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This collection marks the inauguration of a special section in the Archive's Nuclear Vault on Israeli Nuclear History , edited by Avner Cohen. As a project of the Archive's Nuclear Vault, it will be the homepage for the Archive's postings relating to the Israeli nuclear program.

How Israel Hid Its Secret Nuclear Weapons Program By Avner Cohen and William Burr, Politico Magazine , April 15, 2015

Special Collection: Key Documents on Nuclear Weapons Policy, 1945-1990

Israeli Cover Stories the Dimona Reactor Dismayed Top Level Officials Who Saw a "Clearly Apparent Lack of Candor "

U.S. Embassy Telegram Quotes Ben-Gurion Aide That It Was a "Stupid Mistake" by Israel to Cloak the Nuclear Project in Secrecy

To Prevent Military Uses of the Facility, U.S. Officials Believed the International Atomic Energy Agency Should Monitor Dimona (It Never Has)

Today's Posting Inaugurates the National Security Archive's Special Web Site on Israeli Nuclear History

National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 510

Posted - April 15, 2015

Avner Cohen and William Burr, editors

For more information : Avner Cohen at 202-489-6282 (mobile) or 831-647-6437 (office) William Burr at 202/994-7000 or [email protected]

Interview with Addy Cohen

An interview with Mr. Addy Cohen, a retired official from Israel's Treasury Ministry, conducted by Ori Rabinowitz , a post-doctoral fellow at Tel Aviv University.

Part of the puzzle the textile plant cover story is how it came . While we know that Addy Cohen, the director of the Foreign Aid Office at the Treasury Ministry, used that description when guiding U.S. Ambassador Ogden Reid and some of his staff on a helicopter tour of the Negev in September 1960, the documentary trail has it limits. Cohen, who has just turned 87, and is living outside Tel Aviv, recalls the episode vividly. In a series of written and oral exchanges with the editors of this e-book in recent weeks, he has clarified further what happened.

As a senior official, Cohen was aware of the Dimona project and of its utmost secrecy. The issue of Dimona "was discussed in one of the Treasury Ministry executive meetings under [Minister Levi] Eshkol," he wrote us. The helicopter tour covered various development projects that the U.S. supported, and they were on their way from the Dead Sea. "I was not prepared to Ambassador Reid's question [ the Dimona site] as we flew far north of the structure. I ad libbed by referring to Trostler, the Jerusalemite architect [a relative of Cohen's wife], who actually designed a textile plants" at Dimona.

Surprised by Reid's query, Cohen improvised an answer that was not completely false. In retrospect, as he wrote on March 5, 2015, "It may have transpired that I was the first one who referred to the project as a 'textile plant' but I can assure you that it was not planned."

Washington, D.C., April 15, 2015 – The U.S. government first learned of Israel's secret nuclear program at Dimona from an American corporate official talking to U.S. diplomats in Tel Aviv during mid-summer 1960, according to a declassified document published today for the first time by the National Security Archive, the Nuclear Proliferation International History Project, and the Center for Nonproliferation Studies of the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey. Other documents published today detail the discovery of the secret project that some in the U.S. government believed from the very start aimed at a weapons capability; the U.S. debates over Israel's lack of candor; and U.S. government efforts to pressure the Israelis to answer key questions the nature of the Dimona project.

This "discovery," which came as the presidency of Dwight D. Eisenhower was drawing to a close, caused apprehension in Washington by raising concern regional stability and nuclear proliferation, but it also produced annoyance because Israeli officials at all levels repeatedly provided less than credible answers to U.S. questions Dimona. Thus, in September 1960, when embassy officials asked a new construction site when they were on a helicopter ride nearby, an adroit Israeli official, Addy Cohen, improvised a story to keep the secret: it was the site of a textile factory, he said; a story that was not wholly false because there was a textile plant near Dimona. An interview with Addy Cohen detailing the episode appears in this posting for the first time.

Documents published in this collection shed light on a particularly notable intelligence failure: how Washington missed warning signs that the Israelis had a nuclear project underway, but also how the U.S. belatedly realized what the Israelis were doing, and how Eisenhower and his senior advisers reacted to this discovery. Among the documents are:

The June 1959 Israel-Norway secret agreement providing for the sale of Norwegian heavy water to Israel (through the United Kingdom), transmitted by Oslo Embassy political officer Richard Kerry (father of Secretary of State John Kerry).

Reports information from a then-covert source — University of Michigan nuclear engineering professor Henry Gomberg — who learned that the Israelis had a secret nuclear reactor project that involved experiments with plutonium.

A telegram from the U.S. embassy in Tel Aviv reporting on Finance Ministry official Addy Cohen's statement that "we've been misbehaving," and one by an unidentified official close to Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion that the secrecy surrounding Dimona was unjustifiable and that it was "a stupid mistake on the part of Israel."

Reports by U.S. Ambassador Ogden Reid on conversations with Ben-Gurion.

A State Department message to the embassy in Tel Aviv conveying irritation that the responses of the Israeli government showed a "lack of candor."

Messages a role for the International Atomic Energy Agency in inspecting and safeguarding Dimona.

