (1993) 143-144.
130
Alteras (1993) 173-174.
131
Hahn (2006) 233.
132
Telegram: Department of State to U.S. Embassy in Israel, 12 July, 1956 (F.R.U.S. 1955-57, vol.15,
doc.451); Hahn (2006) 233; F.R.U.S. 1955-57, vol.14, doc.359; Telegram: State Department to U.S.
Embassy in Jordan, 2 October, 1955 (F.R.U.S. 1955-57, vol.14, doc.322).

27
and no corresponding offer was made.133 Another, multilateral track open to consideration would

have been to channel U-2 and other evidence of Dimona through the I.A.E.A., but the U.S.

Government, and others, undermined the Agency by persisting with bilateral arrangements until a

viable system of verification and safeguards would later be established and equipped.134

Far from upholding restrictions on the export of technologies that might assist the

development of weapons of mass destruction, the Eisenhower administration rolled back the 1946

McMahon Act which had embargoed U.S. exports of nuclear information and materials. The

Presidents Atoms for Peace initiative assisted and partly funded the construction of Israels first

experimental reactor at Nahal Soreq and trained many of Israels nuclear research scientists.135

Although it is argued that the massive release of nuclear information had only indirect bearing on

military applications and was valuable in promoting peaceful uses, the gift of Atoms for Peace

data removed so many technical hurdles to the manufacture of nuclear weapons that later U.S.

administrations decided to reclassify some of it.136

When the existence of the Dimona complex was eventually revealed in December 1960,

estimates of its cost were withheld even from the Knesset, perhaps out of concern that such an

expenditure would raise questions in Washington at a time when U.S. taxpayers were providing

over $60 million dollars each year in foreign aid to Israel. 137 At the request of Shimon Peres, Wall

Street financier Abraham Feinberg, a fundraiser for the Democratic Party since the late 1940s,

discreetly canvassed wealthy American Jews and raised tens of millions of dollars to finance

Israels special weapons programme.138 Indeed, the Eisenhower cabinet immediately concluded

that the plant had been financed from private and public U.S. aid to Israel and cabinet members

wondered aloud whether such private contributions, which were said to far exceed the amount of

133
Little (1993) 565; Karpin (2006) 144; Hersh (1991) 55; Telegram: U.S. Embassy in Egypt to State
Department, 1 September, 1957 (F.R.U.S. 1955-57, vol.13, doc.379); Memorandum of a Conversation,
12 October, 1957 (F.R.U.S. 1955-57, vol.17, doc. 383); F.R.U.S. 1955-57, vol.17, doc.391; Editorial
Note (F.R.U.S. 1955-57, vol.17, doc.411).
134
Hall (1965) 611.
135
Pry (1984) 6.
136
Ambrose (2003) 355; Hall (1965) 607; cf. Cohen (1998a) 44.
137
Average $60.95 million per annum during Eisenhower administration, 1953-1960, according to Jeremy
M. Sharp, U.S. Foreign Aid to Israel (Congressional Research Service Report, RL33222, April 2013).
138
Hersh (1991) 58.

28
official assistance, should still qualify as tax-exempt when there was clearly no control over the

purposes for which they were expended.139

A prompt and decisive response is required in order to prevent nuclear proliferation since the

research and early development phases represent the best opportunity for intervention to head off

weaponization. The formidable list of strategic risks associated with nuclear weapons in Israeli

hands, and the range of means available to counter Israeli proliferation, might make it seem

implausible to contend that Washington might not have used every tool at its disposal, including

disclosure, to stifle Israels nuclear project at the earliest opportunity. Eisenhower himself claimed

he could conceive of nothing worse than for Israel to achieve a nuclear capability.140 Why then, did

the Eisenhower administration reject a hard-line response to Israels nuclear project when inaction

would not only amount to complicity in its concealment, but would permit a scheme potentially

damaging to vital U.S. interests to progress uninterrupted?

It bears repeating that Eisenhowers greater concern may not have been the Israeli atomic

project itself but international reactions and the prospect that public knowledge could trigger a race

to nuclearize the Middle East. If public knowledge posed the greater threat, then Washingtons

reluctance to publicize its discovery could be understood less in terms of perplexed procrastination

and more as a calculated attempt to contain the vexing international political aspects of Israeli

nuclearization without actually constraining the project itself. As Chapter Five will demonstrate,

this approach would be at once rational, consistent with the administrations broader security aims

and coherent with interpretations of Eisenhowers hidden hand in U.S. foreign policymaking.

139
Memorandum of Conference with the President, 19 December, 1961 [online]
http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/israel/documents/reveal/07-01.htm; Green (1988) 153.
140
F.R.U.S. 1958-60, vol.3, doc.69.

29
 CHAPTER FOUR

Aerial photography of Dimona and other clues

4.1 Early Clues

The late 1950s may have provided the last and best opportunity for the U.S. government to

successfully alter the course of Israeli nuclear history.141 Had the U.S. atomic intelligence

community been alerted to cogent and timely evidence of Israels nascent nuclear programme, the

U.S. government would have been in a strong position to challenge it. A close examination of the

chronology of warning signals will weigh the plausibility of later intelligence review findings that,

on the evidence available at the time, it was not possible for U.S. intelligence authorities to detect

Dimona before late 1960.142

4.1.1 Israels strategic motivation to achieve a nuclear deterrent

The earliest and best clues to the probability of Israels nuclearization were compelling strategic

motivations to achieve nuclear status. States seek nuclear weapons for the military purposes of

intimidation or deterrence, for the political purposes of enhancing influence or status, and for

national pride.143 Israel clearly had all these concerns in mind.

Despite Israels conventional military superiority in the region, Ben-Gurion considered a

dual nuclear deterrent capability against Arab states and the Soviet Union the best possible

guarantee of Israels existence.144 Israels exaggerated security concerns were a function of

historical memory: Holocaust trauma fostered a siege mentality and furthered assumptions that

the fledgling state would remain under constant existential threat from hostile Arab neighbours. 145

Ben-Gurion dreaded a combined attack by all Arab armies and his deeply pessimistic strategic

141
Cohen (1998a) 85; Kroenig (2009) 21.
142
Post-mortem on S.N.I.E. 100-8-60.
143
O.T.A. (1993) 21; S.N.I.E. 100-8-60, 2.
144
Beit-Hallahmi (1987) 129, citing Leonard Beaton and John Maddox, The Spread of Nuclear Weapons,
(1976) 168-69.
145
Alteras (1993) 114; Adamsky (2012) [online].

31
assessment of Israels vulnerabilities shaped national policy.146 Ben-Gurion also aspired to a

triangular second-strike capability against the southern Soviet Union.147 Nikolai Bulganins

thinly veiled nuclear threats against Israel during the Suez Crisis, which were confirmed by U.S.

Embassy reports from Moscow that the Soviets meant to flatten Israel the next day, prompted

Ben-Gurion to dispatch Peres and Meir to bargain for French nuclear assistance.148

A nuclear-armed Israel would also wield a weapon of leverage to guarantee a supply of

Western conventional weapons and diplomatic support and to ensure that Israel would not be

abandoned by the West in the event of an existential threat.149 Attaining a nuclear capability

might also empower Israel to resist external pressures in its conduct of Israeli-Arab affairs.150

Since Washington had repeatedly rebuffed Israeli requests for security guarantees, for conventional

military weapons, for NATO protection and for decisive diplomatic support in its dealings with

Arab states, one might have expected Israel to consider its alternatives.

A 1961 intelligence estimate recognized that, surrounded as it is by hostile Arab states

Israel has strong incentives to have an operational nuclear capability, yet those strong incentives

were in evidence long before that estimate was written. 151 As Robert McNamara would later say,

The fact Israel was trying to develop a nuclear bomb should not have come as a surprise.152

4.1.2 Rhetorical and anecdotal evidence

In his public speeches, Ben-Gurion frequently linked Israels security with its scientific progress.

Before the Knesset, he urged young Israelis to devote themselves to atomic science for the sake of

146
Cohen (1994) 198; Hersh (1991) 22.
147
Cobban (1988) 420.
148
Cohen (1994) 199; Alteras (1993) 243, citing Herman Finer, Dulles over Suez: the theory and practice of
his diplomacy (1964) 419; Hersh (1991) 41; Cohen (1994) 199; Neil Caplan, The 1956 Sinai Campaign
Viewed from Asia, Israel Studies (2002), 94 and 103n10, citing Medzini (ed), Israels Foreign
Relations, VI, 557-8 [doc.7]; Alteras (1993) 247, citing Finer (1964) 446.
149
Beit-Hallahmi (1987) 132, citing M.J. Wilmshurst Reforming the Non-proliferation System in the
1980s, in John Simpson and Anthony McGrew (Eds.) The International Nuclear Non-proliferation
System: challenges and choices (1984), 138; Cobban (1988) 423; Hersh (1991) 40; Green (1998) 151-
52.
150
Feldman (1982) 194.
151
N.I.E. 4-3-61, Nuclear Weapons and Delivery Capabilities of Free World Countries, 21 September, 1961.
152
Meirion Jones, Britains Dirty Secret, New Statesman, 13 March, 2006, 20.

32
the security and independence of Israel.153 In a November 1956 article, Ben-Gurion expressed his

Manhattan Project aspirations: What Einstein, Oppenheimer and Teller, the three of them are

Jews, had made for the United States, could also be done by scientists in Israel for their own

people.154 The following year, the British Chancery in Tel Aviv reported a February 1959 speech

by Shimon Peres at the Weizmann nuclear research institute in which he referred to Israels pursuit

of an unspecified secret weapon.155 A 1958 U.S. intelligence review bemoaned the lack of field

reporting about underlying political factors and forces that shape nth-country proliferation

decisions.156 Yet, Israeli leaders articulated these political considerations openly and

unambiguously.157

In November 1955, leading French newspapers reported cooperation in nuclear research

between the French and Israeli atomic energy commissions and between scientists at the Weizmann

Institute and their counterparts in France.158 By early 1957, further speculation that Israel might be

working on the bomb was circulating in the Western press, including several prominent West

German newspapers.159

For some time, Arab states had been publicly expressing concerns about the prospect of an

Israeli bomb. On 27 March 1956, even before the Peres-Mollet deal at Svres, the Syrian embassy

in London relayed its governments concerns to British officials, following an alleged public

announcement by French State Minister, Pierre Mends France, of his governments progress in

cooperation with Israel on nuclear energy.160 Syrian spies also attempted to infiltrate the Dimona

installation.161

153
Hersh (1991) 22.
154
Cohen (1998a) 12, 354n19.
155
JIC/1103/61 Intelligence Brief on Atomic Activities in Israel, 17 July, 1961; Gerlini (2010) 46; Karpin
(2006) 151.
156
Post-mortem on N.I.E. 100-2-58, 30 October 1958 (N.S.A.E.B.B.155, 4c), 2.
157
Shalom (2005) 11.
158
Benjamin Pinkus, Atomic Power to Israels Rescue, Israel Studies (2002) 117, citing Le Figaro 17
November, 1955 and Le Monde 17 November, 1955.
159
Pry (1984) 38.
160
Gerlini (2010) 145, citing Public Record Office, Israel and the Atomic Bomb, R.M. Hadow, 27 March,
1956, Foreign Office (F.O.) 371/121822.
161
Ian Black and Benny Morris, Israels Secret Wars (1991) 143.

