// essays //
Winter 2006
How Ben Gurion Got The Bomb
Avigail Sugarman
In the past sixty years, there have been clear shifts in the nature of the alliance between the United States and Israel. Though the relationship has changed based on the president or the policy, the history of Israeli nuclear development seems to indicate that the U.S. has always related to Israel with a special tolerance, even in the earliest stages of their interactions. Yet preferential treatment was not simply bestowed upon Israel by the U.S. In the case of nuclear development in particular, the role that Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion's strategies played in these interactions helped to create a political climate in which America could feasibly turn a blind eye to Israeli nuclearization.
This article will tell the story of how Israel acquired nuclear weapons from the diplomatic perspective. What motivated Ben-Gurion's decision to embark on a nuclear program? Why did France and Norway come to the fledgling state's aid? And, most importantly, how did the U.S., under the Eisenhower and Kennedy administrations, allow Israel to acquire nuclear weapons?
The Background
The Israeli nuclear program was initiated by Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion in 1952, four years after the state gained independence. Interestingly, in Ben-Gurion's pre-state writings, there is an insistence on the role of technology and science in determining the security of the new state. He once explained his faith in the scientific capabilities of the Jewish people: "Until now we have disseminated our intellectual capital in foreign lands, and helped many nations in the great scientific achievements of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. ... There is no reason why the genius of science would not blossom and flourish in this native land." Although the need for broad scientific advancements is clear, the question of why a newly created state needed such costly and advanced weaponry remains.
Ben-Gurion's preoccupation with the Holocaust is one viable explanation for his insistence on developing nuclear weapons. One cannot overstate the influence on Ben-Gurion's political ideology of his visit to Germany in 1945, during which he visited Displaced Person camps, former ghettos, and concentration camps. As Israeli nuclear historian Avner Cohen notes, "Without the Holocaust we cannot understand either the depth of Ben-Gurion's commitment to acquiring nuclear weapons or his inhibitions about nuclear weapon policy. ... Anxieties became national policy." Ben-Gurion genuinely believed that Israel's conflict with the Arabs could develop into another Holocaust if not prevented.
Ben-Gurion's worries that were rooted in the tragedy of the Holocaust fused with general anxiety over leading the new state of Israel. An aide once described Ben-Gurion emerging one morning from his bedroom looking tired and ill-rested and declaring "I could not sleep all night, not even for one second. I had one fear in my heart: a combined attack by all Arab armies." To the anxious leader, the Arab enemy was not only territorial but also part of the larger continuum of the Jewish Holocaust. This anxiousness can be seen in the heated debates that took place within the Knesset over whether to negotiate with Germany for Holocaust reparations. Ben-Gurion defended the need for the strengthening of the Jewish state. "They [the Arabs] could slaughter us tomorrow in this country. ... We don't want to reach again the situation that you were in. We do not want the Arab Nazis to come and slaughter us." For Ben-Gurion, the comparison of Arabs and the Nazis was not propagandistic rhetoric; he truly believed that the conflict with the Arabs could easily escalate to catastrophe and that nuclear weaponry was the ultimate weapon of defense, the key to ensuring that "Never Again" was more than a rhetorical injunction.
In 1952, Ben-Gurion met with Munya Mardor, who had served as head of the underground organization that facilitated illegal Jewish immigration to Palestine during the British Mandatory period. Mardor was expected to administer the program; a chemist named Ernest David Bergman had already agreed to oversee the scientific aspects. Ben-Gurion placed the nuclear program under the authority of the Defense Minister Shimon Peres. He called the division EMET, a Hebrew acronym for "division of research and planning," which also spells the Hebrew word for truth.
In 1956, when Israel, France, and the United Kingdom embarked on a joint military operation to conquer the Suez Canal, Israel and France became allies. At the start of the 1956 Sinai campaign, Israel agreed to launch the offensive in exchange for a verbal promise from France guaranteeing a nuclear reactor and the necessary uranium. At the pre-Sinai summit at Sevres, near Paris, defense minister Peres closed the discussions with a verbal understanding between the two countries reached. At the close of the campaign, however, the certainty of that verbal agreement was unclear. But internal French politics, specifically the collapse of the Bourges-Maunory government, proved crucial in sealing the nuclear promise.