The Eisenhower Administration and the Discovery of Dimona: March 1958-January 1961

In the last months of 1960 as the presidency of Dwight D. Eisenhower was coming to a close, the U.S. government discovered that Israel had been building, with French assistance, a secret nuclear reactor near Dimona in the Negev Desert that could give Israel a nuclear weapons potential. The discovery caused apprehension within the Eisenhower administration by invoking concerns regional stability and nuclear proliferation, but it also produced annoyance because Israeli officials at all levels provided less than credible answers to U.S. questions Dimona.

One episode that helped create a sense of deception was that, in response to initial U.S. official questions the construction site, the Israelis said it would be a textile factory. Over the years the "textile factory" story has acquired legendary status, but exactly when the story came has been a mystery. But recently unearthed U.S. government documents — an embassy telegram and a memorandum by the Deputy Chief of Mission — help solve this historical puzzle. They show that during a helicopter flight in September 1960, with American Ambassador Ogden Reid and others of his staff on board, not far from the reactor site, Ambassador Reid (or one of the travelers) asked what the big construction site was. Their host, Addy Cohen, a senior Treasury Ministry official, replied, "Why, that's a textile plant." In December 1960, when the Dimona issue was publicly exposed, Cohen was asked why he had said "textile factory." He responded: "that was our story at the time." Cohen acknowledged that "we have been misbehaving" by keeping Dimona secret, but justified the project as a "deterrent" against Arab neighbors.

Today the National Security Archive, the Nuclear Proliferation International History Project and the Center for Nonproliferation Studies of the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey publish for the first time these two items and other declassified documents on the "discovery" of Dimona. The documents provide new perspectives on how the Eisenhower administration learned the secret reactor project, how it reacted to the discovery, and how the Israelis responded. Among the findings are these:

The initial "discovery" by the U.S. embassy in Tel Aviv of the French-Israeli reactor project was probably in late July 1960, when a U.S. corporate official learned it from an Israeli oil executive and told U.S. diplomats that the site would be a power reactor. This is the earliest known reference to Dimona.

The admission by French Foreign Minister Maurice Couve de Murville on December 16 to Secretary of State Christian Herter that France had helped Israel build the reactor, a "replica of [the] Marcoule plant." He also told Herter that under the bilateral agreement, France would supply Israel the raw materials and receive any plutonium produced by the plant. In to Herter's question the plant's financing, Couve said that he "assumed the money came from [the United States]"

Former Treasury Ministry official Addy Cohen ad libbed the "textile plant" story in response to questions on a helicopter tour [See above and sidebar].

An unidentified official close to Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion, according to an Embassy telegram, told the Canadian ambassador that the secrecy surrounding Dimona was unjustifiable and that it was "a stupid mistake on the part of Israel." Assistant Secretary for Near Eastern Affairs G. Lewis Jones agreed: It was "stupid of them" and an "unnecessary … Israeli caper."

The financial aspects of the Dimona project, i.e., cost, financing, and the role of U.S. money — through both the diversion of U.S. government aid and the use of tax-deductible individual charities — played an important role in the Eisenhower administration's internal deliberations on Dimona. Washington considered applying, but apparently did not use, the power to withhold economic assistance as pressure on Israel.

When the U.S. started asking questions Dimona, and then when the issue was leaked to the press, an irritated Prime Minister Ben-Gurion asked Ambassador Ogden Reid: "Why in [the] States is everything being told [to] everybody?" Ben-Gurion stuck to the new Israeli cover story, namely, that the Dimona reactor was for peaceful purposes only, and for the economic development of the Negev in particular — no more than a step towards the building of nuclear power stations and the production of electric power, a badly needed resource.

A State Department message to the embassy in Tel Aviv conveyed a sense of irritation with the responses of the Israeli government: Ben-Gurion's explanations "appear evasive" and the "clearly apparent lack of candor [is] difficult to reconcile with [the] confidence which had traditionally characterized U.S.-Israel relations." The Department wanted more questions asked and more detailed and frank answers from Ben-Gurion.

In June 1959 Israel and Norway signed a secret agreement providing for Norway to sell heavy water to Israel (through the United Kingdom). According to the U.S. embassy first secretary in Oslo, Richard Kerry (father of Secretary of State John Kerry), disclosure of the agreement could be embarrassing to the Norwegian government in light of its efforts to play the role of an "honest broker" in international conflicts, including in the Middle East.

Also published in this collection are important documents that have been available in National Security Archive postings, but are a significant part of the record of the discovery of Dimona, including:

A Special National Intelligence Estimate — SNIE 100-8-60 from 8 December 1960 — that formally determined that "Israel is engaged in construction of a nuclear reactor complex in the Negev near Beersheba" and "plutonium production for weapons is at least one major purpose of this effort." The SNIE estimated "that Israel will produce some weapons grade plutonium in 1963-64 and possibly as early as 1962." A significant portion of the SNIE is still classified.

President Eisenhower's meeting with top advisers on 19 December 1960 to the Dimona problem, ponder the issues raised by Israeli fundraising in the United States, and plans to encourage Israel to open up Dimona to visits by U.S. or reliable foreign scientists and to subject the reactor to International Atomic Energy Agency inspections. Some portions of this meeting record are also still classified.