33
 Intriguingly, some time in 1958, director of the Norwegian Institute for Atomic Energy,

Gunnar Randers, who had been in confidential negotiation with Israel for the sale of large

quantities of heavy water, an essential component in the production of weapons-grade plutonium,

discreetly asked the U.S. State Department whether it would regard the construction by Israel of a

40-megawatt reactor as ominous.162 In June 1959, the Norwegian foreign ministry informed the

A.E.C. that they had concluded an agreement to supply such large quantities of heavy water to

Israel as could have no other purpose than to moderate a type of nuclear reactor that the Israelis

didnt officially possess.163 In response to informal enquiries, U.S. embassy officials were assured

the Dimona facility was a textile plant.164

The previous month, the U.S. naval attach in Tel Aviv reported that the head of the Israeli

Weapons Development Authority, General Dan Tolkovsky, had resigned a month earlier in protest

at Ben-Gurions pursuit of nuclear weapons, but Tolkovskys stand could not be confirmed at that

time.165 This followed the earlier resignation of all members of Israels A.E.C., except Chairman

Ernst Bergmann, objecting to Israels nuclear orientation towards military, rather than commercial

purposes.166

Washington would certainly have been aware of each of these reports. The C.I.A. had been

gathering data on Israels nuclear activities since at least 10 January 1956, when Israel was

formally designated a Third Category Priority, in the D.C.I.s National Scientific and Technical

Intelligence Objectives listing, albeit the lowest category for C.I.A. intelligence collection

purposes.167 With the benefit of hindsight, the intelligence community would later conclude that

there had indeed been an ample flow of information from overt sources on atomic energy

developments at the Weizmann institute, which it was never possible to consider concurrently with

aerial imagery of Dimona since U-2 data appears to have been restricted to the C.I.A.s U-2 unit

which worked behind a barrier of secrecy, and not disseminated to the atomic intelligence unit or

the C.I.A.s Office of National Estimates (O.N.E.), responsible for compiling intelligence

162
Cohen (1998a) 365n30, citing Odd Karsten Tveit, Alt for Israel: Oslo-Jerusalem 1948-78 (1996) 261-62.
163
Post-mortem on S.N.I.E. 100-8-60, 11.
164
Richelson (2006) 247.
165
Post-mortem on S.N.I.E. 100-8-60, 11.
166
Avi Shlaim, The Iron Wall (2001) 205.
167
Post-mortem on S.N.I.E. 100-8-60, 5; Cohen (1998a) 81.

34
estimates.168 What human intelligence (HUMINT) data was made available to O.N.E. analysts was

often discounted on the basis that sources were deemed unreliable.169

The President warned that if there were any leaks about the maximum security U-2 project,

he was perfectly ready to kill the whole thing and Richard Bissell was adamant that knowledge of

the project be limited to just a few individuals, with very few agency personnel other than those

assigned to project headquarters cleared for access.170 Indeed, the high-altitude reconnaissance

project was so sensitive that the 1954 Killian Committee which first recommended it excluded any

mention of it from its written report.171 Brugioni recalls the White House attitude to briefings

about the Israeli reactor construction: It was always Thank you, and this isnt going to be

disseminated, is it?172

4.1.3 Circumstantial evidence

The year 1947 saw the establishment of the Weizmann Institute, a nuclear research and

development facility in Tel Aviv and, two years later, a specialist department of isotope research;

both under the purview of the Israeli Ministry of Defense.173 The Eisenhower administration

cannot claim to have been unaware that Israels earliest nuclear research efforts were conducted

under the auspices of its Ministry of Defense, since the Weizmann Institute was in large part

funded by the U.S. government.174 In November 1954, two full years after the fact, Ernst

Bergmann announced in a radio address that an Israeli Atomic Energy Commission (I.A.E.C.) had

been founded, ostensibly to conduct peaceful nuclear research. Portentously, Bergmann held two

government portfolios in addition to his I.A.E.C. directorship: scientific advisor to the Defense

Minister and Director of Research for the Defense Ministry.175 U.S. atomic intelligence claims not

to have properly disseminated or interpreted this early intelligence and not to have grasped the

168
Post-mortem on S.N.I.E. 100-8-60, 7-8; Bissell (1996) 100.
169
Hersh (1991) 147.
170
Bissell (1996) 94, 96-7; Michael Beschloss, May Day: Eisenhower, Khrushchev and the U-2 affair
(1986) 90.
171
Bissell (1996) 94.
172
Hersh (1991) 55.
173
Schoenbaum (1993) 126; Evron (1994) 2.
174
Cockburn (1991) 89; Green (1988) 151.
175
(British) Intelligence Brief, JIC/1103/61; Hersh (1991) 20, 23; Cochran (2000) 133.

35
significance of this affiliation between nuclear research agencies and the Israeli military

establishment at the time.

Under Atoms for Peace, Israel intended to apply for $350,000 of American funding to

construct its small, light-water reactor. On 11 April 1956, after a tour of U.S. atomic energy

installations, Bergmann enquired speculatively of senior American A.E.C. officials whether, in

view of what he called Israels advanced position in atomic research, the U.S. government would

be amenable to Israel bypassing this small, experimental reactor phase and upgrading the design to

a 10-megawatt natural uranium, heavy-water reactor.176 The unspoken significance of a larger

uranium reactor is that, unlike a small research reactor, it would produce sizeable quantities of

weapons-grade plutonium.177 Bergmann also queried how the Americans would view the status of

the plutonium that such an upgraded reactor would produce. 178 Amos De Shalit, a leading Israeli

physicist, warned that it would simply not be credible to the United States government that Israel

would pursue a large-scale plutonium separation capacity without exploiting it for military research

purposes.179 Leading American physicists at the A.E.C. might well have drawn similar inferences.

The actual U.S. response is unclear but, in any event, Israel formally submitted a request for only

the smaller, light-water reactor.

Then, on 17 July 1956, Bergmann wrote to A.E.C. Chairman Strauss in Washington to

request his approval for the supply of ten tons of heavy water for use in the 10-megawatt, natural

uranium, heavy-water reactor he declared Israel was about to construct. The A.E.C. conveyed this

information to the C.I.A.180 Philip Farley, Special Assistant to the Secretary of State on Nuclear

Energy, correctly interpreted Bergmanns request for heavy water and mention of a much larger

176
Memorandum of Conversation: Subject: Israeli Atomic Energy Program, (Ekorn), State Department, 11
April, 1956 (N.S.A.E.B.B. Israel and the Bomb) [online]
177
Hall (1998) 607-608.
178
Memorandum of Conversation, Ekorn, 11 April, 1956; Cohen (1998a) 46.
179
Cohen (1998a) 47.
180
Karpin (2006) 152.

36
reactor as ominous signs that the Israelis were contemplating the construction of a second reactor

outside the auspices of Atoms for Peace.181

Some contend that Israels expressions of interest did not unduly concern the U.S. atomic

intelligence community.182 Although no specific expressions of concern from senior administration

officials have been declassified, there is evidence that Bergmanns letter did cause disquiet in some

parts of Washington: having approved the sale of twenty-one tons of heavy water to India in March

1956 without any stipulations as to its use, the American A.E.C. now insisted on the rider that

Israels purchase of heavy water would be subject to U.S. government supervision. This insistence

prompted Israel to abandon its request and turn instead to the Norwegians, who were charging

three times as much.183 Israels reluctance to submit to U.S. oversight might have raised immediate

suspicions.

The British Foreign Office knew by March 1959 that the Israelis had turned down South

African uranium because of Pretorias insistence on safeguards.184 Whether British Technical

Atomic Liaison ever conveyed this information to their American counterparts in the C.I.A. is

unclear, although transatlantic atomic intelligence collaboration was reportedly strong during the

Eisenhower years.185 Another possibility brings into sharp relief the caution that governments are

not unitary actors on the diplomatic stage: Tony Benn, technology minister from 1966, says he was

never asked to agree to later plutonium sales to Israel and was shocked to learn than Britain had

exported nuclear materials to Israel during the 1950s and 60s. Benns experience implies that civil

servants might also have concluded the trilateral heavy water deal, which comprised two shipments

in June 1959 and June 1960, without ministerial approval or knowledge. Benn was uncertain

whether even Prime Minister Harold Macmillan had been consulted.186

181
Post-mortem on S.N.I.E. 100-8-60, 2; Cohen (1998a) 52, citing Memorandum: Farley to the Acting
Secretary of State, 16 August, 1956, RG59, State Lot Files, Lot 57D688, Box 417, U.S. National
Archive.
182
Richelson (2006) 247.
183
Karpin (2006) 141-42.
184
Jones (2006), 19.
185
Michael Goodman With a Little Help From My Friends: the Anglo-American Atomic Intelligence
Partnership, 1945-58, Diplomacy & Statecraft (2007) 167.
186
Jones (2006).

37
 On 2 August, 1960, the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv forwarded a report from a U.S. nuclear

engineer that the French were collaborating with Israel in constructing a major reactor near

Beersheba.187 By late summer in 1960, work at the Dimona site had advanced to the stage where

the steel containment sphere the distinctive, silver-coloured reactor dome was clearly visible to

U.S. military attachs who took photographs from roads nearby. The Israeli response was to plant

trees to shield the facility from prying lenses.188 On 9 August, 1960, the U.S. Army attach in

Israel obtained an excellent series of long-range ground photos of the Dimona installation, which

were only received by U.S. Army Intelligence in Washington on 4 October, but were not forwarded

to central atomic energy intelligence elements until 8 December.189

It seems improbable that C.I.A. atomic intelligence, which was tasked, since January 1956,

with monitoring evidence of Israels nuclear activities, might have failed to deduce Israels true

purpose from the accumulation of such telling evidence provided by senior A.E.C. and State

Department officials.

4.2 Photo-Intelligence Revelations

The most compelling evidence of Israels covert nuclear development facility at Dimona was

brought before President Eisenhower and Secretary Dulles in, or around, March 1958.190 When

Eisenhower assumed the presidency, he established a Photographic Intelligence Division (P.I.D.)

within the C.I.A. to gather aerial intelligence, primarily on the Soviet Union. Arthur Lundahl, a

veteran of aerial reconnaissance analysis for the U.S. Navy during the Second World War who

was, according to Richard Bissell, the driving force behind the creation of photo-intelligence, was

appointed to direct C.I.A.-P.I.D.191 Lundahl promptly recruited Dino Brugioni, a former wartime

aerial photographer, to join the P.I.D. staff as his second in command.192

187
Post-mortem on S.N.I.E. 100-8-60, 8.
188
Hersh (1991) 57; Brugioni (2010) 272.
189
Post-mortem on S.N.I.E. 100-8-60, 13-14.
190
Brugioni (2010) 272; Hersh (1991) 52.
191
Bissell (1996) 103.
192
Richelson (2006) 248.

38
 American U-2 spy-plane reconnaissance of the Soviet Union began in July 1956 and the

following month the span of surveillance was extended to include parts of the Middle East,

bringing in more hard intelligence than all previous sources put together.193 The C.I.A.s own

history of the programme reveals that U-2s conducted periodic overflights of the Middle East from

the U.S. Air Force base at Adana in Turkey.194 These overflights became particularly frequent

during the summer of 1958.195 The three pages which would have detailed U-2 overflights of the

Middle East during 1958 are not just redacted, but are omitted entirely from the C.I.A.s own

partly-declassified account, leaving no mention of overhead reconnaissance of Israel or what it

revealed during that period.196 Compared to only mild redaction in the sections concerning

politically hyper-sensitive overflights of the Soviet Union (mainly to conceal the identities of U-2

pilots), all mention of surveillance over Israel is utterly purged from this official account.