Abel Thomas, French Prime Minister Maurice Bourges-Maunoury's top aide, was the main force behind the nuclear agreement between the two countries—the actualization of the verbal agreement was the Bourges-Maunory government's last action before it was voted out of office by the French National Assembly. Like Ben-Gurion, Thomas's interest in Israeli nuclear development was tied to the Holocaust. Thomas's brother, who had been a lieutenant in the French Résistance, was deported to Buchenwald and killed by the Nazis at age twenty-three. Thomas placed the blame on France because of the Vichy government's cooperation with the Nazis. Michael Karpin, an Israeli journalist and author of a recent book on Israeli nuclear history The Bomb in the Basement, writes that Abel Thomas "felt a commonality of fate...he decided he would give as much help as he could to the remnants of the Holocaust. This would become his life's mission." Through the actions in the Sinai campaign as well as Thomas's final push, the deal with the French came to fruition: the Israelis were now prepared for the first stages of the nuclearization process.
France provided a reactor and uranium, but the reactor required significant quantities of "heavy water," a substance necessary to slow down neutrons in order for them to react with the uranium. France could not supply Israel with heavy water, and in 1959 Israel successfully negotiated a deal to acquire the substance from Norway. Karpin claims that, as in the case of France, the Norwegian government agreed to support the Israeli nuclear effort because of its guilt over the deportation of Norway's Jews and its collaboration with the Nazis during World War II. Other explanations center on the commercial gains of such a deal and on the desire to end American and British nuclear monopoly. Thus, while the Holocaust may not have been the sole cause for Norwegian cooperation and while these other political considerations certainly influenced Norway's decision, Karpin makes a compelling case that the Holocaust was the key impetus.
The Eisenhower Administration: Turning a Blind Eye
The U.S. government knew of Israel's nuclear reactor in Dimona as early as 1958; nevertheless, the Eisenhower administration took little action to halt Israel's nuclear progress. Studies have confirmed that as early as March of 1958, the CIA requested a report of Israel's nuclear activities from Bergmann. Nothing followed Bergmann's response and the Americans continued to state that there was no reactor under construction. One illustrative example of passivity in response to information: in early 1958 Arthur C. Lundahl of the CIA Photographic Intelligence Center showed Eisenhower aerial photographs of the Dimona compound, and Lundahl was met with almost no reaction from the president. Lundahl was never asked for further photographs from the Israelis or for follow up presentations with Eisenhower. Indeed, "[he] was left with the feeling that Eisenhower wanted Israel to acquire nuclear weapons." It is clear that Eisenhower had some awareness of Israeli nuclear ambitions, yet he opted for a moderate nuclear strategy, "setting the precedent that the Israel nuclear weapons programs was treated as a special case."
This passive U.S. stance ended abruptly in 1960. In November of that year, an American nuclear scientist named Henry Jacob Gomberg visited the Israeli nuclear reactor in Nahal Soreq at the invitation of the Israeli Atomic Energy Commission. After his visit, he publicly aired his view that Israel was pursuing a nuclear program in Dimona. His suspicion was based on an observation that the scientific training he witnessed did not match the purported civilian nature of Israeli nuclear aims.
Karpin espouses an original theory about the Gomberg admission: he calculates that by the year 1960 there was an extensive network required for the maintenance of the nuclear reactor and its team. In addition, because of the deal struck with France in 1958, scores of Frenchmen were residing in Beersheba, a city near Dimona. Rumors were already circulating, and the Israelis knew that the international community would demand more information before long on the developments in Dimona. Therefore, Gomberg, according to this analysis, was given to the Americans purposely — "to keep the hungry lion at bay, it was worth throwing him a chunk of meat." Indeed, as Karpin points out, Gomberg was never pursued by the Mossad for divulging such an important national secret. Gomberg's report, whether intentionally instigated or not, caused Israeli to break its silence about the nuclear program, and forced the United States to address it. The CIA drew up its report for President Eisenhower on December 8, 1960 and public discourse about Dimona began for the first time. The New York Times published its first piece on Dimona on December 19, 1960, and Dimona was discussed at the President's meeting on that same day.