The post-mortem on SNIE 100-8-60 ordered by the U.S. Intelligence Board whereby the intelligence community tried to determine what pieces of information it had missed and to learn lessons from the intelligence failure.

The Eisenhower administration's "discovery" during the last months of 1960 that Israel was secretly building a large nuclear complex at Dimona was a belated one indeed. It occurred more than five years after Israel had made a secret national commitment to create a nuclear program aiming at providing an option to produce nuclear weapons; more than three years after Israel had signed its secret comprehensive nuclear bargain with France; and two years or more after Israel had begun the vast excavation and construction work at the Dimona site.

The tardiness of the discovery was a major blunder, what is called in our times an intelligence failure. In comparative terms, it was probably as severe as (or more so than) the failures to anticipate the Indian nuclear tests of in 1974 and 1998. Some of the documents included in this e-book provide clues as to why the discovery was delayed and the roots and causes of the intelligence failure.

What amounted to an intelligence breakdown by the United States was a tremendous counterintelligence success for Israel. The U.S. bungle enabled Israel to buy precious time for the highly vulnerable Dimona project. One could argue that had the United States discovered Dimona two years earlier, perhaps even a year earlier, that the young and fragile undertaking might not have survived. Early political pressure from the United States on the two foreign suppliers, France and Norway, might have terminated it at the very start.

The documents presented here reveal how surprised and angry the Eisenhower administration was when it learned Dimona — and yet how circumspect Washington was in its reaction to the discovery. There was a huge gap between what senior U.S. officials said to each other Dimona and what they said to the Israelis. On the one hand, the Americans were convinced that the evidence they had amassed indicated that it was plutonium production-oriented project with weapons potential that posed a significant proliferation risk. They were irritated that the Israelis were trying to pull the wool over their eyes with all manner of evasive answers and misleading stories. Apparently they had many doubts Ben-Gurion's new cover story as well. On the other hand, the administration masked its anger and suspicions; opting for a cautious approach, it chose not to be confrontational but to confine itself largely to: 1) seeking answers Dimona and Israel's intentions, and 2) encouraging Israel to accept visits by U.S. scientists and consent to applying International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) safeguards to Dimona, as a way to constrain Israeli freedom of action. There are hints that U.S. diplomats warned the Israelis that U.S. economic aid could be jeopardized, but with only weeks left in office the Eisenhower administration was in no position to coerce its ally over the issue.

This and the three other photographs of the construction site near Dinoma in the Negev desert for Israel's then-secret nuclear reactor were taken during the last months of 1960. According to the U.S. Intelligence Board post-mortem (See Document 27A ), the British and U.S. military attachés took photos and these could be from either source. The plainly visible reactor dome undermined Israeli claims that a textile factory was under construction. These images of the reactor site, some of them originally classified secret or confidential, are located in State Department records at the National Archives. (Record Group 59, Records of the Special Assistant to the Secretary of State for Atomic Energy and Outer Space, General Records Relating to Atomic Energy, 1948-62, box 501, Country File Z1.50 Israel f. Reactors 1960)

President Eisenhower and Israel Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion during the latter's visit in March 1960 to the United States. (Source: )

Henry Gomberg, Professor of Nuclear Engineering at the University of Michigan, shown at the laboratory during the 1950s, several years before his fall November 1960 trip to Israel where he made discoveries the Dimona reactor (photo courtesy of Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor).

Under Secretary of State Robert Murphy swearing in Ogden Reid, the newly-appointed U.S. ambassador to Israel, 7 June 1959 (photo from NARA Still Pictures Division, RG 59 SO).

Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs G. Lewis Jones, who wrote to Ambassador Reid that "it was stupid" of the Israelis to undertake the secret reactor project. (photo from NARA Still Pictures Division, RG 59 SO).

Addy Cohen (at the left) with Teddy Kollek, Director General of the Prime Minister's Office and later, Mayor of Jerusalem.

To appreciate the full historical context of the American intelligence failure we need to say a little bit the Dimona project itself. In 1955, soon after David Ben-Gurion came back to power as Israel's prime minister and minister of defense, he launched a secret feasibility initiative to determine whether, and how, Israel could build a nuclear infrastructure to support a program aiming at producing nuclear explosives. Ben-Gurion delegated that difficult task to a young (32 years of age) and highly ambitious lieutenant, Shimon Peres, whose formal position was then the director general of the Ministry of Defense. Within three years, from 1955 to 1958, Peres did almost the impossible: he managed to transform the idea of a national nuclear program from a vague vision of the future into a real technological project in the making.

Unlike the chair of the Israeli Atomic Energy Commission (IAEC), Professor David Ernst Bergmann, who preached self-reliance, Peres's overall philosophy was that Israel must not (and cannot) reinvent the wheel and therefore must find a foreign supplier who could provide the most comprehensive nuclear package possible, one suited for a weapons-oriented program. [1]

Those three years were filled with internal deliberations, debates and planning. Often different courses of action were examined simultaneously, on parallel or even conflicting tracks. At least three countries were considered at one time or another to be the foreign supplier: the United States, France, Norway and, to a limited extent, the United Kingdom. In historical perspective, it appears that by 1958, the project's international master plan had become firmly drawn: France would be the foreign supplier, Norway would provide the heavy water and possibly the backup in case the French card went wrong, and the United States would provide a small peaceful package, under "Atoms of Peace," that could serve as the camouflage for the whole project, mostly as a way to conceal Israel's real achievement — Dimona — from the United States.