Nevertheless, since the use of high-altitude overflights and high-resolution cameras revealed,

in August 1956, twice as many French-supplied Mystre jets at Israeli air bases as Israel had

declared to the U.S. government, Eisenhower chose to step up aerial surveillance activity over

Israel.197 According to Brugioni, periodic overflights of an Israeli practice bombing range in the

Negev provided the first aerial pictures of early excavations at a probable nuclear site.198

To experienced photo interpreters like Brugioni, who had visited and studied nuclear

reactors in the United States, the large-scale excavation with deep, reinforced concrete foundations

surrounded by a long security fence, the extensive and newly-constructed road system and heavy

power transmission lines leading to the barren, desert location were indicative of a nuclear site

and the nature of the heavy construction equipment indicated a possible military link.199 Signs of

a separate chemical reprocessing facility at Dimona could only mean that Israel intended to

produce nuclear weapons. Brugioni recalled the striking similarities in the footprint of excavations

at Dimona and those of the French G-3 nuclear reactor facility at Marcoule, which was frequently
193
Thomas Powers, The Man Who Kept the Secrets: Richard Helms and the C.I.A. (1979) 97; Pedlow and
Welzenbach (1998) 104.
194
Renamed Incirlik Air Base in February 1958.
195
Pedlow and Welzenbach (1998) 152.
196
Pedlow and Welzenbach (1998) 154-56.
197
Cohen (1998a) 83, 371n17.
198
Richelson (2006) 250; Cohen (1998a) 83; Brugioni (2010) 272.
199
Brugioni (2010), 271; Hersh (1991) 52.

39
overflown at that time by American civilian transport planes equipped with hidden cameras.200

P.I.D. analysts watched as the Israelis, aware of U.S. overflights, attempted to mask their activities

by planting turf and bushes, and by hauling away the excavated spoil in covered trucks and under

cover of darkness so as to confound U.S. attempts to gauge the extent of the excavations.201

As head of the U-2 intelligence unit, Lundahl showed the detailed imagery to D.C.I. Allen

Dulles, and was asked to brief Secretary John Foster Dulles, A.E.C. chairman Strauss, and the

President. Access to U-2 surveillance imagery was often limited to the President and his most

senior officials, and photo-intelligence briefings were deemed so sensitive that no written records

were permitted, which makes it difficult to date the earliest of the Dimona briefings. 202

Nevertheless, it appears likely that these P.I.D. briefings began some time before officials of the

C.I.A.s Office of Scientific Intelligence, who were privy to the briefings, submitted a request to

the State Department for detailed follow-up information on 27 March, 1958, and certainly before

Strausss five-year A.E.C. chairmanship expired on 30 June 1958.203

According to Brugioni, in the normal course of events, the President would examine P.I.D.

briefing boards, ask questions and request a detailed follow-up. Two large briefing boards were

prepared, displaying ground and aerial photographs of the construction site at Dimona alongside

strikingly similar photographs of the Marcoule reactor.204 As Brugioni recalls, the French and

Israeli photographs were almost mirror images.205 Despite being an avid consumer of photo-

intelligence who had demonstrated a long-standing respect for expert authority and heavy reliance

on aerial photo-intelligence since World War II, the usually effusive President refrained from his

usual volley of questions and shoved the briefing board aside without comment.206 Eisenhower

requested no further photographs or briefings.

200
Hersh (1991) 56-7; Post-mortem on S.N.I.E. 100-8-60, 15.
201
Brugioni (2010) 273.
202
Oral history interview with Brigadier General Andrew Goodpaster, 26 June 1975, for Eisenhower
Library, transcript, 15-16.
203
Brugioni (2010) 272; ; Barton Bernstein, Sacrifices and Decisions: Lewis L. Strauss, The Public
Historian, 8(2) (Spring 1986) 119.
204
Brugioni (2010) 273.
205
Brugioni (2010) 273.
206
Hersh (1991) 50; Beschloss (1986) 144; Brugioni (2010) 272-3.

40
 Brugioni recalls that Lundahl was amazed at the apparent lack of reaction on the part of the

President, which might conceivably support Robert Tafts earlier observation that Eisenhower had

an inability to make up his mind, but which left both analysts with the stronger impression that

the President may have already known about the Israeli weapons development project from other

sensitive intelligence sources and may have been reluctant to take action to prevent it.207

Eisenhowers muted reaction had a chilling effect on senior C.I.A.-P.I.D. photo-analysts:

although Lundahl and Brugioni had no doubt that the Israelis were going for the bomb, they

quickly understood not to volunteer any further collateral information about the installation at

Dimona.208 Whenever you get something on the Israelis and you move it along, according to

Brugioni, youd better be careful. Especially if youve got a career.209

Dulles occasionally told Brugioni he should ask the Deputy Director for Intelligence

(D.D.I.), Robert Amory, to see the Israeli reports or the Jewish information, referring to CIA

human intelligence on the Israeli bomb.210 Despite Brugionis unusually broad U-2 clearance

for very sensitive matters, Amory refused his request.211 Based on what they knew outside of the

reports, Lundahl and Brugioni concluded that they were from American-Jewish scientists who

knew what was going on in Israel.212 Although Lundahl was never asked to follow up on the

Dimona briefings, neither was he told not to and Brugioni reported that they carried on watching

the construction of Dimona while U-2s went on overflying the facility.213 For reasons that remain

unclear, their detailed findings were not disseminated within the administration and were never

explicitly referred to in any Post-mortem or intelligence review.214

207
Brugioni (2010) 274; Cohen (1998b) 18n22; Cohen (1998a) 83; cf. Graubard (2004) 373.
208
Brugioni (2010) 273; Hersh (1991) 58.
209
Hersh (1991) 53.
210
Brugioni (2010) 272; Hersh (1991) 58.
211
Brugioni (2010) 272; Hersh (1991) 54.
212
Brugioni (2010) 272.
213
Hersh (1991) 54, 55.
214
Post-mortem on S.N.I.E. 100-8-60, 2.

41
 4.3 Secrecy Is Itself a Clue

During the earliest stages of development, when the Dimona project might still have been

vulnerable to international pressure on Israel to desist, Ben-Gurion and a coterie of his most senior

officials kept Dimona confidential and made public disclosure in December 1960 only under

irresistible pressure from President de Gaulle.215 When the existence of Dimona was formally

revealed, the fact of its earlier concealment fuelled doubts about its peaceful purposes. Despite

Israeli claims that concealment was designed to protect foreign suppliers business interests in Arab

countries, Israeli secrecy and deception convinced the U.S. intelligence establishment that

Dimona was intended for the production of weapons-grade plutonium.216 Senator J. William

Fulbright justifiably asked, if Israel had nothing to hide, then, why did they hide it?217

4.3.1 Three signals of covert nuclear intention

In a 2004 statement, Assistant Secretary of State John S. Wolf outlined three general principles to

assist in determining whether a states actions manifest a covert intention to acquire nuclear

weapons.218 The first, most important indication, and arguably the most incriminating, is the

presence of undeclared nuclear facilities: Legitimate peaceful nuclear activities do not require

denial and deception.219 In other words, secrecy is a strong signal of intention and the clandestine

construction of Dimona did not bode well for the innocence of Israel.220

The second warning sign is procurement patterns inconsistent with those of a civil nuclear

programme, such as clandestine procurement, and the third signal is nuclear activity that has little

coherence for peaceful purposes. Examples of these overlapping categories might be attempts, for

example, to pass off a research reactor as a power reactor, or to purchase or produce heavy water as

a moderator when that states civil facilities use light water, or antipathy to external oversight.221

215
Shlaim (2001) 206; Green (1988) 154.
216
Telegram: U.S. Embassy Israel to Secretary of State, 27 December, 1960 (D.N.S.A. NP00730); S.N.I.E.
100-8-60, 1; Post-mortem on S.N.I.E. 100-8-60, 1.
217
Cohen (1998a) 90; F.R.U.S. 1961-63, vol.17, doc.2.
218
Statement: Assistant Secretary of State for Non-proliferation John Wolf, New York, 30 April, 2004, 4-5.
219
Wolf (2004) 4.
220
Pry (1984) 13.
221
Wolf (2004) 4.

42
As has been explained, the small, American-supplied reactor at Nahal Soreq used only light water

as a moderator and U.S. atomic intelligence admits that Israeli attempts to procure heavy water

should have suggested that they were constructing a second reactor. Indeed, it might have been

noted as early as 1956 that the I.A.E.C. declined the supply of cheap American heavy water in

favour of expensive Norwegian supplies precisely because Israel preferred to operate outside the

glare of U.S. oversight.

4.3.2 Inconsistent cover stories

Israel offered the U.S. government so many alternative designations and explanations to account

for the Dimona facility that, in March 1964, N.S.C. senior staffer Robert Komer was able to

compile a 14-page chronology cataloguing Israels obfuscations, denials and solemn assurances of

peaceful purposes at Dimona.222 The sheer breadth and inconsistency ought to have prompted

scepticism. The sign outside proclaimed the facility to be a soil research institute, yet Dimona

was variously described to U.S. officials as a textile plant, an arid zone research facility, a

metallurgical research laboratory, a manganese processing factory, a pumping station, a desert

grasslands research institute, a mineral recovery facility, and a power reactor.223 Although the

production of desalinated water and electricity were sincere ambitions of the Israeli leadership,

these also represented effective covers for Dimonas real purpose: the real desalination project at

Nahal Soreq proved uneconomic and was later dropped and, to this day, Israel derives none of its

electricity from nuclear power.224

4.3.3 Disclosure was not welcomed in Washington

When news of Dimona broke, the Eisenhower administration had at least two options to distance

itself from charges of complicity and minimize any international backlash against the United

States: either to feign surprise and challenge Israel firmly to desist or cede to international

222
Chronology of Israel Assurances of Peaceful Uses of Atomic Energy, 20 March, 1964, D.D.R.S.
CK3100724204
223
(British) Draft Assessment of Secret Atomic Activities in Israel, JIC/519/61, 27 March, 1961, 12-13, 20-
21; Hersh (1991) 63-4, 72, 78; Cohen (1998a) 85; Richelson (2006) 250; Jeremy Salt, Israels Nuclear
Weapons: the White House factor, Middle East Policy (2010) 24; Karpin (2001) 155; Green (1998)
150-151; Findley (1993) 131; Barnaby (1989) 6; Jabber (1971) 34; Crosbie (1974) 162; Post-mortem on
S.N.I.E. 100-8-60, 13.
224
Raviv and Melman (1994) 114; C.I.A. World Factbook [online].

43
oversight; or to feign surprise and try to still the atmosphere. True to his reputation for avoiding

confrontation, Eisenhower preferred the latter course.225 Despite the assessment of C.I.A. and

A.E.C. experts that the Dimona complex cannot be solely for peaceful purposes, Eisenhower

chose to downplay the disclosure and publicly endorse Israels doubtful claims to benign

purposes.226

Israeli Ambassador Avraham Harman requested assistance in stilling the atmosphere and

the U.S. State Department, agreeing that a new round of alarmist publicity would be unwelcome

and, not wishing to prolong or exaggerate this issue, duly issued a statement emphasizing the

peaceful purposes of the facility and transmitted a circular to American embassies worldwide

requesting assistance in stilling atmosphere.227 In order to allay what one diplomat called

hysterical Arab suspicions, the State Department announced, in Secretary Christian Herters

words, that Dimona did not represent cause for special concern, and authorized sources referred

to rumours of atomic weapons research there as ridiculous. 228

Just as U.N. Ambassador Adlai Stevenson would, later, memorably exhibit photographic

evidence of Soviet missile sites on Cuba, by 1960, the U.S. was in a position to reveal

incontrovertible evidence from U-2 surveillance, ground photography by military attachs and

high-resolution Corona Satellite imagery which might have rallied an international consensus

behind imposing I.A.E.A. oversight on activities at Dimona.229 The Eisenhower administration

opted instead to publicly endorse Israeli claims to exclusively peaceful purposes.

225
Greenstein (1982) 9, 30.
226
F.R.U.S. 1958-60, vol.13, doc.177; Ben-Zvi (1998) 94.
227
Telegram: State Department to U.S. Embassy in Israel, 31 December, 1960 (F.R.U.S. 1958-60, vol.13,
doc.181); Telegram from State Department, 22 December 1960, (D.N.S.A. NP00725); D.N.S.A.
NP00726; Partial Transcription of Conversation between Israeli Ambassador (Harman) and Secretary of
State (Herter), 21 December, 1960 (D.N.S.A. NP00721).
228
Telegram from U.S. Embassy in Beirut to Secretary of State, 27 December, 1960 (D.N.S.A. NP00731);
U.S. Welcomes Israel Promises on Reactor, Washington Post, 23 December 1960, A2; Alvin
Schuster, Israel Satisfies U.S. on Use of Reactor, New York Times, 23 December 1960, 1; Israel Say
A-Reactor is for Peace, Washington Post, 23 December, 1960, A2.
229
Karpin (2001) 155-56; Eisenhower saw the first Corona images of the U.S.S.R. in August 1960: Brugioni
(2010) 365; Bissell (1996) 93, 137. According to Israeli sources, CORONA first photographed Dimona
in September 1960: Karpin (2006) 155.