Ben-Gurion's statement to the Knesset on December 21, 1960, the only time an Israeli prime minister issued a statement about Dimona, reflects Israel's public relations strategy from that point onward: to stop American intervention and internal debate by claiming solely scientific aims. Ben-Gurion presented the aims of the program as follows. "We are presently engaged in building a research reactor with a 24,000 thermal kilowatt (24 megawatt) output, to serve the purposes of industry, agriculture, medicine and science." It is clear in this statement that Israel was less than honest with the U.S. about its objectives and capabilities, leaving it up to the U.S. to guess the scope of Israel's progress. Because Ben-Gurion's half-truths diminished confrontation with the general public, the State Department could then continue speaking of the reactor's peaceful purposes. Ben-Gurion was willing to say what he needed to say, and the Americans were willing to publicly show their belief in Ben Gurion.
The Kennedy Administration: Political About-Face
Upon his election, John F. Kennedy established nuclear nonproliferation as a top priority of his administration. Kennedy feared a nuclear Middle East, and he also resented the fact that the Israelis had received the Nahal Soreq reactor from the U.S. in 1955 as part of Eisenhower's Atoms for Peace Program, a program aimed at nuclear cooperation for the sake of economic development, as they simultaneously developed a larger nuclear program at Dimona. Although the Kennedy administration continued to privately press the Israeli government to increase the transparency of its nuclear program, it achieved very little in the first years of Kennedy's presidency. The U.S. made clear, at almost weekly intervals, that it wanted visitation rights; during the early months of Kennedy's presidency, February to April of 1961 specifically, Kennedy and Ben-Gurion see-sawed on the date for the Dimona visitation. Meetings occurred frequently between the various ambassadors and State Department officials involved, but Ben-Gurion remained steadfast. He used any reason within his grasp—including internal politics, or the Jewish holidays—as an excuse to push off the American visit.
Internal politics at the time were, in fact, tumultuous. Ben-Gurion's Mapai party was embroiled in a scandal known as the Lavon affair, which forced Israeli Defense Minister Pinhas Lavon to resign after a failed Israeli covert operation against Egyptian-owned, American-owned, and British-owned targets in Egypt. The State Department's report to Kennedy about the Dimona visit seems to indicate that the department believed Ben-Gurion's pledges for visitation and also thought that the delays were because of the domestic politics plaguing Ben-Gurion's administration. Eventually, however, in May of 1961, two American Jewish lobbyists, Myer "Mike" Feldman and Abe Feinberg, successfully facilitated a visitation as well as a meeting between Ben-Gurion and Kennedy.
On May 17-18, 1961, two American scientists, Ulysses Staebler and Jesse Croach, conducted a two day inspection of Israel's nuclear facilities. They spent the first day touring the Technion, the Weizmann Institute, and the Nahal Soreq reactor, and they spent the second day on a closely monitored tour of Dimona. After the visit, they reported to the State Department that although the Dimona reactor could eventually produce enough plutonium for nuclear weaponry, there was no evidence of this being the Israeli aim.
The Israelis must have exercised a great amount of discretion and some deception during that visitation. The visit was held on the Sabbath. The scientists were not allowed to bring any measuring tools or collection instruments. The underground plutonium plant was kept hidden. The Israeli scientists spent a great deal of time lecturing the visitors, which limited the actual inspection time. Yet despite this apparent deception, the facile American conclusion about Dimona's purpose indicates that the scientists were not inclined to challenge Israeli promises.
In exchange for this visit, Ben-Gurion had his first meeting with President Kennedy. The meeting, which occurred on May 30, 1961, is described by historians as amicable and relaxed. Though the topic of nuclear development was a priority, the recent visit of American scientists to Dimona created a climate of ease and openness between the two leaders. In fact, though Ben-Gurion stuck to his earlier policy of claiming solely energy and peaceful purposes, he made certain additions that historians like Zaki Shalom and Avner Cohen interpret as hints to Kennedy of Israel's ultimate intentions. Ben-Gurion stated that "Our main—for the time being—and only purpose is to dedicate it to peaceful purposes...after three or four years Israel might want to develop a pilot plant for plutonium separation, which is needed for atomic power, but there is no intention to develop weapons capacity now." Here, Ben-Gurion opened the door for the future transition from peaceful to military purposes. Ben-Gurion reasoned that a future change in policy could always be traced back to this honest senior meeting and blame for duplicity would be avoided. Why Kennedy did not respond to this verbal foreshadowing may be a sign of Kennedy's tacit approval or, at the very least, resistance to fully halting Israeli nuclearization. The meeting guaranteed that the American government tacitly approved Israel's demand that discussions regarding the Dimona project must take place "neither publicly, threateningly, or embarrassingly, but behind the scenes and in a low profile mode."
