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History of Israel’s secrecy in cover-up of its nuclear weapons program

How Israel Hid Its Secret Nuclear Weapons Program, Politico,  An exclusive look inside newly declassified documents shows how Israel blocked U.S. efforts to uncover its secret nuclear reactor. By AVNER COHEN and WILLIAM BURR April 15, 2015 For decades, the world has known that the massive Israeli facility near Dimona, in the Negev Desert, was the key to its secret nuclear project. Yet, for decades, the world—and Israel—knew that Israel had once misleadingly referred to it as a “textile factory.” Until now, though, we’ve never known how that myth began—and how quickly the United States saw through it. The answers, as it turns out, are part of a fascinating tale that played out in the closing weeks of the Eisenhower administration—a story that begins with the father of Secretary of State John Kerry and a familiar charge that the U.S. intelligence community failed to “connect the dots……..

The Israeli Decision and Lapses in U.S. Intelligence 

The Americans were truly surprised by the audacity of the Israeli nuclear project. Soon after Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion came to power in 1955, he launched a secret initiative to determine whether, and how, Israel could build a nuclear infrastructure to support a national program aimed at producing nuclear explosives. A senior defense official named Shimon Peres took charge of the project. Within three years, he did the almost impossible—transforming the idea of a national nuclear program from a vague vision into a real technological achievement. Unlike the chairman of the Israeli Atomic Energy Commission, professor David Ernst Bergmann, who preached self-reliance, Peres believed that Israel must not and could not reinvent the wheel—it had to focus on finding a foreign supplier who could provide the most comprehensive nuclear package possible suited for a weapons-oriented program……..

Dimona is the story of a huge secret. Secrecy was essential to shield and insulate the highly vulnerable, newly born project from hostile outsiders. At the very core, of course, it was an Israeli secret—the largest, most awesome and longest-held secret that Israel has ever generated. But it was more than just an Israeli secret; Israel’s partners France and Norway also wanted secrecy.   ………..

The dilemma the Eisenhower administration faced after the discovery of Dimona in December 1960-January 1961 would endure for the entire decade. From then on, three successive U.S. administrations—under presidents Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon—would have to deal with it as well. Kennedy chose the toughest path of struggle and confrontation in his effort to check the program; Johnson realized that the U.S. had limited leverage on the issue and planted the seeds of compromise and looked the other way; finally, in a bargain with Prime Minister Golda Meir, Nixon accepted the Israel’s de facto nuclear status as long as it stayed secret—a controversial and unacknowledged deal that remains in place effectively through the current day.

Avner Cohen is a professor of nonproliferation studies at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey and the author of Israel and the Bomb.

William Burr is a senior analyst at the National Security Archive, George Washington University, where he directs the Archive’s Nuclear Documentation Project and edits its special Web page, The Nuclear Vault. http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/04/israel-nuclear-weapons-117014.html#.VTAlHtyUcnl

April 17, 2015 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | Israel, secrets,lies and civil liberties