44
 4.4. Intelligence Estimates of Israels Nuclear Activity

In May 1957, Harold Stassen, Special Assistant on disarmament, wrote to Secretary of Defense

Charles Wilson that, with France already on the brink of deciding to begin nuclear weapons

manufacture, there would be a high probability that Israel would also acquire them, either by

developing them or by purchasing them from France.230 Only days later, Stassen, Eisenhowers so-

called secretary of peace, reassured N.S.C. members that measures to prevent fourth-power

proliferation were among the U.S. Governments top priority objectives.231 Despite the high

priority accorded to fourth-country proliferation, and despite Stassens early suspicions, Israel was

still rated only a Third Category Priority in the D.C.I.s Intelligence Objectives listing, the lowest

category proliferation risk for intelligence collection purposes.232

National Intelligence Estimates are jointly prepared by the C.I.A. and the intelligence

organizations of the Departments of State, the Army, the Navy, the Air Force, the Joint Staff and

the A.E.C. Intelligence estimates of June 1957 and July 1958, which have been declassified in full,

concluded that, with foreign assistance, Israel would almost certainly attempt to achieve nuclear

capability.233 Yet these estimates appear to have taken no account of critical information and

assessments supplied by senior officials from the State Department and the A.E.C. that Israel was

already receiving foreign assistance. The very first U-2 overflight of the Middle East, on 29

August 1956, had revealed that the French were arming Israel in contravention of the Tripartite

Declaration of May 1950 and, to Eisenhowers annoyance, lying to the Americans about it.234

More perplexing still, in the intervening period between these two estimates, in approximately

March 1958, the President and Secretary Dulles were presented with the detailed imagery which

revealed the probable construction of a large and covert nuclear site near Dimona.

The July 1958 estimate concluded that Israel would probably seek to develop limited

weapons production programmes within the decade, yet this phrase belies the urgency of the

230
F.R.U.S. 1955-57, vol.20, doc.199.
231
F.R.U.S. 1955-57, vol.20, doc.201.
232
Post-mortem on S.N.I.E. 100-8-60, 5.
233
N.I.E. 100-6-57, 7; N.I.E. 100-2-58, 2.
234
Brugioni (2010) 174; Ambrose (2003), 436.

45
problem.235 Bergmann had already told U.S embassy officials in April 1958 that the decision to

build a power reactor had been taken and that Israel would need five to seven years to bring it into

operation, which suggests that U.S. intelligence, on its own estimates, should have been alert for

signs that preparation for the Israeli project was already underway.236 References to Israel, and

only Israel, have been so thoroughly redacted from subsequent estimates that it is impossible to

know what else the intelligence bureaucracy might have known of Israels atomic progress.

As a result of the Bergmann meeting in April 1958, Israel was promoted to a Second

Category proliferation risk on the D.C.I.s Intelligence Objectives listing on 15 September, but this

second priority status was still so low as to have too little effort and urgency attributed to it.237

Although the problem of fourth-country proliferation had been designated a top-priority objective

since mid-1957, the U.S. atomic intelligence community dedicated to collating, analyzing and

interpreting evidence of the Israeli atomic program comprised just one part-time C.I.A. analyst

within the Office of Scientific Intelligence, who was also responsible for corresponding coverage

of over forty other countries.238

4.4.1 The intelligence post-mortem

In his first weeks in the White House, President Kennedy asked to see a detailed review of the

intelligence record on the Israeli reactor. Framed as a Post-mortem on Special National

Intelligence Estimate 100-8-60, the January 1961 review concluded that information had indeed

been available as early as April 1958 to some elements of the intelligence community which

could have revealed the Israeli nuclear construction project.239

According to the post-mortem, the U.S. government obtained information on Israels

procurement of heavy water in June 1959 but failed to disseminate it to intelligence. The review

concluded that if this information had been properly disseminated, it would have confirmed the

235
N.I.E. 100-2-58, 2.
236
Post-mortem on S.N.I.E. 100-8-60, 9.
237
Post-mortem on S.N.I.E. 100-8-60, 2.
238
Post-mortem on S.N.I.E. 100-8-60, 5.
239
Post-mortem on S.N.I.E. 100-8-60, 1.

46
existence of an additional reactor construction programme in Israel.240 In fact, Bergmann made

attempts to procure heavy water directly from leading figures in the American A.E.C. as early as

1956 but, it was claimed, Israeli intentions were not recognized.241

Despite providing a detailed audit trail of the receipt and dissemination of evidence on the

Dimona construction, the precise nature of the April 1958 evidence available to some elements

within the C.I.A. is not disclosed. The U-2 project was the most compartmented and self-

contained activity within the C.I.A. and the need to know doctrine meant that aerial intelligence

was deemed too sensitive even to be included in National Intelligence Estimates.242 The President

was hamstrung in a number of ways by his self-imposed injunction on the public use of U-2 data;

not just by being unable to head off pressure from the military-industrial complex to increase

defence spending to close a non-existent missile gap, but also by being prevented from consulting

his valued N.S.C. and cabinet advisers and from dealing openly with Israeli leaders about the

discovery of Dimona.243

The U-2 evidence was, however, clearly communicated to the president, John Foster Dulles,

D.C.I. Allen Dulles, A.E.C. Chairman Strauss and a few A.E.C. aides who were cleared for U-2

intelligence, as early as March 1958.244 Lundahl and Brugioni also gave periodic briefings on the

Negev overflights to C.I.A. Director of Counter-intelligence James Angleton, although Angleton

never revealed to them what human intelligence he held on Israels atomic plans.245 A small

number of other senior officials regularly attended U-2 planning meetings and were privy to aerial

intelligence briefings: C.I.A. Deputy Director for Plans Richard Bissell who directed overhead

reconnaissance programmes and was Lundahls boss; Bissells deputy Richard Helms; D.D.I.

Robert Amory was also familiar with Lundahls activities; and, as Staff Secretary to the President,

240
Post-mortem on S.N.I.E. 100-8-60, 2.
241
Memorandum of Conversation: Israeli Atomic Energy Program, (Ekorn), 11 April, 1956 (N.S.A.E.B.B.
Israel and the Bomb) [online]
242
Bissell (1996) 104-105; .
243
Beschloss (1986) 237; Boyle (2005) 122.
244
Bissell (1996) 105; Hersh (1991) 54.
245
Hersh (1991) 147.

47
Andrew Goodpaster played an active role in U-2 meetings and briefed the President daily on

overnight C.I.A. intelligence reports.246

Another possible explanation for the lack of U-2 and HUMINT data in U.S. Intelligence

Estimates may be that, when it came to papers on Israel, the objectivity of certain members of the

Board of National Estimates, including Harold Linder, was said to be a matter of concern to their

colleagues.247 Another friend of Israel within the U.S. intelligence establishment, the C.I.A.s

James Angleton, was a close friend of Sherman Kent, chairman of the Board of National Estimates,

and was said to have remarkable access to him.248 Most significantly, A.E.C. Chairman Strauss

was later discovered to have shared a close friendship with his Israeli counterpart, Ernst Bergmann,

and to have privately approved of the Israeli nuclear programme.249

A further possibility is that, since the January 1961 Post-mortem is classified only

secret/noforn, rather than top secret, the absence of any reference to U-2 data might be

explained by the existence of a second, more highly classified report on the matter.250 The fact that

the 1961 Post-mortem has been released in its entirety, without redaction, while certain earlier

estimates of Israels nuclear progress remain heavily sanitized, tends to support this possibility.

4.5 U.S. Intelligence Kept Dimona Close Hold

If the Americans had cracked the secret of Dimona in 1958, they would have been able to kill the

project.251 Matthew Kroenig, Associate Professor of International Relations at Georgetown

University, suggests that, on discovering the covert nuclear site in 1958, the United States applied

a variety of diplomatic, intelligence and military tools designed to dissuade Israel from its nuclear

246
Bissell (1996) 103, 104, 110-11, 114, 140; Beschloss (1986) 143-44.
247
Powers (1979) 321n36.
248
Tom Mangold, Cold Warrior, James Jesus Angleton (1991) 47.
249
Hersh (1991) 83, 85-6.
250
Cohen (1998a) 372n25; noforn designates no foreign nationals; N.S.A.E.B.B. Israel and the Bomb
[online] http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/israel/documents/reveal/index.html.
251
Karpin (2006) 146.

48
course.252 What Kroenig omits to say is that such measures were only applied by President

Kennedy almost three years after Eisenhowers discovery.

During the crucial two-and-a-half year hiatus between detection and disclosure President

Eisenhower and his closest aides kept detailed, credible photo-imagery and an accumulation of

human intelligence pointing to Israels nuclear project, close hold. The weight of evidence

suggests that the C.I.A. may indeed have cracked the secret as early as 1958 but that the

Eisenhower administration was inclined to tread softly around it.253 There is no strong evidence

to suggest that Eisenhower applied any diplomatic, intelligence, or military measures to address

Israels nuclear aspirations. As Avner Cohen concluded, The challenge of how to apply American

opposition to fourth-country proliferation to the complexity of the Israeli case was left to the

incoming Kennedy administration.254 It is intriguing that, while Kennedys correspondence with

Israeli leaders on the subject of Dimona has been extensively published, letters said to have passed

between Eisenhower and Ben-Gurion on the subject have never been made public.255 In any event,

on Kroenigs own reasoning, by the time Kennedy entered the White House in January 1961, the

nuclear construction phase was already advanced and the opportunity for dissuasion was already

receding into history.256

U.S. intelligence agencies concluded in retrospect that they could not have promptly and

accurately interpreted the significance of fragmentary evidence that was not properly disseminated

within the national security bureaucracy.257 If this conclusion is to be accepted as credible, it raises

the greater question as to why the issue of what was known about Dimona, and when, should

remain so sensitive that it merits greater secrecy, even today, than any other aspect of U.S. nuclear

history, including U-2 overflights of the United States Cold War arch rival, the Soviet Union.

The original Special National Intelligence Estimate 100-8-60, of December 1960, the target

of Kennedys later Post-mortem review, was released only in 2009, the result of an appeal by the

252
Kroenig (2014) 2.
253
Cohen (1998a) 85.
254
Cohen (1998b) 1.
255
Hersh (1991) 55.
256
Kroenig (2014) 21n38.
257
Post-mortem on S.N.I.E. 100-8-60, 1-2.

49
National Security Archive to the Interagency Security Classification Appeals Panel (I.S.C.A.P.),

which finally reversed earlier C.I.A. denials of the document.258 I.S.C.A.P. withheld material it

still regards, more than fifty years later, as sensitive secrets and the declassified version remains

so heavily redacted that any substantive reference to Israeli nuclear capabilities is entirely

expunged.259 One might be forgiven for inferring that the Central Intelligence Agency uses over-

classification, and indeed legal challenges to any attempts at declassification, in order to maintain a

tight grip on its own version of history.

258
N.S.A.E.B.B.276, The Secrecy Court of Last Resort, 5 June 2009
259
N.S.A.E.B.B.276; (S.N.I.E.) 100-8-60.

50
 CHAPTER FIVE

Strategy or Ad Hockery?

A common judgment in historical accounts is that the United States Government opposed, not

assented to, Israels pursuit of nuclear weapons. Yet, as has been demonstrated, any modest

measures by the U.S. government to deter Israeli nuclearization were implemented only after

President Eisenhower left the White House, and largely without success.