Memorandums and reports on Dimona nonetheless circulated through the White House and State Department through 1962, and a push for the future visitations remained in the foreground of these memos. In July of 1962, the Egyptians displayed their ballistic missile capabilities, and in that same year, calamity was avoided in the Cuban Missile Crisis. Partially as a result of these events, Kennedy reapplied pressure to freeze the Israeli nuclear program at Dimona.
The "volte-face" in American policy, as historian Zaki Shalom calls it, spelled a renewed distrust in Dimona's purposes and its stage of advancement. Language in the memos at this time changed from discussions on the "visit" to the "inspection" and policy-wise, the Kennedy administration was resolved to "abolish Israel's nuclear activity at Dimona." Additionally, internal White House documents reveal a surge of memos and meetings; these documents reveal that Kennedy came closest of any American president to stopping the actions at Dimona. On May 18, 1963, Kennedy wrote that "American commitment and support would be seriously jeopardized in public opinion and in the West, if it should be thought that this Government was unable to obtain reliable information on a subject as vital to peace as Israel's efforts in the nuclear field." The potential withdrawal of American support was a significant hazard to Israel, and this letter presented the greatest threat so far to the success of the Dimona project. Ben-Gurion refused to submit to biannual visitation, saying that "the 'start-up' time of the Dimona reactor will not come until the end of this year or early 1964...this will be the most suitable time for your representatives to visit the reactor." He also continued to insist that Israeli nuclear aims were civilian in nature.
Kennedy was no longer willing to tolerate Ben-Gurion's wavering. In June of 1963, Kennedy wrote that if inspections and the desired conditions of these inspections did not take place as early as that summer and a satisfactory agreement was not reached, it would "jeopardize the U.S. government's commitment to, and support of, Israel." This memo never reached Ben-Gurion. He resigned from office the day it was cabled to him.
Ben-Gurion's closest aides have debated what role Kennedy's pressure regarding the nuclear reactor had in pushing Ben-Gurion to resign. Many of Ben-Gurion's aides dismiss the idea that the nuclear cause alone caused Ben-Gurion to leave office. They point to the other pressures which must have been significant as well, among them the Lavon affair and Ben-Gurion's deteriorating health. But Pinhas Sapir and Yuval Neeman, who also served as aides to Ben-Gurion, claim that Kennedy's pressure was the single impetus for resignation. Neeman views Ben-Gurion's resignation as yet another stalling tactic which would allow Israel to finish the project. It is certainly the case that Levi Eshkol's succession delayed the American visitations past the summer of 1963, because Eshkol was able to feign relative ignorance and to request time to learn the details of the negotiations. Eventually, under Eshkol's watch, Israel allowed limited visitations to Dimona, but the Kennedy administration never renewed the pressure that they had used during the Ben-Gurion years.
Why did Kennedy fail to stop Israeli nuclearization? In particular, is it possible that Kennedy, a president who made nuclear non-proliferation a top priority of his administration, could not stop the completion of Dimona? Perhaps Ben-Gurion's secrecy was a successful tactic. Kennedy never acquired enough information to merit a strong reaction. Israel to this day continues to give ambiguous indications regarding its nuclear capabilities. When I wrote to Michael Karpin to try and make sense of what exactly was and is known within Israel, he explained "The information is still classified and your—indeed everyone's—confusion about the definition of what Israel has and has not is a direct consequence of Israel's ambiguity policy."
Beyond Kennedy
The nuclear story does not end with Kennedy and his policy about-face. The succeeding pairs of leaders—Levi Eshkol/Lyndon Johnson and Golda Meir/Richard Nixon—each had their own complicated interactions on the topic of Dimona. When the reactor went critical in 1964 and Israel could no longer claim that it was for solely scientific purposes, the Israelis adopted a line first coined by then Defense Minister Shimon Peres in a meeting with Kennedy that "Israel would not be the first to introduce nuclear weapons in the Middle East." Thus, a clear transition in policy occurred as Ben-Gurion's ambiguity became Eshkol's and Meir's transparencies.
