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Don't Like That Israel Has the Bomb? Blame Nixon. Newly declassified documents reveal how the Nixon White House looked the other way while

Israel built the Middle East’s first nukes.

Foreign Policy BY Avner Cohen , William Burr SEPTEMBER 12, 2014

In the summer of 1969, Richard Nixon's administration was absorbed in a highly secret debate:

how to address the diplomatic, strategic, and political problems posed by Israel's emergent nuclear

weapons program. Leading those discussions were senior Defense Department officials who

believed that a nuclear-armed Israel was not in U.S. interests -- it would dangerously complicate

the situation in an already dangerous region, they argued.

According to recently declassified government documents -- published on Sept. 12 by the National

Security Archive, in collaboration with the Center for Nonproliferation Studies -- Deputy Defense

Secretary David Packard, co-founder of Hewlett-Packard, warned his boss, Defense Secretary

Melvin Laird, that if Washington did not use its leverage to check Israel's nuclear advances, it

would "involve us in a conspiracy with Israel which would leave matters dangerous to our security

in their hands."

The overall apprehension was palpable for National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger, who

consequently signed off in 1969 on National Security Memorandum (NSSM) 40, a request for a

set of interagency studies -- including policy recommendations -- of the problems posed by the

Israeli nuclear program. NSSM 40 and the studies it produced are now public for the first time,

making it possible to better understand the environment in which President Nixon made his own

secret decisions, which turned out to be at great variance with Packard's arguments.

Packard's memo, among others, exposes the contours of a policy debate that has been hidden for

years. By now, Israel's nuclear weapons are the world's worst-kept secret, universally accepted as

well-established fact, and yet Washington still respects Israel's nuclear opacity stance, keeping up

the charade that the U.S. government does not comment on Israel's nuclear status. Recent

unofficial estimates published by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (but which are based on U.S.

intelligence leaks) suggest that Israel may possess 80 warheads and also an unspecified amount of

weapons-grade fissile material in reserve. (Although the National Security Archive first submitted

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its declassification request to the Defense Department in 2006, the Interagency Security

Classification Appeals panel only released the documents in March 2014.)

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In 1960, when U.S. government officials discovered that Israel, with French aid, was building a

secret nuclear reactor at Dimona, in the Negev Desert, Washington became concerned about the

proliferation and security risks of an Israeli nuclear weapons program. With the Soviets arming

Arab clients in the region, a nuclear Israel threatened to aggravate Cold War dangers. U.S.

presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson had tried to weigh these concerns against the

domestic political complications posed by getting tough on Israel -- and they tried, without much

success, to check Israel's nuclear ambitions.

But the new documents disclose that in mid-February 1969, Assistant Secretary of Defense Paul

Warnke, a holdover from the Johnson administration, was probably the first to alert Laird to the

danger of a nuclear Israel, urging him that the Pentagon should take a strong position on the

matter. Warnke had recently concluded a round of difficult negotiations with Israeli Ambassador

Yitzhak Rabin about the sale of Phantom jets to Israel, in which he tried unsuccessfully to link the

deal with Israel's signature on the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) -- that is, no NPT, no

jets. Moreover, he asked Rabin that Israel explicate and define its old vague pledge "not to be the

first to introduce nuclear weapons into the Middle East" -- a pledge that Warnke specifically

insisted should be mutually defined as a commitment to nonpossession of nuclear weapons. Rabin

refused to accept Warnke's proposed interpretation of "non-introduction." Convinced that Israel

was about to become a de facto nuclear state, Warnke thought that only decisive American action,

including possibly canceling the jets, could halt this looming possibility.

In a long memorandum to Laird, written less than a month after Nixon took office, Warnke

warned that the United States must respond firmly to the Israeli nuclear challenge and pressed

Laird to "consider another serious, concerted, and sustained effort to persuade Israel to halt its

work on strategic missiles and nuclear weapons." Secretary Laird adopted Warnke's position and,

later in February, asked for a high-level White House meeting on the matter.

Earle Wheeler, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, also highlighted the danger of a nuclear

Israel and proposed presidential involvement and the application of pressure, such as "cease and

desist" of a specific, but still secret, nuclear-related activity.

One of the remaining mysteries of the story, however, is what U.S. intelligence was apparently

showing about the exact, technical status of the Israeli program. The U.S. government is still

keeping that secret.

Laird's proposed White House meeting did not materialize. Instead, under Nixon's direction,

Kissinger asked Laird, Secretary of State William Rogers, and CIA Director Richard Helms to

participate in a policy study on the Israeli nuclear weapons program. And so NSSM 40 was born.

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As was often the case at the Nixon White House, Kissinger used the NSSM system as a way to

assert White House control over national security policy. In this way, he directed the various

agencies involved in U.S. national security decision-making to prepare background studies for the

senior review group that he chaired, which allowed him to oversee closely the production of these

policy studies. Sometimes the National Security Council's responses to the group's requests led to

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a formal presidential national security decision memorandum, but often they produced a quiet

presidential decision without a full bureaucratic paper trail. That is to say, Nixon and Kissinger

decided on such matters without finally consulting, or even informing, the relevant agencies.

Indeed, in the case of the NSSM 40 studies, the agencies never learned exactly what Nixon

decided.

When Kissinger sent NSSM 40 to the bureaucracy, he conveniently omitted the government's

chief arms controller, Gerard C. Smith, the head of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency.

Nuclear proliferation issues were part of his portfolio. Even though Smith was a Nixon appointee,

Kissinger excluded the agency, perhaps because he worried that the agency head might align with

Laird -- which could make it more difficult for the White House to choose a soft approach to

Israel.