This raises the issue of secrecy. The story of Dimona is one of a huge secret. Secrecy was essential in order to shield and insulate the highly vulnerable, newly born, project from a hostile outside. At the very core, of course, it is an Israeli secret - the largest, most comprehensive and longest-held secret Israel has ever generated. However, it is more than an Israeli secret; Israel had partners in this venture. The prime partner was the chief foreign supplier, France; the second was Norway, in concert with the British.

And then there was the United States. In a sense, the secrecy surrounding Dimona was aimed primarily against the United States. After all, of all the nations involved, the U.S. posed the greatest threat to the Israeli program. Since the time of the Baruch Plan in 1946 the United States had been on the record opposing the spread of nuclear weapons. Washington helped to create the IAEA in 1957 — the very same year the Dimona deal was signed — and since then it had the creation of an international safeguards system. Should the Dimona secret have been compromised, the United States would have likely exercised pressure on France either to terminate the project altogether or at least to submit it to international safeguards.

The documents in this e-book involve Israel's nuclear relations with the United States, France and Norway. What follows is some brief background on Israel's efforts with each of them:

The United States . On 12 July 1955, Israel was the second country to sign a general agreement with the United States for peaceful nuclear cooperation under "Atoms for Peace." Initially, the leaders of the Israeli Atomic Energy Commission [IAEC] thought that American assistance could be the starting point for a largely indigenous Israeli nuclear program. Consistent with this vision, during 1955-56, IAEC Chairman Bergmann tried to find out whether the United States would provide assistance to build a "real reactor" — that is, a 10 MW natural uranium/heavy water reactor — but also to provide 10 tons of heavy water. Bergman made a formal request in July 1956 through a letter to AEC Chairman Lewis Strauss. In September the AEC notified Israel that it could be done but only under the aegis of a new bilateral nuclear power agreement which would require a more rigorous safeguards agreement than the original 1955 bilateral research accord. When Israel asked why, it was told that "plutonium production capabilities" necessitated stricter controls. When it became apparent the United States would insist on strict safeguards, Israel dropped its probe altogether. A year later, however, in 1957, Israel returned to the original U.S. "Atoms for Peace" offer to construct a small 1 MW swimming pool-type reactor, to be designed and installed by American Machines and Foundry (AMF) Atomics. The contract was signed on 20 March 1957 and in December of that year the long-awaited proposal was submitted to the USAEC by AMF on behalf of Israel for the Nachal Soreq (Rubin) site. Finally, on 19 March 1958, Israel signed a contract with AMF, expecting that the reactor startup date would be 15 months later. Construction on the Soreq site had begun in January 1958 and the small reactor reached criticality in a public ceremony in June 1960, six months prior to the discovery of Dimona. [2] Unlike Dimona, however, the Soreq ("Atoms for Peace") reactor became subject to IAEA safeguards beginning in the mid-1960s.

France . By early 1956, as French-Israeli military relations intensified, Peres became convinced that France could evolve into Israel's foreign nuclear supplier and acted accordingly. But it was the nationalization of the Suez Canal that summer which created the political opening for a French-Israeli nuclear deal. In September 1956 the French Atomic Energy Commission and the IAEC reached an agreement in principle for the sale of a small EL type research reactor to Israel. A month later, as a side issue at the end of the secret Sevres conference (October 22-24) (site of the "collusion" that led to the Suez campaign), the nuclear deal received top-level political approval. The 1956 deal, however, was quite limited in size and scope; it also did not include a chemical separation plant and related reprocessing technology. It was in the context of the Suez campaign itself, when all three participants were subject to Soviet nuclear threats, that France reinforced its own earlier (1954) decision to become a nuclear power and agreed to help Israel to do the same. With France making its own nuclear decisions it became easier for Peres to be more explicit the package that Israel actually wanted. The small EL-102 reactor that the CEA had planned for Israel in the fall of 1956 — similar to the experimental EL3 18 MW in Sacly — was upgraded to a large plutonium-producing reactor of generally the same order as the G-1 reactor at Marcoule. Following a year of highly intense discussions and negotiations in France, on 30 October 1957 Peres finally signed the Dimona package, which included both hardware and technological aid. In the wake of widespread rumors of French-Israeli nuclear cooperation in early 1958, U.S. embassy officials reported that Israel had plans to build an "experimental" reactor but the State Department did not investigate this further (See Documents 1A - B ). [3]