Political diplomacy, political scientists argue, revolves around nuanced advances by two mutually independent decision-makers. In the case of Israel-American nuclear dialogue, the positions of the two sides met: America's preferential attitude towards Israeli nuclear development was more easily justified because of Ben-Gurion's stealthy policies. Thus, the case of Israeli nuclear history provides a window on way this special relationship played out in real policy.
This article will tell the story of how Israel acquired nuclear weapons from the diplomatic perspective. What motivated Ben-Gurion's decision to embark on a nuclear program? Why did France and Norway come to the fledgling state's aid? And, most importantly, how did the U.S., under the Eisenhower and Kennedy administrations, allow Israel to acquire nuclear weapons?
The Background
The Israeli nuclear program was initiated by Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion in 1952, four years after the state gained independence. Interestingly, in Ben-Gurion's pre-state writings, there is an insistence on the role of technology and science in determining the security of the new state. He once explained his faith in the scientific capabilities of the Jewish people: "Until now we have disseminated our intellectual capital in foreign lands, and helped many nations in the great scientific achievements of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. ... There is no reason why the genius of science would not blossom and flourish in this native land." Although the need for broad scientific advancements is clear, the question of why a newly created state needed such costly and advanced weaponry remains.
Ben-Gurion's preoccupation with the Holocaust is one viable explanation for his insistence on developing nuclear weapons. One cannot overstate the influence on Ben-Gurion's political ideology of his visit to Germany in 1945, during which he visited Displaced Person camps, former ghettos, and concentration camps. As Israeli nuclear historian Avner Cohen notes, "Without the Holocaust we cannot understand either the depth of Ben-Gurion's commitment to acquiring nuclear weapons or his inhibitions about nuclear weapon policy. ... Anxieties became national policy." Ben-Gurion genuinely believed that Israel's conflict with the Arabs could develop into another Holocaust if not prevented.
Ben-Gurion's worries that were rooted in the tragedy of the Holocaust fused with general anxiety over leading the new state of Israel. An aide once described Ben-Gurion emerging one morning from his bedroom looking tired and ill-rested and declaring "I could not sleep all night, not even for one second. I had one fear in my heart: a combined attack by all Arab armies." To the anxious leader, the Arab enemy was not only territorial but also part of the larger continuum of the Jewish Holocaust. This anxiousness can be seen in the heated debates that took place within the Knesset over whether to negotiate with Germany for Holocaust reparations. Ben-Gurion defended the need for the strengthening of the Jewish state. "They [the Arabs] could slaughter us tomorrow in this country. ... We don't want to reach again the situation that you were in. We do not want the Arab Nazis to come and slaughter us." For Ben-Gurion, the comparison of Arabs and the Nazis was not propagandistic rhetoric; he truly believed that the conflict with the Arabs could easily escalate to catastrophe and that nuclear weaponry was the ultimate weapon of defense, the key to ensuring that "Never Again" was more than a rhetorical injunction.
In 1952, Ben-Gurion met with Munya Mardor, who had served as head of the underground organization that facilitated illegal Jewish immigration to Palestine during the British Mandatory period. Mardor was expected to administer the program; a chemist named Ernest David Bergman had already agreed to oversee the scientific aspects. Ben-Gurion placed the nuclear program under the authority of the Defense Minister Shimon Peres. He called the division EMET, a Hebrew acronym for "division of research and planning," which also spells the Hebrew word for truth.
In 1956, when Israel, France, and the United Kingdom embarked on a joint military operation to conquer the Suez Canal, Israel and France became allies. At the start of the 1956 Sinai campaign, Israel agreed to launch the offensive in exchange for a verbal promise from France guaranteeing a nuclear reactor and the necessary uranium. At the pre-Sinai summit at Sevres, near Paris, defense minister Peres closed the discussions with a verbal understanding between the two countries reached. At the close of the campaign, however, the certainty of that verbal agreement was unclear. But internal French politics, specifically the collapse of the Bourges-Maunory government, proved crucial in sealing the nuclear promise.
