Copyright 1991 by Seymour M. Hersh
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions.
Published in the United States by Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.
Library of Congress Card Catalogue Number: 9152678
eISBN: 978-0-8041-5106-1
v3.1
Authors Note
This is a book about how Israel became a nuclear power in secret. It also tells how that secret was shared, sanctioned, and, at times, willfully ignored by the top political and military officials of the United States since the Eisenhower years.
In it, you will find many senior American officials being quotedmost of them for the first timeabout what they knew and when they knew it. These officials spoke to me not because of animosity toward the Israeli government, but because they realized the hypocrisy of the American policy of publicly pretending that Israels nuclear arsenal does not exist. That policy remains in effect as this is written.
I chose not to go to Israel while doing research for this book. For one thing, those Israelis who were willing to talk to me were far more accessible and open when interviewed in Washington, New York, or, in some cases, Europe. Furthermore, Israel subjects all journalists, domestic and foreign, to censorship. Under Israeli rules, all material produced by journalists in Israel must be submitted to military censors, who have the right to make changes and deletions if they perceive a threat to Israeli national security. I could not, for obvious reasons, submit to Israeli censorship. Those in the past who have broken the rules have been refused reentry to Israel.
Those Israelis who talked were not critics of Israels nuclear capability, nor would they feel secure without the bomb. They spoke because they believe that a full and open discussion of the Israeli nuclear arsenaland of the consequences of its deploymentis essential in a democratic society.
S EYMOUR M. H ERSH
August 1991
Washington, D. C .
Contents
A Secret Agreement
Americas most important military secret in 1979 was in orbit, whirling effortlessly around the world every ninety-six minutes, taking uncanny and invaluable reconnaissance photographs of all that lay hundreds of miles below. The satellite, known as KH-11, was an astonishing leap in technology: its images were capable of being digitally relayed to ground stations where they were picked upin real timefor instant analysis by the intelligence community. There would be no more Pearl Harbors.
The first KH-11 had been launched on December 19, 1976, after Jimmy Carters defeat of President Gerald R. Ford in the November elections. The Carter administration followed Fords precedent by tightly restricting access to the high-quality imagery: even Great Britain, Americas closest ally in the intelligence world, was limited to seeing photographs on a case-by-case basis.
The intensive security system was given a jolt in March 1979, when President Carter decided to provide Israel with KH-11 photographs. The agreement gave Israel access to any satellite intelligence dealing with troop movements or other potentially threatening activities as deep as one hundred miles inside the borders of neighboring Lebanon, Syria, Egypt, and Jordan. The Israelis were to get the real thing: the raw and spectacular first-generation imagery as captured by the KH-11, some of it three-dimensionaland not the deliberately fuzzed and dulled photographs that were invariably distributed by the American intelligence community to the bureaucracy and to overseas allies in an effort to shield the superb resolution of the KH-11s optics.
It was a significant triumph for the Israeli government, which had been seeking access to the KH-11 since the moment of launch three years before. Jimmy Carters decision to provide that high-tech imagery was suspected by some American intelligence officials as being a reward for Prime Minister Menachem Begins successful Camp David summit with Egyptian President Anwar Sadat the year before. These officials understood what many in the White House did not: adding an Israeli dimension to the system was a major commitmentand one that would interfere with the KH-11s ability to collect the intelligence its managers wanted. The KH-11 was the most important advance of its time, explained a former official of the National Security Agency (NSA), the unit responsible for all communications intelligence, and every military and civilian intelligence agency in the government seemed to have an urgent requirement for it. The goal of the KH-11s managers was to carefully plan and prioritize the satellites schedule to get it to the right place at the right time, while avoiding any abrupt shifts in its flight path or any sudden maneuver that would burn excess fuel. With good management, the multimillion-dollar satellite, with its limited fuel supply, would be able to stay longer in orbit, provide more intelligence, and be more cost-efficient. Carters decision to give Israel direct access to the KH-11 completely disrupted the careful scheduling for the satellites future use; it also meant that some American intelligence agencies were going to have less access to the satellite. It was an unpopular decision in many, many ways, said the former NSA official.
There were no official protests inside the administration, however: those few who were distressed by the KH-11 agreement understood that any disquiet, or even second-guessing, could jeopardize their own access to such information and thus reduce their status as insiders.
The Israelis, not surprisingly, viewed the KH-11 agreement as a reaffirmation of respect and support from the Carter administration, whose director of central intelligence, retired Admiral Stansfield Turner, had abruptly cut back intelligence liaison with Israel and other friendly nations as part of a restructuring of the Central Intelligence Agency. The Israelis, accustomed to far warmer treatment by Presidents Richard M. Nixon and Gerald R. Ford, saw the men running the Carter administration as nave and anti-Semitic; as men who perhaps did not fully understand how entwined Israels primary foreign intelligence service, Mossad, had become with the CIA during the Cold War. The 1979 agreement on the KH-11 was no less than the twenty-eighth in a series of formal IsraeliAmerican cooperative ventures in strategic intelligence since the 1950s.
Nothing has ever been officially disclosed about these arrangements, many of which were financed off-the-booksthat is, from a special contingency fund personally maintained by the director of central intelligence. Through the 1960s, for example, one of the most sensitive operations in the Agency was code-named KK MOUNTAIN ( KK being the CIAs internal digraph, or designation, for messages and documents dealing with Israel) and provided for untold millions in annual cash payments to Mossad. In return, Mossad authorized its agents to act, in essence, as American surrogates throughout North Africa and in such countries as Kenya, Tanzania, and the Congo. Other intelligence agreements with Mossad revolved around the most sensitive of Israeli activities in the Middle East, where American dollars were being used to finance operations in Syria, and inside the Soviet Union, where the CIAs men and women found it difficult to spy. Some of the Soviet activities apparently were financed by regular Agency disbursementsand thus cleared through the appropriate CIA congressional oversight committeesbut the complex amalgamation of American financing and Israeli operations remains one of the great secrets of the Cold War.