By the end of May 1969, Kissinger had requested a joint report by the State Department, the

Defense Department, and the CIA. The State and Defense departments agreed on key

recommendations: that Israel should sign the NPT and to keep its nuclear program in check. They

also agreed that Israel should make private assurances to the United States not to produce nuclear

weapons. But they disagreed on how to get there and how they could verify those assurances.

The State Department, with some dissent by the Bureau of Political-Military Affairs, favored a

"graduated approach," by which the United States would begin with "essentially persuasive tactics

but maintain the flexibility to move to tougher policies depending on Israel's response." Thus, if

the Israelis were "unresponsive," the report said, Washington could "make it clear" that Israel's

pursuit of nuclear weapons will impose a "major strain" on the relationship, risking U.S. weapons

supply. By contrast, the Pentagon wanted to "move more swiftly, place more demands on Israel,

and adopt from the outset a more determined attitude than the Department of State proposes." The

CIA did not enter this debate on paper, though, according to Packard's memorandum, Helms

agreed with the Defense Department's position.

In June 1969, senior officials tried to work out their disagreements. Bridging the gap between the

Defense and State departments, both Packard and Undersecretary of State Elliot Richardson

favored a tough approach. Packard sent Laird a top-secret "Scenario for Discussions with Israel of

Their Nuclear Program," which he said represented a consensus of the Pentagon's leadership,

Kissinger, Helms, and Richardson. Kissinger may well have agreed with Packard at the time, but

he soon shifted his thinking, probably in deference to Nixon's inclinations.

Packard noted that the scenario paper did not fully reflect some aspects of the objectives and

conclusions, apparently because they were too sensitive or conceptually subtle to write down.

Nevertheless, getting Israeli assurances and Israel's signature on the NPT remained major goals.

The scenario that Packard presented was this: He and Richardson would hold at least two meetings

with Ambassador Rabin, in which they would stress that the United States wanted to discuss the

NPT and Israel's nuclear weapons intentions -- though they would not use open pressure, such as

explicitly declaring that the Phantom jet deliveries were at stake. If Rabin was not responsive,

Packard and Richardson would ask for another meeting. If then Rabin "stonewalls," they "would

make it clear to [him] that a lack of response on Israel's part raises questions regarding our ability

to continue meeting Israel's arms requests."

In mid-July, when Packard was warning Laird of the dangers of being trapped in a "conspiracy"

with Israel if Washington failed to use pressure, Kissinger and his National Security Council

assistants assessed the senior review group's discussions and appear to have reached somewhat

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parallel conclusions. In a fascinating long memorandum to Nixon, possibly never sent, Kissinger

developed a substantive and significant line of thinking about the complex dilemma raised by the

Israeli nuclear program. When it was written, Kissinger still seems to have believed that delaying

the Phantom jets' delivery could provide some leverage for reaching an understanding with Israel

on signing the NPT. This would be difficult, Kissinger acknowledged, but he thought it might be

possible to persuade Israel that with all of the treaty's loopholes, signing it would not prevent the

country from weapons research and development.

Kissinger also recognized the real possibility that nothing could be done to stop the momentum

and that as long as Israel kept its weapons program secret, it would not disturb the regional and

international environment. As he put it in the document,

"Saying that we want to keep Israel's possession of nuclear weapons from becoming an established

international fact may come very close to describing what we really want in this case." This came

close to what Nixon appears to have preferred.

What Kissinger actually advised Nixon -- and what the president's line of thinking was -- remains

obscure, though someday Nixon's and Kissinger's diaries, as well as Kissinger's meeting notes,

may shed light on this matter. That the president appears to have believed that nuclear

proliferation by America's close allies was tolerable may have reduced his concern about Israel,

and indeed he may have given personal assurances to some Israelis even before he took office.

Another mystery in this story concerns the intelligence findings that spurred Defense Department

apprehension and the NSSM 40 process: Perhaps the Israelis made some important technical

advances, or maybe the United States had collected stronger evidence that the Israelis had

acquired highly enriched uranium from a U.S. source. Whatever the findings were, they still

remain classified apparently because of strong CIA insistence.

In any event, as previously declassified documents indicate, at the end of July 1969 both Packard

and Richardson met with Rabin. Richardson made a tough statement arguing that a nuclear Israel

would threaten U.S. national security by complicating the Cold War conflict with the Soviet

Union. Richardson demanded that Israel sign the NPT, that it not "possess" nuclear weapons, and

that it not develop the Jericho missile because of its nuclear capability. But Richardson's statement

was as far as the pressure went.

Despite the arguments for strong pressure on Israel, Nixon took the opposite path. Apparently he

was "leery" about using the jets as pressure. Moreover, Nixon endorsed Rabin's suggestion to

leave the issue for his meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir a few weeks later.

With Nixon reluctant to take the "lean-on" approach that Packard and others had favored, the

Israelis did not need to worry about a confrontation, as Meir would learn personally when she met

with Nixon in September. At that meeting, which left so far almost no public paper trail, the two

leaders made a secret deal that tacitly recognized the undeclared reality of nuclear Israel: The

United States would accept Israel's nuclear status as long as Israel did not acknowledge it publicly.

Today, 45 years later, that secret understanding is still the foundation for nuclear relations between

the United States and Israel. This policy has never been confirmed by either side -- and both

countries abide by its fundamentals, regardless of whether the tacit agreement is outmoded and

inconsistent with international nonproliferation interests.