Abel Thomas, French Prime Minister Maurice Bourges-Maunoury's top aide, was the main force behind the nuclear agreement between the two countries—the actualization of the verbal agreement was the Bourges-Maunory government's last action before it was voted out of office by the French National Assembly. Like Ben-Gurion, Thomas's interest in Israeli nuclear development was tied to the Holocaust. Thomas's brother, who had been a lieutenant in the French Résistance, was deported to Buchenwald and killed by the Nazis at age twenty-three. Thomas placed the blame on France because of the Vichy government's cooperation with the Nazis. Michael Karpin, an Israeli journalist and author of a recent book on Israeli nuclear history The Bomb in the Basement, writes that Abel Thomas "felt a commonality of fate...he decided he would give as much help as he could to the remnants of the Holocaust. This would become his life's mission." Through the actions in the Sinai campaign as well as Thomas's final push, the deal with the French came to fruition: the Israelis were now prepared for the first stages of the nuclearization process.
France provided a reactor and uranium, but the reactor required significant quantities of "heavy water," a substance necessary to slow down neutrons in order for them to react with the uranium. France could not supply Israel with heavy water, and in 1959 Israel successfully negotiated a deal to acquire the substance from Norway. Karpin claims that, as in the case of France, the Norwegian government agreed to support the Israeli nuclear effort because of its guilt over the deportation of Norway's Jews and its collaboration with the Nazis during World War II. Other explanations center on the commercial gains of such a deal and on the desire to end American and British nuclear monopoly. Thus, while the Holocaust may not have been the sole cause for Norwegian cooperation and while these other political considerations certainly influenced Norway's decision, Karpin makes a compelling case that the Holocaust was the key impetus.
The Eisenhower Administration: Turning a Blind Eye
The U.S. government knew of Israel's nuclear reactor in Dimona as early as 1958; nevertheless, the Eisenhower administration took little action to halt Israel's nuclear progress. Studies have confirmed that as early as March of 1958, the CIA requested a report of Israel's nuclear activities from Bergmann. Nothing followed Bergmann's response and the Americans continued to state that there was no reactor under construction. One illustrative example of passivity in response to information: in early 1958 Arthur C. Lundahl of the CIA Photographic Intelligence Center showed Eisenhower aerial photographs of the Dimona compound, and Lundahl was met with almost no reaction from the president. Lundahl was never asked for further photographs from the Israelis or for follow up presentations with Eisenhower. Indeed, "[he] was left with the feeling that Eisenhower wanted Israel to acquire nuclear weapons." It is clear that Eisenhower had some awareness of Israeli nuclear ambitions, yet he opted for a moderate nuclear strategy, "setting the precedent that the Israel nuclear weapons programs was treated as a special case."
This passive U.S. stance ended abruptly in 1960. In November of that year, an American nuclear scientist named Henry Jacob Gomberg visited the Israeli nuclear reactor in Nahal Soreq at the invitation of the Israeli Atomic Energy Commission. After his visit, he publicly aired his view that Israel was pursuing a nuclear program in Dimona. His suspicion was based on an observation that the scientific training he witnessed did not match the purported civilian nature of Israeli nuclear aims.
Karpin espouses an original theory about the Gomberg admission: he calculates that by the year 1960 there was an extensive network required for the maintenance of the nuclear reactor and its team. In addition, because of the deal struck with France in 1958, scores of Frenchmen were residing in Beersheba, a city near Dimona. Rumors were already circulating, and the Israelis knew that the international community would demand more information before long on the developments in Dimona. Therefore, Gomberg, according to this analysis, was given to the Americans purposely — "to keep the hungry lion at bay, it was worth throwing him a chunk of meat." Indeed, as Karpin points out, Gomberg was never pursued by the Mossad for divulging such an important national secret. Gomberg's report, whether intentionally instigated or not, caused Israeli to break its silence about the nuclear program, and forced the United States to address it. The CIA drew up its report for President Eisenhower on December 8, 1960 and public discourse about Dimona began for the first time. The New York Times published its first piece on Dimona on December 19, 1960, and Dimona was discussed at the President's meeting on that same day.
Ben-Gurion's statement to the Knesset on December 21, 1960, the only time an Israeli prime minister issued a statement about Dimona, reflects Israel's public relations strategy from that point onward: to stop American intervention and internal debate by claiming solely scientific aims. Ben-Gurion presented the aims of the program as follows. "We are presently engaged in building a research reactor with a 24,000 thermal kilowatt (24 megawatt) output, to serve the purposes of industry, agriculture, medicine and science." It is clear in this statement that Israel was less than honest with the U.S. about its objectives and capabilities, leaving it up to the U.S. to guess the scope of Israel's progress. Because Ben-Gurion's half-truths diminished confrontation with the general public, the State Department could then continue speaking of the reactor's peaceful purposes. Ben-Gurion was willing to say what he needed to say, and the Americans were willing to publicly show their belief in Ben Gurion.