Indeed, by declining to lift the veil of secrecy that shrouded Israels nuclear ambitions, the

Eisenhower administration effectively acquiesced in and facilitated them. The President and his

close aides maintained silence, when voicing disapproval might have galvanized international

opposition. By endorsing a substantial flow of U.S. foreign aid to Israel, with no strings attached,

and by supplementing Jewish-American donations to Israel through tax exemption without

oversight, the United States also played a significant part in bankrolling Israels nuclear project.

Having established the Eisenhower administrations awareness of, and failure to make serious

efforts to oppose the Dimona project, the most important question remains: why?

5.1 General Explanations for Inaction against Proliferation

Brandeis Professor Shai Feldman posits three general explanations for inaction against nuclear

proliferation.260 The first is a tendency to underinvest in collective goods such as the security

derived from stemming proliferation; individual countries lack the incentive to bear a predominant

share of efforts where the resultant benefit of increased security is available to all, including free

riders.261

The second reason is even greater reluctance when the odds of success are low. Secretary

Dulles doubted the possibility of reducing nuclear promiscuity as long as the Big Three

reserved to themselves nuclear stockpiles and the right to deploy them in their national defence.262

260
Shai Feldman, Israeli Nuclear Deterrence (1982), 196-98.
261
O.T.A. (1993) 22.
262
Cohen (1998a) 79; Bader (1968) 16.

51
Henry Kissinger would later endorse this pessimistic assessment of the chances of influencing

other countries calculations as to whether to develop a nuclear force.263

The third reason for American equivocation in non-proliferation policy is the dilemma of

conflicting policy objectives. The tension was evident between the desire to slow Soviet nuclear

progress by means of a test ban and the impulse to pursue U.S. testing programmes; as it was

between the stated aim to obstruct fourth-country proliferation and the Atoms for Peace and

NATO first initiatives.264

U.S. unwillingness to disclose or challenge Israels nuclear project can be understood in

terms of reluctance to expend unilateral effort in pursuit of the collective benefits of non-

proliferation, since Eisenhowers inner circle clearly recognized that the chances of inducing an

Israeli U-turn without offering entangling security inducements were slim. In addition to these

general reasons for inertia in the face of nth-country proliferation, there exist compelling reasons for

U.S. reluctance to reveal and restrain Dimona. Rather than a straightforward case of benign

neglect, the proposition that Eisenhower calculated that a covert Israeli nuclear capability was the

best among alternative prospects at that time represents the most rational and persuasive

explanation for his administrations apparent indifference to Israels pursuit of the bomb.

5.2 U.S. Motives for Secrecy

Chapters Two and Three examined in detail why the Eisenhower administration prioritized the

fourth-country problem among its principal national security objectives, and why it particularly

feared the international repercussions of a nuclear arsenal in Israeli hands. The most significant

point arising out of those assessments is that Israeli nuclearization arguably posed a lesser threat to

U.S. security interests at that time than did Arab and Soviet knowledge of it.265 None of the more

damaging prospective consequences for the region a regional arms race, wider proliferation,

conflict escalation or increased Soviet influence - would be more likely to eventuate if the Dimona

project could remain secret. The United States would not be accused of complicity, of double

263
Feldman (1982) 197.
264
F.R.U.S. 1958-60, vol.3, doc.69.
265
Gerlini (2010) 145.

52
standards, or of powerlessness to protect its allies if the sensitive issue were not disclosed. Israel

could wield no power of nuclear compellence over its Arab neighbours, nor of triangular deterrence

against the Soviet Union, unless its nuclear capability were revealed; a wholly covert capability

bestows limited leverage.

Although not all of the adverse consequences associated with Israeli proliferation could be

averted by secrecy, those consequences that a clandestine Israeli bomb would still entail might be

the easiest to manage. Even in the event of a covert Israeli nuclear capability of which the Soviet

Union and Arab nations remained unaware, a nuclear-armed Israel might still become more

assertive in bilateral relations with the United States and could be expected to accelerate the decline

in U.S. influence over its already inflexible client state. Still, the United States would retain the

upper hand in the relationship: commanding $60 million dollars per annum in foreign aid

(equivalent to a present value in excess of half a billion dollars per annum) and sanctioning many

more millions in private, tax-exempt, diasporic donations out of the United States.266 As a friendly

superpower, the U.S. would still represent nuclear Israels best hope of securing conventional arms

supplies, informal security assurances and robust diplomatic support from a heavyweight in the

international arena.

Eisenhower was not unduly concerned by the risks of proliferation to U.S. allies.267 Despite

rhetorical support for non-proliferation aims, his administration already shared nuclear information

and materials with friendly countries in order to strengthen combined defence. The Presidents

Atoms for Peace and NATO First initiatives demonstrated beyond question that the nth-country

problem was, in reality, a lower priority than collective security, international collaboration to

develop commercial nuclear energy, or scoring points in the Cold War competition for

international prestige.

There are a number of compelling and mutually reinforcing rationales for U.S. acquiescence

in Israels nuclear programme. Chapter Three has already explored a number of critical

considerations which might have persuaded the Eisenhower administration that Dimona was a

266
Average $60.95 million per annum during Eisenhower administration, 1953-1960, Sharp, U.S. Foreign
Aid to Israel (C.R.S. Report, RL33222, April 2013); present value calculated at $525 million per year,
including cumulative inflation since 1956 using www.usinflationcalculator.com.
267
F.R.U.S. 1952-54, vol.2(2), doc.220; D.N.S.A. NP00274; F.R.U.S. 1955-57, vol.20, doc.185.

53
secret best kept close hold, and has outlined the undesirable consequences for the U.S. of

disclosure. There are equally compelling strategic and political considerations which might have

persuaded the U.S. to tolerate, or even to actively favour, Israeli nuclearization.

As has been established, non-proliferation was only one of Eisenhowers three foreign policy

pillars. The U.S. national security interest in preventing proliferation to nth countries competed

with other important national objectives and tensions between policy objectives inevitably force

trade-offs.268 Among the most important of these competing objectives was, for strategic,

diplomatic and domestic political reasons which will be explored, the maintenance of favourable

relations with Israel.

The potential benefits of an Israeli nuclear deterrent that would bolster Israels independence

in defence matters could include relief for the United States from the pressure to provide formal

security guarantees or conventional arms supplies and a lower risk of U.S. entanglement in regional

conflicts on Israels behalf. Moscow regarded Israeli nuclear weapons as part of the U.S. arsenal,

and it appears that parts of the U.S. defence establishment viewed them in much the same light: as

a complement to U.S. power which could strengthen combined defence, impose strategic costs on

the Soviet Union and improve the nuclear balance of power.269 It is by no means clear that the

United States would have, or could have, blocked Israels nuclear programme since no evidence of

such deliberations has yet been declassified, although the potential clearly existed for much

international credibility to be lost by trying and failing.

5.3 U.S.-Israeli Relations as a Motive for Acquiescence

To be weighed against the price of perceived complicity in Israels nuclearization, which would be

exacted on U.S. relations with Arab nations and with the Soviet Union, were the strategic and

political costs of outing and challenging Americas closest ally in what Eisenhower claimed to

regard as the most strategically important area in the world.270 Eisenhower and Secretary Dulles

saw alliances as important weapons in the U.S. arsenal, as important as the nations nuclear

268
O.T.A. (1993) 25.
269
Letter from the Deputy Secretary of Defense (Quarles) to the Secretary of State, 24 May, 1957 (F.R.U.S.
1955-57, vol.20, doc.202); F.R.U.S. 1961-63, vol.17, doc.95; F.R.U.S. 1955-57 vol.20, doc.33.
270
Alteras (1993) 30.

54
deterrent capability.271 To challenge Israels pursuit of atomic weapons would risk undermining an

important political relationship and would most likely entail losing Israels cooperation in other

vital matters. One of the most valuable aspects of the bilateral relationship at stake was a series of

secretive joint ventures in strategic intelligence.272

5.3.1 Intelligence collaboration

It is not possible to compile a detailed account of U.S.-Israeli intelligence collaboration from

official archives because no such information has been declassified; what little is known is derived

from the accounts of former C.I.A. officials who have agreed to interviews or who have published

their memoirs.

Although the details of these highly sensitive arrangements remain classified, if documented

at all, Israels intelligence agency, Mossad, was paid off-the-books from a contingency fund

maintained directly by the Director of U.S. Central Intelligence, to gather and share highly valued

intelligence from the Soviet Union, North Africa and the Levant, where it was more difficult for

C.I.A. operatives to penetrate.273 New immigrants to Israel were debriefed at length by the

Investigations Department of Israels internal security service, Shin-Bet, and could be recruited by

its intelligence agency, Mossad, to develop spy networks in their native countries.274

In May 1951, James Angleton, the C.I.A.s head of counter-intelligence, arranged for Ben-

Gurion to meet with C.I.A. Director, General Walter Bedell-Smith.275 Three years later, Alan

Dulles, by then Bedell-Smiths successor as D.C.I., established a back channel with Isser Harel,

head of Mossad, to circumvent conventional diplomacy as required.276 From 1956, intelligence

chiefs established a C.I.A.Mossad liaison unit, tasked with gathering and sharing Middle East

intelligence. Within two years, all C.I.A. covert operations in the Middle East were coordinated

271
John Lewis Gaddis, Strategies of Containment (2005), 150; Report to the N.S.C. by Executive Secretary
(Lay), N.S.C. 162/2, 30 October, 1953 (F.R.U.S. 1952-54, vol.2(1), doc.100).
272
Wolf Blitzer, Between Washington and Jerusalem: a reporters notebook (1985), 83
273
Hersh (1991) 5.
274
Hersh (1991) 5; Jeffrey T. Richelson and Desmond Ball, The Ties that Bind (1985) 173.
275
Black & Morris (1991) 169; Jeff McConnell and Richard Higgins, The Israeli Account, Boston Globe,
14 December 1986.
276
Black & Morris (1991) 170.

55
with Mossad.277 In 1951, the U.S. and Israeli intelligence agencies had reached an understanding

not to spy on one another; by 1985, experienced U.S. intelligence officials acknowledged that,

despite infractions by both sides, cooperation between the two agencies was so close that they

really had no need to spy on each other.278

James Jesus Angleton was a strong supporter of Israel, whose long-standing links with

Jewish intelligence helped Khrushchevs Secret Speech of 1956 find its way into American

hands, making him Allen Dulles logical choice to head the Israel desk at the C.I.A.279 Mentored

in counter-intelligence by Kim Philby, his senior counterpart at the British Secret Intelligence

Service, M.I.6, Angleton is said to have been one of Israels friends in high places in the U.S.

intelligence establishment.280 James Angleton is repeatedly described as intense and obsessive,

D.D.I. Robert Amory later described him as a co-opted Israeli agent and future D.C.I. James

Schlesinger would feel unease at the intimacy between Angleton and the Israelis and consider it a

mistake to allow him to continue to control this power centre so tightly.281

The reclusive Angleton took standard compartmentation practices to an extreme, and

jealously guarded sensitive information against other agencies of the intelligence bureaucracy and

even other sections of the C.I.A.282 Although hundreds of scientists, researchers and engineers

would have been involved in the research and construction of Dimona, and although Angleton had

close personal ties with the Israeli intelligence community, the striking lack of early human

intelligence on Dimona, which might have lent further support to U-2 evidence, may be attributable

in some measure to Angletons suppressive tendencies within the Agency: Angleton never

learned or, at least, never reported the extent to which Israel was deceiving Washington about its

nuclear weapons progress.283

277
Raviv & Melman (1994) 284; Richelson (1985) 173.
278
Raviv & Melman (1994) 284; Blitzer (1985) 95-96.
279
Blitzer (1985) 91; Hersh (1991) 145; David Robarge, Moles, Defectors and Deceptions, Journal of
Intelligence History (2003) 27; Powers (1979) 80, 322n5.
280
Ben Macintyre, A Spy Among Friends: Kim Philby and the great betrayal (2014), 67-68.
281
David Schoenbaum, More Special Than Others, Diplomatic History, 22(2) (1998), 281; Hersh (1991)
144; McConnell and Higgins (1986); Mangold (1991) 285.
282
Robarge (2003) 27; Cohen (1998a) 84.
283
Hersh (1991) 147.