Norway . Beginning in 1955, Israeli AEC Chair Bergmann pressed his government to obtain 20 tons of heavy water cheaply and, if possible, without safeguards. Outside the United States, the Norwegian company Norsk Hydro was the only available producer of heavy water. In early 1956, Israel made a request to the United States but also approached Norway, informally via political channels, as to whether and when it could supply Israel with 20 tons of heavy water. Norway's initial was that, due to current orders, it would be impossible to do so before the end of 1960. When the approach to Washington became hopeless, Israel grew more interested in the Norwegian supply. In August 1956, Bergmann wrote his friend Gunnar Randers, the director of the Norwegian Institute of for Atomic Energy, with a formal request to purchase 10 tons of heavy water. Randers responded noncommittally: supply was short but there was a "good chance" for a deal later on. Negotiations between Israel and Norway intensified in 1957-58, at the time that the Dimona deal was negotiated and signed. In a letter Randers wrote in August 1957 to Fredrik Moller, the director of NORATOM, a newly established company aimed at promoting the Norwegian nuclear industry, he explained that Israel needed the heavy water for a 40 MW "production reactor" fueled by natural uranium. As there were political and logistic difficulties with the Israeli order, to make it more attractive Randers presented it in the context of a larger nuclear cooperation agreement between NORATOM and the IAEC. In addition, to expedite the deal it became a three-party transaction: Israel purchased heavy water from NORATOM that had been sold and transferred two years earlier to Britain, but became surplus for them. The heavy water was shipped directly from the UK to Israel, without safeguards, as the issue of safeguards was left to the Norwegians. The paper record indicates that Randers was willing to be "creative" on controls, but the Norwegian Foreign Ministry insisted on safeguards to ascertain "peaceful use." After long discussions Israel gave up on the question of safeguards and on 25 February 1959 the two countries exchanged documents on the heavy water sale with provisions to ensure that the use was peaceful. A few months later the Norwegian Foreign Ministry informed a U.S. AEC representative the bilateral agreement, assuring him that it included safeguards and inspection rights (See Documents 2 , 20 ). [4]

The discoveries of the French and Norwegian roles in the Israeli nuclear project were a revelation to the Eisenhower administration but it was even more surprised to discover that it already had in its possession clues that had not been followed up until it was too late. The documents below demonstrate how, during the short time it had available, the Eisenhower administration scrambled to pull the threads together by conducting an intelligence "post-mortem." (See Document 27A ). The post-mortem treated the missed opportunities as unfortunate but innocent errors caused by the deficient sharing of information and poor follow-up of instructions. But there have been more conspiratorial explanations of the missed opportunities: for example, the view that pro-Israeli officials in the AEC, CIA, and other agencies stove-piped important reports and information, and the open question that President Eisenhower himself may have chosen to look the other way during 1958-1959. [5]

A more delicate and complex dilemma faced by the Eisenhower administration was how to respond both publicly and privately to the challenge to U.S.-Israeli and U.S.-French relations posed by Dimona. Specifically, the administration had to decide how tough it should be and how to balance the Israeli proliferation concern against the rest of the U.S.-Israeli relationship. It is important to keep in mind that the administration was becoming aware of two things: (a) that Israel had made deliberate efforts to keep Dimona secret for as long as possible; and (b) that Washington could hardly take on faith the new Israeli "cover story" Dimona, including Ben-Gurion's public and private assurances. The administration remained skeptical, if not suspicious.

The possible public disclosure of Dimona also placed Israel, and specifically Prime Minister Ben-Gurion, in a dilemma: How should it react to the disclosure? How much should Israel tell and how truthful should it be? Could Israel tell the U.S. government one thing in private and something else to the world? The question was whether Israel should choose the path of truth or the path of ambiguity and deception. Because the first public statement would have great impact, this was a truly fateful decision. The internal Israeli deliberations what to say are still unavailable, but it is possible to reconstruct the underlying reasoning based on important public and private statements made by Israeli officials, including Ben-Gurion.

Ben-Gurion chose the path of ambiguity and concealment: he declared that Dimona was purely a civilian scientific project, for training in the use of nuclear power for economic development. It was "exclusively for peaceful purposes," he declared in his Knesset statement on 21 December 1960. In his private assurances to the United States Ben-Gurion provided some new information, but it was entirely consistent with his public version. [6] He would not tell the whole truth because the fate of the project was at stake. For Ben-Gurion this ambiguous, if not entirely deceitful, strategy had obvious short-term benefits: lessening U.S. anger and resulting pressure, and thereby avoiding a public showdown with Washington, while also calming the situation at and in the region generally. [7]

It is apparent that the Eisenhower administration had no appetite to call Ben-Gurion's bluff (either in private or in public). Nor was the departing president interested in escalating the Dimona problem into a diplomatic confrontation, which would not have even been possible given , with all that was already on his agenda (the Laos and Berlin crises, for example). Because relations with Israel had been relatively good, Israel had significant domestic support within the United States, and, perhaps most significantly, the Eisenhower administration was in its last few days in office, the White House let the State Department deal with the issue, keeping it under diplomatic control until the new Kennedy administration took office.