The Kennedy Administration: Political About-Face
Upon his election, John F. Kennedy established nuclear nonproliferation as a top priority of his administration. Kennedy feared a nuclear Middle East, and he also resented the fact that the Israelis had received the Nahal Soreq reactor from the U.S. in 1955 as part of Eisenhower's Atoms for Peace Program, a program aimed at nuclear cooperation for the sake of economic development, as they simultaneously developed a larger nuclear program at Dimona. Although the Kennedy administration continued to privately press the Israeli government to increase the transparency of its nuclear program, it achieved very little in the first years of Kennedy's presidency. The U.S. made clear, at almost weekly intervals, that it wanted visitation rights; during the early months of Kennedy's presidency, February to April of 1961 specifically, Kennedy and Ben-Gurion see-sawed on the date for the Dimona visitation. Meetings occurred frequently between the various ambassadors and State Department officials involved, but Ben-Gurion remained steadfast. He used any reason within his grasp—including internal politics, or the Jewish holidays—as an excuse to push off the American visit.
Internal politics at the time were, in fact, tumultuous. Ben-Gurion's Mapai party was embroiled in a scandal known as the Lavon affair, which forced Israeli Defense Minister Pinhas Lavon to resign after a failed Israeli covert operation against Egyptian-owned, American-owned, and British-owned targets in Egypt. The State Department's report to Kennedy about the Dimona visit seems to indicate that the department believed Ben-Gurion's pledges for visitation and also thought that the delays were because of the domestic politics plaguing Ben-Gurion's administration. Eventually, however, in May of 1961, two American Jewish lobbyists, Myer "Mike" Feldman and Abe Feinberg, successfully facilitated a visitation as well as a meeting between Ben-Gurion and Kennedy.
On May 17-18, 1961, two American scientists, Ulysses Staebler and Jesse Croach, conducted a two day inspection of Israel's nuclear facilities. They spent the first day touring the Technion, the Weizmann Institute, and the Nahal Soreq reactor, and they spent the second day on a closely monitored tour of Dimona. After the visit, they reported to the State Department that although the Dimona reactor could eventually produce enough plutonium for nuclear weaponry, there was no evidence of this being the Israeli aim.
The Israelis must have exercised a great amount of discretion and some deception during that visitation. The visit was held on the Sabbath. The scientists were not allowed to bring any measuring tools or collection instruments. The underground plutonium plant was kept hidden. The Israeli scientists spent a great deal of time lecturing the visitors, which limited the actual inspection time. Yet despite this apparent deception, the facile American conclusion about Dimona's purpose indicates that the scientists were not inclined to challenge Israeli promises.
In exchange for this visit, Ben-Gurion had his first meeting with President Kennedy. The meeting, which occurred on May 30, 1961, is described by historians as amicable and relaxed. Though the topic of nuclear development was a priority, the recent visit of American scientists to Dimona created a climate of ease and openness between the two leaders. In fact, though Ben-Gurion stuck to his earlier policy of claiming solely energy and peaceful purposes, he made certain additions that historians like Zaki Shalom and Avner Cohen interpret as hints to Kennedy of Israel's ultimate intentions. Ben-Gurion stated that "Our main—for the time being—and only purpose is to dedicate it to peaceful purposes...after three or four years Israel might want to develop a pilot plant for plutonium separation, which is needed for atomic power, but there is no intention to develop weapons capacity now." Here, Ben-Gurion opened the door for the future transition from peaceful to military purposes. Ben-Gurion reasoned that a future change in policy could always be traced back to this honest senior meeting and blame for duplicity would be avoided. Why Kennedy did not respond to this verbal foreshadowing may be a sign of Kennedy's tacit approval or, at the very least, resistance to fully halting Israeli nuclearization. The meeting guaranteed that the American government tacitly approved Israel's demand that discussions regarding the Dimona project must take place "neither publicly, threateningly, or embarrassingly, but behind the scenes and in a low profile mode."