56
 Eisenhower saw no need for the U.S. to have to make public the policy of giving nuclear

information to allies.284 In fact, senior C.I.A. officials, including Angleton, later confirmed to

former New York Times reporters, Seymour Hersh and Tad Szulc, that the C.I.A. had actively

supplied Israel with government-classified technical nuclear information in the late 1950s.285

Former senior intelligence officials doubted whether C.I.A. directors ever really knew all of what

Angletons office was doing.286

Former U.S. Air Force Intelligence Chief, Major General George Keegan, would later credit

this intelligence collaboration with having kept the Soviets at Bay in the Middle East.287

Crucially, Angleton himself claimed to believe that U.S. support for the Israeli nuclear program

was a requisite quid pro quo for continuing cooperation between the two countries in matters of

secret intelligence.288 After his death in 1987, two monuments to Angleton were dedicated at

memorial services in Jerusalem, attended by the surviving chiefs of Israeli intelligence and public

figures.289 It is intriguing, including to William Hood, a former senior aide in Angletons counter-

intelligence division, to consider what might have prompted Israeli authorities to accord such

public recognition and distinction to a foreign intelligence officer.290

5.3.2 Reluctance to reveal surveillance

Confronting the Israeli government about its activities at Dimona would not only have risked

disrupting a valuable intelligence relationship but would have drawn international attention to the

United States advanced surveillance capabilities. By exposing Israels actions, the U.S.

284
F.R.U.S. 1958-60, vol.3, doc.69.
285
Jeff McConnell, Israeli Spies in the U.S. Middle East Research and Information Project: Middle East
Report, No.139 (Jan-Feb 1986), 35-37 + 45, 36; Seymour Hersh, The Angleton Story, New York
Times, 25 June, 1978; Michael Holzman, James Jesus Angleton, the C.I.A. and the Craft of Counter-
intelligence (2008) 167; Pry (1984) 9.
286
Hersh (1978).
287
Blitzer (1985) 90.
288
Holzman (2008) 168.
289
Holzman (2008) 153, citing Hood, Angletons World, in Myths Surrounding James Angleton, by
William Hood, James Nolan and Samuel Halpern (1994) 10; Robarge (2003) 27 .
290
Holzman (2008) 153, citing Hood (1994) 10.

57
intelligence agencies risked compromising the sources and methods by which critical evidence had

been collected; such is the tension that exists between collecting intelligence and exploiting it.291

In reality the Israelis were aware of U.S. overflights and the U.S. Air Force had already

begun training Israelis in aerial reconnaissance and photo interpretation, yet the existence of U-2

overflights remained Washingtons biggest national security secret.292 While Eisenhowers fear

of inciting the revulsion of world opinion against U.S. covert aerial surveillance may have been

overstated, confirming the fact of U.S. aerial surveillance of allied nations would certainly have

generated considerable diplomatic discomfort in Washington.293 .

5.3.3 Israels special case for existential deterrence

Successive U.S. governments have made cumulative pledges and promises amounting to a unique

commitment to Israels security. Considerations including Cold War geopolitics, strategic

intelligence cooperation, moral and ideological affinities, shared identities as pioneer nations, and

a collective sense of regret at Western failure to help Jews escape the Nazi Holocaust, combined to

significantly limit Eisenhowers flexibility to respond to Israels nuclear ambitions and may have

persuaded the President to regard it as Israels sovereign right to possess the ultimate security

guarantee.294 Washington made no discernible effort, until Kennedy entered the White House, to

create diplomatic linkage between Israeli cooperation on the nuclear question and Israels

catalogue of demands for U.S. economic aid, security guarantees, conventional weapons,

diplomatic support or membership of NATO.

Before being presented with the dilemma of Dimona, Eisenhower had already established a

precedent of turning a blind eye to arms for Israel. Under the terms of the Tripartite Declaration,

the flow of arms into the Middle East was monitored, and additional requests considered, by a

coordinating committee representing the three signatories: Britain, France and the United States.

Since Eisenhower dreaded the prospect that an extensive commitment to supply arms would make

America a virtual ally in any trouble Israel might get into, it suited U.S. purposes to look the other

291
O.T.A. (1993) 32.
292
Hersh (1991) 53.
293
Memorandum: Conference with the President, 7 April, 1959 (F.R.U.S. 1958-60, vol.10(1), doc.72).
294
Boyle (2005) 51.

58
way when U-2 intelligence confirmed that French arms exports to Israel exceeded the scope of the

tripartite agreement.295

In view of the Egyptian-Czech arms deal of 1955, as well as continued tensions between

Israel and its neighbours and Washingtons own disinclination to enter into a defence treaty or arms

supply contracts with Israel, Eisenhower might have felt reluctant to press Israel, a valued ally, to

forego a nuclear capability which it deemed essential to its national survival. Veteran Israeli

journalist Michael Karpin suggests that Ben-Gurions focus on Dimona, and indifference to missile

development, may have persuaded Eisenhower that Israel aimed to achieve, not an offensive

weapon, but a strictly defensive instrument of deterrence: a bomb in the basement.296

5.3.4 Israels security dependence reduced

For the Eisenhower administration, a number of important strategic considerations would have

weighed in favour of a nuclear-armed Israel. For a President sympathetic to Israels exposed

position and who sought to allay Israels feelings of insecurity, but who was also concerned not

to spend a dollar more on defence than was necessary, an independent Israeli nuclear deterrent

would have solved more than one problem.297 Eisenhower saw the U.S. nuclear arsenal as a

shortcut to lower defence spending, so it is not implausible to conceive that he viewed Israels

nuclear arsenal in a similar light.298 Considerations of economy may have rendered a division of

labour, that is to say, allied participation in combined Western nuclear deterrence, an appealing

prospect.299 An Israeli nuclear deterrent could potentially save U.S. foreign military and economic

aid, and relieve pressure to consent to a defence pact or to guarantee conventional weapons

supplies.

Washington desired to see Israel able to defend itself without wishing to embroil the United

States in a defence treaty to achieve it. Despite repeated requests for a defence pact with the

295
Diary Entry by the President, 13 March, 1956 (F.R.U.S. 1955-57, vol.15, doc.187); Alteras (1993) 146.
296
Karpin (2006) 127.
297
Memorandum of Conversation: Acting Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs (Jernigan),
17 December 1954 (F.R.U.S. 1952-54, vol.9(1) doc.935); Why We Fight (2005) Documentary film.
Directed by Eugene Jarecki; Bader (1968) 26.
298
Jack Raymond, Defense Program Keyed to Missiles and the Atom, New York Times, 20 January, 1959.
299
Gaddis (2005) 164.

59
United States to formally guarantee the territorial integrity and political independence of the state

of Israel, the Eisenhower administration was prepared to go no further than to offer equivocal

assurances and to resolve to adopt firm measures against any initiation of aggression in the

Middle East.300 Eisenhower feared that a U.S.-Israeli defence pact would strike an irreparable

blow to U.S.-Arab relations and devastate U.S. influence in the Middle East.301

Even without extending formal security guarantees, many Americans felt what is often

described as an unspoken moral commitment to intervene when necessary to defend Israels

security and ensure its national survival.302 Israels nuclear capability would conveniently release

Washington from the responsibility to underwrite Israels security and exempt the United States

from having to resort to such intervention as would risk damaging U.S. political standing in the

Arab world. McGeorge Bundy, National Security Advisor to Presidents Kennedy and Johnson,

would later reason that, if Washington were to compel Israel to abandon its nuclear deterrent, the

U.S. would face even greater pressure to provide alternative guarantees.303 A covert nuclear

weapons programme in Israel might constitute the lesser risk to U.S.-Arab relations than an overt

defence treaty with far-reaching commitments to meet Israels conventional weapons requirements.

Although Israel offset the Czech-Egyptian arms deal with equivalent purchases of French

and Italian weapons, Israeli leaders continued to press for a U.S. commitment to supply sufficient

conventional materiel for Israel to achieve and maintain a qualitative military edge over any

combination of its Arab neighbours.304 Officials in Washington viewed this prospect with extreme

apprehension, not least because recent Soviet commitment to Egyptian security represented an

insurmountable obstacle to Israels military superiority in the region.305 In pursuit of U.S. arms and

guarantees, Ben-Gurion impliedly threatened preventive war with Egypt, which doubtless

300
Memorandum of Conversation: Officer in Charge of Israel-Jordan Affairs (Bergus), 8 October 1954
(F.R.U.S. 1952-54, vol.9(1), doc.905).
301
Alteras (1993) 115, 264.
302
Feldman (1997) 191.
303
Feldman (1997) 191.
304
Telegram: Secretary of State to U.S. Embassy in Israel, 7 August, 1954 (F.R.U.S. 1952-54, vol.9(1),
doc.854).
305
Alteras (1993) 115.

60
enhanced the impression in Washington that a prospective nuclear deterrent in Israeli hands could

have a potentially stabilizing influence in the Middle East.306

5.4 A Complement to U.S. Power

Paul Kroenig explains the tendency of great powers to oppose nuclear proliferation more

vigorously in some cases than in others in terms of the nature of their political relationship with the

potential proliferator. It seems logical, and therefore plausible to suppose that patterns of amity

and enmity play a part in how states respond to nuclear proliferation.

5.4.1 Political relationship theory

Kroenig contends that states are liable to resist the spread of nuclear weapons to states with which

armed conflict is likely and are more willing to accept, even assist, nuclear proliferation by allied

states, since nuclear-armed friends are less threatening and may serve to augment the overall

capabilities of the alliance.307 As well as having the merit of logical consistency, political

relationship theory would explain the apparent double standard in U.S. non-proliferation policy

and is borne out by historical evidence.

Interestingly, Kroenig finds scant support for his own theory in the case of U.S.-Israel.308

With his limited sample of only five superpower responses to eight potential proliferators, in which

every dyad bears immense weight and coding decisions assume considerable sensitivity, Kroenig

crucially treats the U.S.-Israel example as the decisive outlier contradicting his theory, in which the

superpower actively pursued various means to obstruct potential proliferation by an ally. Yet the

United States was not the vigorous opponent to Israeli proliferation that Kroenig implies; the

accumulation of available evidence roundly undermines this coding decision. Kroenig himself

argues that what matters are anti-proliferation measures implemented before, not after, the process

is underway; yet every instance of opposition or obstruction which Kroenig cites in support of his

verdict, and in opposition to political relationship theory, post-dates the Eisenhower

306
Alteras (1993) 168.
307
Kroenig (2014) 4.
308
Kroenig (2014) 27.

61
administration, when the Dimona nuclear reactor and plutonium reprocessing plant were already, in

popular Israeli parlance, facts on the ground.

Contrary to Kroenigs appraisal, the Eisenhower administration did indeed decline to

respond to signs of Israeli proliferation, exactly as political relationship theory would suggest:

Kroenigs theory arguably wields more explanatory power than the theorist maintains.