A determination to avoid a crisis encouraged senior officials such as Assistant Secretary of State G. Lewis Jones [Document 19] to try to "calm down" the agencies, including CIA, which he believed had been reacting intemperately, and to ensure that no one tried to cut off aid to Israel. At the same time, "calm", secrecy, and the avoidance of publicity might make it possible for Washington to get answers from the Israeli and put quiet pressure on them to open up Dimona to visits by U.S. scientists and to accept safeguards by the IAEA (in fact, the last thing Ben-Gurion and his associates were likely to accept).

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, Johnson and Nixon — would have to deal with it as well. President Kennedy chose the toughest path of struggle and confrontation in his effort to check the program; President Johnson realized that the U.S. had limited leverage on the issue and planted the seeds of compromise and looking the other way; finally, in a bargain with Prime Minister Golda Meir, President Nixon accepted the Israel's de facto nuclear status as long as it stayed secret, and in doing so created the present dilemma.

The documents that follow are illuminating but more is to be learned. Many records remain classified in the National Archives, not only in State Department files but also those of the Atomic Energy Commission. The papers of AEC Chairman John McCone at the National Archives include a file on Israel which is the subject of an earlier declassification request along with related State Department files. Moreover, the National Security Archive has pending requests with the Department of Energy, the Central Intelligence Agency, and the Dwight D. Eisenhower Library. In response to a request to re-review SNIE 100-8-60 (See Document 8 ), the CIA has held the line, refusing to release more information. The request is now under appeal.

Documents 1A-B: Unnoticed Intelligence

A : Department of State Instruction A-128 to U.S. Embassy Israel, "Atomic Energy Developments," 7 March 1958, Confidential

B : U.S. Embassy Tel Aviv Despatch No. 652 to State Department, "Israeli Exchanges With Other Countries Relating to Atomic Energy," 16 April 1958,

Source for both: National Archives (College Park), Record Group 59, Department of State Records (hereinafter RG 59), Central Decimal Files, 1955-1959, 984a.801/4-1658.

Some in the U.S. intelligence community [8] regarded these communications as an early missed opportunity to discover the Dimona project a year or two earlier. In March 1958, in light of growing concern the possibility of surreptitious nuclear weapons programs, the State Department saw an "urgent" need for information on the Israeli atomic energy program and asked its Tel Aviv embassy to report on "all phases" of Israeli nuclear-related activities, research and development, including any exchanges with foreign governments and organizations. As an example, the instruction cited a recent press report in the Jerusalem Post on French-Israeli atomic cooperation. The report included statements by the French minister of foreign affairs, Francois Benard, that France was supplying Israel's uranium needs in exchange for "Israeli discoveries in atomic research for peace."

In response the embassy set up a meeting on 15 April 1958 between embassy Second Secretary Lewis Townsend and Professor David Ernest Bergmann, the chairman of Israel's Atomic Energy Commission. With respect to cooperation with France, Bergmann asserted flatly that Minister Benard "did not know what he was talking ." Bergmann acknowledged that Israel had a nuclear agreement with France but the exchanges under the agreement were informational only. Under the agreement Israel received from France "unpublished reports" and sent students to study at French nuclear centers. He noted that the agreement had no provision under which France was obligated to supply Israel uranium as had been reported; nor had Israel ever received such supply. The substance of Bergmann's commentary was close to what a US AEC representative would hear in Paris more than two years later in a similar inquiry (see Document 4 ). The were quite accurate as far as that (unpublished) 1954 bi-lateral exchange agreement was concerned (Bergmann mentioned that there was also a tri-lateral agreement on atomic energy research between Israel, France and the UK). Israel did not advertise the existence of those agreements, but did not treat them as classified either. [9]

Not surprisingly, however, Bergmann made no reference to the extremely secret French-Israeli Dimona agreement which had been signed in Paris on 3 October 1957. One must assume that he must have known something that deal but it is not clear how much knew given that the IAEC was hardly consulted, let alone involved, in the decisions and actions that led to Dimona. [10] Bergmann's most intriguing came at the end when he said that the principal decision to build a "power reactor had already been taken." He seems to suggest two stages: first, "plans" which are currently "contemplated" to construct an "experimental nuclear reactor" within two or two-and-a-half years, and then five to seven years later "a large economically feasible [power] reactor could be put into operation."

Was the reference to that "experimental reactor" an oblique reference to Dimona — as indeed Israel initially presented it — or was it a deliberate effort to confuse his American interlocutor? Or perhaps it was a mix of both? It is worth noting that Bergmann was known among Israelis as being loose on secrecy and this was apparently one of the reasons why he was bypassed on the Dimona project. [11]

In retrospect, according to the post-mortem investigation (see Document 27A ) on why the United States discovered Dimona two years late, Bergmann's loose on the "experimental reactor" was one of those major missing hints. In April 1958 U.S. intelligence wrongly assumed that the reference to the "experimental reactor" was to the US small swimming pool reactor at Soreq whose construction started in January that year at Nachal Soreq (see Document 3 ). Moreover, U.S. intelligence took on faith Bergmann's statement the limited nature of French-Israeli nuclear cooperation, although there had already been some reports possible French-Israeli secret nuclear cooperation, even the possibility of joint nuclear weapons research. One way or another, a chance to investigate Bergmann's claims and to seek further information the "experimental reactor" was lost.