Memorandums and reports on Dimona nonetheless circulated through the White House and State Department through 1962, and a push for the future visitations remained in the foreground of these memos. In July of 1962, the Egyptians displayed their ballistic missile capabilities, and in that same year, calamity was avoided in the Cuban Missile Crisis. Partially as a result of these events, Kennedy reapplied pressure to freeze the Israeli nuclear program at Dimona.
The "volte-face" in American policy, as historian Zaki Shalom calls it, spelled a renewed distrust in Dimona's purposes and its stage of advancement. Language in the memos at this time changed from discussions on the "visit" to the "inspection" and policy-wise, the Kennedy administration was resolved to "abolish Israel's nuclear activity at Dimona." Additionally, internal White House documents reveal a surge of memos and meetings; these documents reveal that Kennedy came closest of any American president to stopping the actions at Dimona. On May 18, 1963, Kennedy wrote that "American commitment and support would be seriously jeopardized in public opinion and in the West, if it should be thought that this Government was unable to obtain reliable information on a subject as vital to peace as Israel's efforts in the nuclear field." The potential withdrawal of American support was a significant hazard to Israel, and this letter presented the greatest threat so far to the success of the Dimona project. Ben-Gurion refused to submit to biannual visitation, saying that "the 'start-up' time of the Dimona reactor will not come until the end of this year or early 1964...this will be the most suitable time for your representatives to visit the reactor." He also continued to insist that Israeli nuclear aims were civilian in nature.
Kennedy was no longer willing to tolerate Ben-Gurion's wavering. In June of 1963, Kennedy wrote that if inspections and the desired conditions of these inspections did not take place as early as that summer and a satisfactory agreement was not reached, it would "jeopardize the U.S. government's commitment to, and support of, Israel." This memo never reached Ben-Gurion. He resigned from office the day it was cabled to him.
Ben-Gurion's closest aides have debated what role Kennedy's pressure regarding the nuclear reactor had in pushing Ben-Gurion to resign. Many of Ben-Gurion's aides dismiss the idea that the nuclear cause alone caused Ben-Gurion to leave office. They point to the other pressures which must have been significant as well, among them the Lavon affair and Ben-Gurion's deteriorating health. But Pinhas Sapir and Yuval Neeman, who also served as aides to Ben-Gurion, claim that Kennedy's pressure was the single impetus for resignation. Neeman views Ben-Gurion's resignation as yet another stalling tactic which would allow Israel to finish the project. It is certainly the case that Levi Eshkol's succession delayed the American visitations past the summer of 1963, because Eshkol was able to feign relative ignorance and to request time to learn the details of the negotiations. Eventually, under Eshkol's watch, Israel allowed limited visitations to Dimona, but the Kennedy administration never renewed the pressure that they had used during the Ben-Gurion years.
Why did Kennedy fail to stop Israeli nuclearization? In particular, is it possible that Kennedy, a president who made nuclear non-proliferation a top priority of his administration, could not stop the completion of Dimona? Perhaps Ben-Gurion's secrecy was a successful tactic. Kennedy never acquired enough information to merit a strong reaction. Israel to this day continues to give ambiguous indications regarding its nuclear capabilities. When I wrote to Michael Karpin to try and make sense of what exactly was and is known within Israel, he explained "The information is still classified and your—indeed everyone's—confusion about the definition of what Israel has and has not is a direct consequence of Israel's ambiguity policy."
Beyond Kennedy
The nuclear story does not end with Kennedy and his policy about-face. The succeeding pairs of leaders—Levi Eshkol/Lyndon Johnson and Golda Meir/Richard Nixon—each had their own complicated interactions on the topic of Dimona. When the reactor went critical in 1964 and Israel could no longer claim that it was for solely scientific purposes, the Israelis adopted a line first coined by then Defense Minister Shimon Peres in a meeting with Kennedy that "Israel would not be the first to introduce nuclear weapons in the Middle East." Thus, a clear transition in policy occurred as Ben-Gurion's ambiguity became Eshkol's and Meir's transparencies.
Political diplomacy, political scientists argue, revolves around nuanced advances by two mutually independent decision-makers. In the case of Israel-American nuclear dialogue, the positions of the two sides met: America's preferential attitude towards Israeli nuclear development was more easily justified because of Ben-Gurion's stealthy policies. Thus, the case of Israeli nuclear history provides a window on way this special relationship played out in real policy.