5.4.2 To strengthen combined defence

Dozens of articles in the Soviet media suggested that Moscow regarded Israels nuclear weapons as

part of the United States strategic nuclear arsenal.309 There is considerable evidence to indicate

that the U.S. defence establishment similarly viewed Israels strategic nuclear potential as a

supplement to its own. The Presidents own Special Assistant for Disarmament, Harold Stassen,

conceded that the U.S. should challenge nth-country proliferation, except where allied nuclear

forces might provide an essential counterpoise to the looming Soviet nuclear threat.310 The Joint

Chiefs calculated that, despite its threats, the Soviet Union would be extremely unlikely to

provide nuclear capabilities to its satellites, while nuclear weapons in the hands of U.S. allies

would strengthen U.S. alliances and improve the nuclear balance of power.311 While there could be

no guarantee that an Israeli bomb would be used to deter Soviet aggression in the way Washington

intended, voices on the National Security Council indicated that fourth country proliferation

might still represent a net gain for the U.S.312

Thoughts expressed by Eisenhower in relation to nuclear sharing among NATO allies might

equally have applied to the prospect of an Israeli nuclear defence capability: In order for the free

world to be an effective defence unit, it must be geared to the atomic facts of this era.313

Eisenhowers line of thinking has endured: D.C.I., Robert Gates would later describe Israels

309
Cobban (1988) 433n21.
310
F.R.U.S. 1955-57, vol.20, doc.33.
311
F.R.U.S. 1955-57, vol.20, doc.202; F.R.U.S. 1961-63, vol.17, doc.95.
312
F.R.U.S. 1955-57, vol.20, doc.89.
313
Special Message to Congress Recommending Amendments to Atomic Energy Act, 17 February, 1954
(P.P.P.U.S. 1954/38).

62
deterrent and defensive nuclear capabilities as a complement to U.S. power and a hedge

against other regional threats.314

States may seek to improve their strategic environment by imposing the strategic costs of

proliferation on rival states. By limiting rivals conventional military power-projection capability

into a region of interest, for example, or by diverting a rivals strategic attention, states can exploit

the payoff structure to their advantage: France provided nuclear assistance to Israel, in part, to

check Egypts growing regional power, and China would later assist Pakistan to impose strategic

costs on India. 315

Notwithstanding a November 1956 pledge to uphold the territorial integrity and political

independence of Iran, Iraq, Pakistan and Turkey, as well assurances to Britain and France during

the Suez Crisis that a Soviet missile attack on either would be met with a U.S. response, the United

States expressed no intention, and evidenced no desire, to assist Israel in the event of Soviet

military action.316 Yet denial of the Middle East to the Soviet bloc was an important U.S. objective

and loss of the area to the free world would be a matter of great gravity.317 Israeli triangular

deterrence would reduce the likelihood of Soviet intervention in support of Arab interests in any

future regional clashes, and would reduce the risk of hostilities broadening to the extent that the

United States could be dragged into direct conflict with the Soviet Union.318 Eisenhowers national

security strategy was said to include an energetic devotion to covert action, and Israels covert

nuclear programme would be consistent with this approach.319

5.5 The Odds of Mounting a Successful Challenge

In matters of diplomacy, as elsewhere, there is wisdom in engaging only in contests that are

winnable.320 Foreign aid rarely generates significant leverage for donor states, particularly when

the patron faces domestic political obstacles that prevent it from exploiting the aid package for

314
Aronson (1992) 626n40.
315
Kroenig (2014) 7; Kroenig (2009) 116.
316
Alteras (1993) 244, 247.
317
Memorandum: 229th N.S.C. Meeting, 21 December, 1954 (F.R.U.S. 1952-54, vol.2(1), doc.141).
318
F.R.U.S. 1952-54, vol.2(1), doc.137.
319
Newton (2011) 274, 356.
320
Sun Tzu, The Art of War (2006) 7, 14, 15.

63
diplomatic purposes.321 The decentralized nature of the process governing U.S. foreign aid makes

it particularly difficult for the White House to use aid as a tool to further its foreign policy aims and

the U.S. is often frustrated that its massive aid flows bring such weak influence over Israeli

policy.322

While accepting generous economic and diplomatic support from the United States, Israeli

government officials worked hard, through their Hasbara project of press and public relations, to

build popular and congressional support for Israel in order to minimize the leverage afforded by

Israels reliance on U.S. patronage and to counter Eisenhowers early professions of impartiality

towards the Middle East. As Moshe Dayan once candidly observed: Our American friends offer

us money, arms and advice. We take the money, we take the arms, and we decline the advice.323

On Eisenhowers election, Ben-Gurion remarked: Even though the President does not owe

anything to the Jews, he is still dependent on the Congress, and through the Congress we can

act.324 Israels support in Congress is credited with blocking economic aid for Egypts Aswan

Dam in 1956.325 In early 1957, in the wake of the Suez Crisis, Eisenhower wielded the threat of

economic sanctions to pressure Israeli military withdrawal from Sinai and Gaza, attracting a chorus

of condemnation from Congress and leading public figures.326 The President tried and failed to

obtain a unified statement from Congressional leaders calling for Israeli withdrawal and Democrats

in both Houses threatened to scupper the Eisenhower Doctrine if the administration were to impose

sanctions on Israel.327 Dulles lamented that the Israeli embassy is practically dictating to the

Congress and making it almost impossible to carry out a foreign policy not approved by Israeli

leaders.328 Congressional and popular support permitted Israel to withstand White House pressure

for withdrawal from Egypt by rendering the threat of sanctions almost impossible to

321
Stephen M. Walt, The Origins of Alliances (1987) 225, 236.
322
Walt (1987) 240; Charles Lipson American Support for Israel, in Gabriel Sheffer (ed.) U.S.-Israeli
Relations at the Crossroads (1997), 142.
323
Shlaim (2000) 316.
324
Bickerton (1988) 10; Hahn (2006) 227, 239n11.
325
Walt (1987) 255.
326
Alteras (1993) 260.
327
Alteras (1993) 298, 301-302.
328
Alteras (1993) 270, 271; Findley (2003) 123.

64
implement.329 Senator Fulbright, long-serving chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee,

would later credit the pro-Israel lobby, one of the most influential in Washington, with the clout to

just about tell the President what to do when it comes to Israel.330

If the White House had such limited powers of coercive diplomacy as to be unable to realize

Israeli withdrawal from Egypt without expending an exorbitant amount of political capital in

open confrontation with Israeli leaders, then Eisenhower may have had only a slim chance of

reversing a nuclear policy which Israel regarded as an internal affair and a matter of national

survival.331 If the President were minded to challenge Israels nuclear development, which is

doubtful on the evidence, then, in view of his supposed penchant for clandestine diplomacy and

of his characteristic conflict-avoiding approach to potentially ugly rows, he might have

considered his chances of success would be improved by raising the matter privately with Ben-

Gurion (future declassification of such correspondence may resolve the matter).332 As Eisenhower

himself remarked, the best way to get results was non-confrontation, lubricated by informal

negotiations.333 Just as Moscow found it convenient to restrict itself to private, diplomatic protests

over U-2 surveillance, in order to avoid public pressure to issue ultimata to Washington and to

draw world attention to its initial powerlessness to prevent U.S. overflights; so too, Eisenhower, a

cautious man who liked to have contingencies under his control, would have been keenly aware

that revealing Dimona would likely stimulate international pressure to take political action against

it and would highlight his administrations limited influence to prevent it.334 For these reasons, as

Richard Bissell saw it, the U.S. and Soviet governments virtually collaborated in keeping the U-2

program secret.335 Perhaps U.S. and Israeli decision-makers went about things in the same way to

keep the Dimona project secret.

329
Alteras (1993) 261.
330
Michael Thomas, American Policy Toward Israel (2007), 51, 200n21.
331
Rubenberg (1986) 9.
332
Stephen Rabe, Eisenhower Revisionism: a decade of scholarship, Diplomatic History (1993) 113;
Greenstein (1982) 30; Hersh (1991) 55.
333
Greenstein (1982) 9, 30.
334
William Pickett, Eisenhower, Khrushchev and the U-2 Affair, in J. Garry Clifford and Theodore Wilson
(eds.) Presidents, Diplomats and Other Mortals (2007) 142; Bissell (1996) 114.
335
Beschloss (1986) 156.

65
 In September 1953, Eisenhower and Dulles had delayed for over a month their public

announcement that financial aid to Israel was suspended pending Israeli compliance with U.N.

demands to cease water-diversion works from the Jordan River. The delay was calculated to

postpone the predicted waves of protest from pro-Israel groups and Congressional supporters of

Israel while the suspension might exercise its effect in private.336 As anticipated, there were large-

scale protests and the deferral of funds was roundly condemned as an intemperate and cruel

action and an instrument of unwarranted duress, all of which inclined the Israeli government to

resist U.S. and U.N. demands and prolong the dispute.337

After public and Congress rallied to Israels defence during the Jordan River and Suez stand-

offs, Eisenhower might have been reluctant to take overt action against Israel since, as Kennedy

would discover, many senior members of Congress openly supported the idea of a nuclear-armed

Israel and would likely attempt to block any White House challenge to Israels nuclear

ambitions.338 A private approach to Ben-Gurion might have worked in the Presidents favour since

Israeli leaders could hardly rally Congress openly to defend Israels most secret project.

5.6 Missed Opportunities?

Certain elements of the intelligence community, according to the C.I.A.s own assessment,

possessed enough evidence by April 1958 to recognize Israels intentions, and there was an

acknowledged failure of dissemination.339 It remains unclear whether such failure was by dint of

compartmentalization of knowledge to protect sensitive information, or of complicity within a

subculture of the intelligence establishment, which, by controlling the flow of evidence on which

decisions are based and opening or closing avenues of possibility, could turn policy in directions

unintended by the commander-in-chief himself, rendering the C.I.A. incapable of making

336
Yaacov Bar-Siman-Tov, The Limits of Economic Sanctions: the American-Israeli case of 1953, Journal
of Contemporary History, 23 (1988) 429.
337
Bar-Siman-Tov (1988) 434-35; U.S. is Criticized on Israel Policy, New York Times, 21 October, 1953,
13.
338
Hersh (1991) 119.
339
Post-mortem on S.N.I.E. 100-8-60.

66
objective appraisals of their own intelligence information.340 The national security bureaucracy

was, as Eisenhower complained, simply too big, too complex and too persuasive for one

individual to pretend to direct.341 Yet notions of Eisenhowers unwillingness to grasp the reins of

power may be misplaced in this respect since these accounts of C.I.A. unwieldiness appear in

reports commissioned by Eisenhower himself, as part of exhaustive performance reviews of C.I.A.

clandestine operations, seeking refinements in what was reported to policymakers and how.342

Eisenhowers most difficult year

Eisenhowers was the second most popular presidency, with approval ratings averaging almost 65

per cent during his two terms in office.343 Interestingly, the Presidents approvals dropped to 48

per cent in March 1958, their lowest ebb, during the same month as Lundahl first presented aerial

photographs of Dimona.344 After at least two politically challenging skirmishes with the Israeli

leadership and, crucially, with Congressional and public supporters of Israel, Eisenhower might

have been reluctant to expend limited political capital on another potentially bruising clash with

Israels domestic supporters; a judgment which could be interpreted either as politically lazy or,

given the political context in 1958, as politically prudent.345

The year 1958 was, in Eisenhowers words, the year all hell broke loose, the worst in his

life, when the President seemed less popular than ever before.346 The year opened with the death

of his brother, Arthur, and an unwelcome boost for Nassers anti-Western pan-Arabism in the form

of the new United Arab Republic.347 February saw a civil war in Lebanon and, when the pro-

Western Chamoun government looked likely to fall, Eisenhower deployed marines to Beirut to

340
Bissell (1996) 103; Mangold (1991); Third Report of the Presidents Board of Consultants on Foreign
Intelligence Activities (the Hull Board after Chairman John Hull), 30 October, 1958, presented to the
President on 16 December, 1958, cited in Memorandum: D.C.I. to Special Assistant for National
Security Affairs (Gray), 9 January, 1961 (F.R.U.S. 1961-63, vol.25, doc.83).
341
Post-mortem on S.N.I.E. 100-8-60, 1.
342
Rabe (1993) 103, citing Tor Frland; cf. Letter: President to General Doolittle, 26 July, 1954 (F.R.U.S.
1950-55, doc.185); Executive Order 10656, 6 February, 1956, established the Hull Board; F.R.U.S.
1961-63, vol.25, doc.83.
343
Ropercenter.uconn.edu
344
Ropercenter.uconn.edu
345
Rabe (1993) 102.
346
Newton (2011) 279; Ambrose (1997) 492; Neustadt (1990) 74.
347
Newton (2011) 280.