The numbers on the right side of these documents indicate that they are from the State Department's central decimal files (whereby documents were filed using numerical combinations denoting subjects and countries). The 900 category signifies communications, transportation, and science; 84A stands for Israel; and 801 indicates research and development. The filing of the document in the R&D category, instead of the usual 1901 category for nuclear energy matters, would have hindered any U.S. government official who was interested in tracing intelligence on the Israeli nuclear program.

Documents 2A-C: "Certain Highly Classified Transactions with Israel"

A : Memorandum of Conversation, Norwegian Foreign Ministry, 5 June 1959, Secret, with 30 December 1960 routing slip [transcript attached]

B : Richard Kerry to Philip Farley, 15 June 1959, Secret

C : Richard Kerry to Philip Farley, 7 August 1959, enclosing copy of letter to Robert Brandin, and "Memorandum of conversation of August 6, 1959, at the Atomic Energy Institute, Kjeller, Norway," Secret

Sources: A: RG 59, Records of Special Assistant to the Secretary of State for Atomic Energy and Outer Space, Records Relating to Atomic Energy Matters, 1948-1962 [SAE], box 305, File 12. Peaceful Uses of Atomic Energy Safeguards Sept-Dec 1960 Part 1 of 3; B: RG 59, SAE, box 501, Z1.50 Country File Israel d. General 1953-1961 Part 2 of 2 C: RG 59, SAE, box 313, Country File Norway d. General 1957-1961 Part 2 of 2

A critical piece of information that was known to the State Department, but for obscure reasons remained unknown to the U.S. intelligence community for many months (see Document 22 ), was the 20 tons of heavy water that Norway had quietly sold to Israel upon an agreement signed in Oslo on 25 February 1959. The Norwegians claimed that they wanted to keep the transaction under wraps because disclosure could hurt their diplomatic standing and interfere with business prospects in the Middle East. Evidently, Israel had equally strong reasons of her own to keep the heavy water deal secret as well. For this reason, but also due to an availability issue, Norway used the U.K. as a key third party in the deal: NORATOM (the Norwegian state- company to promote Norwegian nuclear energy industry) had originally sold heavy water to the United Kingdom for its nuclear weapons program. Then, as part of the three-party arrangement, the Norwegians asked the British to resell their excess heavy water back to NORATOM; even though the product would be shipped directly from the United Kingdom to Israel, it was NORATOM that was selling it. This also enabled NORATOM to avoid the political difficulty of having to apply to the Norwegian government for an export license. [12]

According to Olaf Solli, a nuclear energy expert with the Norwegian Foreign Ministry, some British officials wanted to "inform" Washington of the Israeli heavy water deal, but ultimately London did not the information, according to British press reports in 2005 and 2006 based on new declassifications in British archives. [13]

In any event, on 5 June 1959, the Norwegian Foreign Ministry informed AEC official William M. Fullerton, a division chief at the Office of International Affairs, the agreement to sell heavy water to Israel — subject to "safeguards and inspections" — but the size of the transaction was not reported. The U.S Embassy in Oslo prepared the memo of conversation and some days later, on 15 June, embassy political officer Richard Kerry forwarded it to Philip J. Farley, the assistant to the secretary of state for disarmament and atomic energy, asking that Fullerton and his boss, Algie Wells, receive copies.

For unknown reasons the memo was lost in the shuffle and was not disseminated above the middle levels of the State Department and the AEC. Top Department officials, not to mention those at the CIA or from State Department intelligence, did not see that June 1959 memo until December 1960, although months before the CIA had learned there had been a deal. [14] Accordingly, the questions the sale that could have been asked of the Israelis, the Norwegians, and the British were not.

In a follow-up conversation, Richard Kerry learned more, indirectly, the political sensitivity of Norwegian secret deals with Israel from Gunnar Randers, the director of the Atomic Energy Institute, and the key figure in Norwegian nuclear policy after World War II. Referring to NORATOM's negotiations with the Egyptians over "isotope work," Randers saw a "delicate" situation concerning transactions with Israel, but as long as they did not reach the public the Norwegians would not face any "difficulties" from Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser. Randers was a close friend of the IAEC chair, David Bergmann, and this story supported Israel's need for secrecy but it also suited Randers who had not kept the upper levels of the Norwegian Foreign Ministry in the picture (see Document 20 ).

Document 3 : "French Atomic Energy Project in Israel"

U.S. Embassy Tel Aviv Despatch 75 to State Department, "French Atomic Energy Project in Israel," 2 August 1960, Confidential

Source: National Archives (College Park), Record Group 59, Department of State records (RG 59), Central Decimal Files 1960-1963, 884A.1901/8-260

American Machine and Foundry (AMF) Atomics was the company which installed for Israel the 1 MW swimming pool type light water nuclear reactor at Nachal Soreq (known today as the Soreq Nuclear Research Center) that Israel received as a gift from the U.S. under the1955 "Atoms for Peace" bilateral agreement. In late July 1960, U.S. Embassy officials learned from a conversation with D. Anderson, an AMF employee, that French personnel were involved in building "a 60 megawatt atomic power reactor" in the Beersheba area. Anderson stated that this was his "impression, gained on conversations he had with an Israeli, Daniel Kimhi, the director of the Naptha Petroleum Company. According to Kimhi, the French nationals were working on a project described to him as 'gas cooled power reactor capable of producing approximately 60 megawatts of electrical power.'" Anderson's understanding was that the project had been under way for " two years" with the completion date two years off.