67
mount a show of force.348 July brought a military coup against the pro-Western government in

Iraq, which had been the key to the Baghdad Pact.349 August saw a second Taiwan Strait Crisis

and a second round of nuclear brinkmanship with Communist China. In November, shortly after

the passing of Swede Hazlett, one of Eisenhowers oldest and most faithful friends, the

resignation under a cloud of his valued chief of staff, Sherman Adams, and a Democratic landslide

in the mid-terms, Khrushchev picked his moment to test Eisenhowers resolve with an ultimatum

over Berlin.350 Amid swelling criticism of his administration and with his approvals at their

lowest, certain press commentators suggested that the President might delegate his responsibilities

to Vice President Nixon and resign.351 This chain of tempestuous events led Eisenhower to

confide to his diary that it had been a mistake to run for a second term, and to admit privately that,

despite the Republicans poor electoral prospects, he was desperately looking forward to retiring

from office in January 1961.352

The crush of overlapping foreign crises took place against a backdrop of sharp economic

recession, and was compounded by Eisenhowers poor health following a stroke in November

1957, a complication of his 1955 heart attack, which left the President feeling physically

incompetent to handle the tensions of his second term of office.353 A run of frequent and serious

illness during 1958 took its toll on Eisenhowers energy and stamina and by mid-1958 the president

was taking oxygen two or three times a day.354 Eisenhower and his staff guarded his health, and his

military career had taught him to conserve his energy for only the most significant issues.355 The

Israeli project at Dimona may not have ranked among the most significant issues at that turbulent

time, and poor health may have provided the President with a further reason to incline towards

letting the Israelis go quietly about their business at Dimona.

348
Boyle (2005) 115.
349
Alteras (1993) 308.
350
Newton (2011) 287; Ambrose (1997) 483-83, 491; Neustadt (1990) 142.
351
Ambrose (1997) 475; Robert Gilbert, The Mortal Presidency (1998) 109.
352
Gilbert (1998) 106; Ambrose (1997) 492.
353
Newton (2011) 279, 305; Gilbert (1998) 106; Ambrose (1997) 474.
354
Gilbert (1998) 113.
355
Gilbert (1998) 117; Newton (2011) 296

68
 5.7 Israeli Exceptionalism as U.S. Foreign Policy Precedent

Throughout the Cold War there was a strong tendency in Washington to treat Israels nuclear

programme as a special case, an exemption from U.S. non-proliferation policy.356 This tendency

clearly began with the Eisenhower administration. By omitting to press Israel to disclose its

nuclear activities and to accept international oversight, and by allowing Israel to maintain an

ambiguous nuclear status, Eisenhower sanctioned a precedent of Israeli nuclear exceptionality,

which was formalized to an unprecedented and now seemingly irreversible degree by Presidents

Nixon and Clinton in particular, and which has permitted Israel to operate outside the global

nuclear order ever since.357

An important element in Eisenhowers calculation to acquiesce in, and effectively endorse,

Israels nuclear weapons development, was the consideration that Israels arsenal complemented

U.S. power. The United States has never had cause to rely on Israel to exert nuclear pressure of

any kind in the name of combined defence, so assessing Israels contribution to the nuclear balance

of power is a matter of attempting to evaluate international perceptions rather than of judging

specific actions. Since the Soviets viewed Israels nuclear capability as part of U.S. strategic

planning, it does indeed appear to have succeeded in exacting the desired strategic cost, if only in

terms of Soviet perceptions and preparations. If a nuclear-armed Israel contributed in some

measure to limiting Egypts perceived freedom of action and Soviet power projection into the

region, then the operation of these constraints represented a pay-off for the United States in terms

of an improved strategic environment in the Middle East. Recent history also appears to have

judged Eisenhowers calculation correct in at least one respect: Israels nuclear capabilities have

come to be regarded as a complement to U.S. power and a hedge against more threatening states

in the Middle East.358

356
Feldman (1997) 189.
357
Cohen (2010) xi; Gerald M. Steinberg, Examining Israels N.P.T. Exceptionality: 1998-2005, The Non-
Proliferation Review (2006) 117-141.
358
Geoffrey Aronson, Hidden Agenda: U.S.-Israeli relations and the nuclear question, Middle East Journal
(1992) 626n40, citing Robert Gates.

69
 CHAPTER SIX

Conclusions: Hidden Hand or Benign Neglect?

The Eisenhower record of inconsistency prompted allegations of a U.S. double standard in nuclear

policy, a hindrance to international cooperation on non-proliferation.359 Amidst the frustrating

shortage of declassified evidence, this inconsistency renders interpretations of Americas treatment

of Dimona all the more tentative. Most historical accounts gloss over Eisenhowers inaction as an

intelligence oversight, if indeed they acknowledge it all. Few have analyzed the Presidents

rhetoric and non-proliferation policy for clues as to his attitude towards Israels nuclear project.

None has examined in detail the geopolitical and political fundamentals surrounding Israeli

nuclearization to determine whether Eisenhowers conscious policy of ignoring reality might

actually have been the better course, or at least a rational course for the United States in all the

circumstances of the day.

Most Eisenhower papers now in the public domain were released at the Eisenhower library

during the 1970s and published by the U.S. Office of the Historian during the 1980s.360 During the

1990s, a very select group of authors questioned whether the United States had ever been in a

position to halt Israels early nuclear development.361 In the absence of any significant

declassification of new evidence, there has been little follow-up in the secondary literature since

that time. Nevertheless, this thesis moves the debate forward in at least one important respect:

where others have approached the question whether America knew and did nothing about Dimona

by examining the Presidents means of knowing; this enquiry focuses instead on Eisenhowers

possible motives for deciding against action.

Even with the benefit of hindsight, U.S. acquiescence in Israels nuclearization is sometimes

regarded as a neglectful oversight which permitted a controversial nuclear apartheid to develop,

and which has been detrimental to the universality of non-proliferation aims.362 Consequently,

those seeking to explain Americas acquiescence in Israeli nuclear development in terms of a

359
O.T.A. (1993) 101.
360
Correspondence with U.S. Office of the Historian, December 2014.
361
Hersh (1991); Cohen (1998a).
362
Feldman (1997) 184; Cohen and Burr (2006) 3; O.T.A. (1993) 101; Cohen and Perkovich (2009) 1.

71
blunder tend to focus their enquiries on a search for evidence of intelligence failure and distortion

within a historical pattern of U.S. atomic estimates admittedly replete with examples.363 Despite the

fact that none of Israels major steps to develop nuclear weapons went undetected by U.S.

intelligence, numerous accounts still discount compelling indications that Eisenhower was aware

of Dimona from 1958 and, deeming him unskilled at dissembling, are apt to characterize his muted

reaction to early U-2 evidence as one of complacency or even apathy.364 There has been a

tendency to overlook the wilful ignorance thesis and to neglect geopolitical and political

considerations that tend to support it.

Assertions that Israeli capabilities and French assistance were underestimated, and that

circumstantial evidence went unanalyzed and unappreciated within the intelligence community, are

doubtless valid on the evidence.365 Whether the result of insufficient transmission, or of

deliberate suppression intended to delay American discovery of Dimona, this failure or suppression

of human intelligence fails to account fully for the lack of response by Eisenhowers inner circle to

detailed U-2 imagery and other compelling evidence that did find its way to the very top of the

intelligence hierarchy in early 1958.

Accounts of Eisenhowers political skill and sensitivity, of his highly ordered decision-

making style and of the rare explicitness and clarity of his goals, chime with the interpretation

offered here of a calculated decision to keep Dimona close hold, based on the foreseeable

geopolitical and political consequences, and to downplay its later disclosure.366 This interpretation

of Eisenhowers deliberate blind eye and the likelihood of his private approaches to Ben-Gurion,

lend weight, in turn, to these revisionist impressions of Eisenhowers contradictory signals on

nuclear issues as evidence of his ability to contrive plausible deniability, his self-conscious

artfulness, and his mastery of the several-tiered strategy.367

Such accounts of the Eisenhower presidency portray a keen political operator who was

more inclined to hide his hand in order to preserve his apolitical reputation than to indulge in

363
Montgomery and Mount (2014) 357.
364
Findley (1993) 132; Graubard (2004) 388; cf. Cohen (1998a) 84; Montgomery and Mount (2014) 377.
365
Montgomery and Mount (2014) 378.
366
Greenstein (1982) 25; Roger Porter, Presidential Decision-Making (1980) 229; Greenstein (2009) 56.
367
Greenstein (1982) 18; Pickett (2007) 144.

72
visible displays of political skill to enhance his influence.368 Just as Eisenhower is said to have

concealed moves that were inconsistent with his apolitical exterior, such a politically skillful

President might have been similarly inclined to conceal moves (or stasis) inconsistent with his

administrations declared policies of non-proliferation and friendly impartiality in the Middle

East.369 This deliberate and careful president, as his Vice President observed, far more complex

and devious than many realized, approached every problem, thinking in terms of alternatives,

action and counteraction.370 These observations make it appear all the less likely that Eisenhower

would treat Middle East proliferation, and its potentially far-reaching consequences, with benign

neglect.

Despite his confident delegation of authority and his encouragement of deliberation,

Eisenhower reserved to himself the final word on every major question and a survey of minutes

of his N.S.C. meetings confirms that significant decisions rested with the President, not his

subordinates.371 The man who liked making decisions, who displayed geometric precision in

delineating problems, deducing their implications and weighing the alternatives, is arguably more

likely to have calculated and decided against action than to have simply failed to act.372 If what

Eisenhower had done best was managing crises, then the Eisenhower administrations two-year

silence about Dimona looks more like a crisis managed in the Presidents non-confrontational

style, than a blundering oversight.373

If it was true of Eisenhowers years in the White House, as it was of his successors, that the

Presidents fundamental aim was to promote the cause of peace and ease the threat of war, then this

would seem to be the most appropriate lens, tinted with anti-Communism, through which to

examine Eisenhowers approach to Israels attempt to nuclearize.374 The advantages of an

independent nuclear deterrent in Israeli hands were entirely consistent with the Presidents guiding

principles in foreign policy.

368
Greenstein (2009) 44-45, 53; Greenstein (1982) 59; Neustadt (1990) 144.
369
Greenstein (2009) 45.
370
Greenstein (2009) 56-57, citing Richard Nixon, Six Crises (1962) 58-59; Greenstein (1982) 9; Nixon
(1962) 58-59.
371
Eisenhower (1965) 633; Rabe (1993), 99-100.
372
Rabe (1993) 100; Greenstein (1982) 20.
373
Rabe (1993) 100, citing Ambrose, 102.
374
Neustadt (1990) 141; James Blight in Virtual JFK, 2008 film, directed by Koji Masutani.

73
 Having detected incontrovertible evidence of Dimona, what appears to have mattered most

to Eisenhower, as it would come to matter to certain of his successors in the White House, was the

contrivance of an outward appearance of virtue to prevent Israeli nuclearization from becoming

an established international fact.375 Eisenhower seems to have been prepared to reap the benefits

of strengthened Western defence while avoiding at all costs the likely complications and

confrontations associated with public disclosure, which his administration could ill afford at such a

turbulent time in Americas Cold War history. The clearest demonstration that those calculations,

which led Eisenhower to determine that his best course of action was inaction, remain valid today

is that ten successive American presidents have since reaffirmed and entrenched their nations tacit

bargain with a nuclear-armed Israel.

(25,000)

375
F.R.U.S. 1961-63, vol.17, doc.57; N.S.A.E.B.B.189, doc.9.

74
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