As of this writing, this document is the first and earliest available declassified US document that makes explicit reference to the Dimona project. We should note that at the National Archives (College Park), over one hundred additional documents from 1960-1961 remain classified in the decimal files. A declassification request for them is pending.

The embassy reported this conversation to Washington and asked that the U.S. embassy in Paris look into the French government's role, if any, in the alleged development. It took a few weeks before this information went to nuclear energy intelligence experts in Washington (at the AEC and CIA) who came to realize that they had missed other pieces of intelligence (See Document 27A ) and began looking more closely at what was going on at the Dimona site.

Documents 4A-B: "The French CEA Was Not Collaborating with the Israelis"

A : State Department Instruction CA-3636 to U.S. Embassy Paris, "Reported Atomic Reactor Power Project at Beersheba," 19 October 1960, confidential

B : U.S. Embassy Paris Airgram G-766 to State Department, 22 November 1960, Confidential

Sources: A: Record Group 84, Records of Foreign Service Posts, Classified Records of the U.S. Mission to the International Atomic Energy Agency, 1955-1963, box 1, Atomic Energy Developments Israel 1959-61; B: Freedom of Information release

When the U.S intelligence community got wind of the Tel Aviv embassy report on the French-Israeli reactor project (see Document 2 ), it took time to digest it; U.S. officials realized that more information was needed because apparently they had no independent sources to corroborate the report. (It is still a puzzle whether, and to what extent, U-2 overhead photographs were especially telling or whether they were being distributed within the intelligence community.) [15] According to the post-mortem (see Document 27A , PDF page 23), the CIA formulated a list of technical questions French-Israeli collaboration, including the organizations involved in the project, reactor specifications, and plans for spent fuel, e.g. whether the Israelis were building a chemical separation plant. The State Department sent the CIA questions as an "Instruction" to the U.S. embassy in Israel, with the embassy in Paris and the U.S. mission to the IAEA also receiving copies. The request for information did not get high priority; it had a "Routine collection priority."

If the U.S. embassy in Israel ever sent back a formal response, it is still classified. But U.S. military attaches at the Embassy in Tel Aviv did begin collecting information and sent photographs back to Washington. Another attempt to ferret out information is known: John Rouleau, the AEC's representative in Paris, tried, but he met with complete denial from an unnamed member of the French Atomic Energy Commission. The latter, according to Rouleau's account, "stated flatly that the French CEA was not collaborating with the Israelis in the construction of a nuclear power reactor." Furthermore, the official denied that any French company could be working with the Israelis on a power reactor because "prior permission from the CEA would be required and such permission has neither been requested nor granted."

While the French official denied any bilateral cooperation with Israel on a power reactor, he acknowledged the existence of an earlier 1954 agreement between the two national atomic energy commissions under which the bodies collaborated in two specific areas: (1) heavy water production and (2) extracting uranium from phosphates. In retrospect, it is impossible to say whether the CEA interlocutor truly knew nothing the Dimona project-the Israeli-French deal was highly compartmentalized and secret within the CEA-or whether he made a deliberate effort to mislead the United States. Strictly speaking, however, his statement was not a lie because the Dimona reactor was not a power reactor.

Document 5 : "The Know-How on Building Crude Atomic Bombs"

Memorandum of conversation, "Safeguards for Reactors," 25 November 1960, Secret

Source: National Archives (College Park), Record Group 59, Department of State Records (hereinafter RG 59), Records of Special Assistant to the Secretary of State for Atomic Energy and Outer Space, Records Relating to Atomic Energy Matters, 1948-1962, box 305, 12H P.U.S File: 18. Safeguards September-December 1960 [Part 2 of 3]

Despite the lack of cooperation from the French government, Washington was piecing together information the site in the Negev Desert from a variety of intelligence sources. By 25 November, Secretary of State Herter was confident enough in the information accumulated so far to its essence with British Ambassador Harold Caccia. While intelligence experts in London and Washington had already been consulting each other (see chronology with Document 27A ), Herter took it to a higher level by telling Caccia that Washington had unconfirmed reports that a "plutonium-producing reactor may be being built in Israel with French aid." Furthermore, France may be giving the Israelis the "know how" to build "crude atomic bombs." What made the existence of the Israeli reactor project of special concern was that for months Washington and its allies had been trying to build a consensus at the IAEA in favor of effective safeguards on nuclear power plants; this "new factor emphasized the importance of providing adequate atomic energy safeguards."

Documents 6A-C: Professor Gomberg's Discoveries

A : Paris Embassy Telegram 2162 to State Department, 26 November 1960, Secret

B : Memorandum of conversation, [Title excised], 1 December 1960, Secret, excised copy

C : Central Intelligence Agency, Information Report, "Nuclear Engineering/Large Nuclear and Electric Power Plant Near Beersheba/French Nu...