The Dimona file: US intelligence and the Israeli nuclear programme
Early US satellite imagery of the Negev Nuclear Research Center at Dimona, Israel (US Government, public domain).
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The weekend’s Israeli airstrikes on Iran come a week after the world got something of an unexpected preview. On 18 October, the pro-Iranian Telegram channel Middle East Spectator published two US intelligence reports on the upcoming attacks.1
In off-the-record briefings, US officials confirmed the authenticity of the documents, which were published on Substack by former Intercept journalist Ken Klippenstein.2
They came from the Pentagon’s National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA), whose work typically involves sources such as satellite imagery. Perhaps the most notable observation in the material concerned the dispersal of Israel’s Jericho II medium range ballistic missile (MRBM).
Israel likely dispersed MRBMs on 1 October, and we lack indications that the dispersal has concluded, MRBM dispersal is almost certainly defensive; we have not observed indications that Israel intends to use a nuclear weapon.3
US officials do not publicly acknowledge that Israel has nuclear weapons.4 Yet the Israeli nuclear program has long been a target for US intelligence, including human as well as technical collection.
By the early 1960s, the CIA station in Tel Aviv had established a strong liaison relationship, but covert human intelligence collection less effective. According to Seymour Hersh, station chief Peter Jessup doubted his ability to fulfil the nuclear mission given him by DCI John McCone at a meeting in Rome.
“He was in a great hurry,” Jessup recalled, “and told me that President Kennedy thinks the most serious problem facing us is the proliferation of nuclear weapons.” McCone wanted the questions about Israel put to rest, and urged his station chief to put “his staff” to work. At the time, the bemused Jessup added, his “staff” at the CIA station consisted of two aides.5
By early 1967, the US embassy had concluded that Israel was close to a bomb, according to diplomat William Dale.
Some of the CIA’s information came from Jewish Americans who, after visiting Israel, came to believe that Israel was developing weapons that required a supply of highly enriched uranium, according to sources who studied the matter in the late 1970s. Dale recalls that two Jewish Americans, one a scientist, once came to the embassy in Tel Aviv to report their dismay at what they had seen in Israel and their dismay over Israeli requests that they not tell US officials.6
By this time, the CIA was also collecting physical evidence from the area around the nuclear research facility at Dimona, as Yossi Melman and Dan Raviv recount.
The station chief in Tel Aviv in the 1960s, John Hadden, told us he would make a point of driving as close as he could to the nuclear reactor and occasionally stopped his car to collect soil samples for radioactive analysis. Shin Bet was obviously tailing him, and an Israeli helicopter once landed near his automobile to stop it. Security personnel demanded to see identification, and after flashing his U.S. diplomatic passport Hadden drove off, with little doubt there were big doings at Dimona.7
The signature of the highly enriched uranium found at the site pointed in an unexpected direction: the United States - specifically, the Nuclear Materials and Equipment Corp (NUMEC) of Apollo, Pennsylvania.8
While much of the CIA’s information on the NUMEC affair remains classified, significant evidence points to the diversion of US uranium by LAKAM, an Israeli intelligence organisation specialising in nuclear technology.9
Despite going to great lengths to establish the truth about Israel’s nuclear status, the US remains unwilling to acknowledge what has been described as one of the world’s worst-kept secrets. The Israelis are reported to have obtained a secret letter on the subject from every President since Bill Clinton. Their concern may reflect legal issues around Israel’s adherence to the 1963 Limited Test Ban Treaty, and US export controls related to nuclear proliferation.10
Some former US officials have become increasingly restive over the policy of secrecy as Israel’s ascendant far-right makes increasingly overt nuclear threats. A former CIA officer was among the contributors to a February Washington Post op ed which asked:
with increasing prospects of Iran acquiring nuclear weapons and of Israel and Iran attacking one another, what is to be gained by preventing open official discussion of what might unfold? Shouldn’t our government instead be encouraging talks on how to promote greater nuclear restraint by both parties and in the Middle East more generally?11
Such questions are all the more urgent now that those attacks have become reality.
Barak Ravid, Pro-Iranian account leaks alleged U.S. intel on Israel's attack plan, Axios, 19 October 2024.
Ken Klippenstein, Israel Preps for Strike on Iran, Top Secret Leak Reveals, Substack, 19 October 2024.
On the off-the-record briefings, see for example, Natasha Bertrand and Alex Marquardt, Leaked documents show US intelligence on Israel’s plans to attack Iran, sources say, CNN, 20 October 2024.
Israel: Defence Forces Continue Key Munitions Preparations and Covert UAV Activity Almost Certain for a Strike on Iran, NGA, 16 October 2024, archived at Ken Klippenstein, op. cit.
William Burr, Richard Lawless and Henry Sokolski, Why the U.S. should start telling the whole truth about Israeli nukes, Washington Post, 20 February 2024.
Seymour Hersh, The Samson Option: Israel, America and the Bomb, Faber and Faber, 1991, p.165.
Jeff McConnell and Richard Higgins, The Israeli Account, Boston Globe, 14 December 1986. Archived at the CIA FOIA Electronic Reading Room.
Yossi Melman and Dan Raviv, Spies Like Us, The Tablet, 8 April 2010.
John J. Fialka, CIA Found Israel Could Make Bomb: Soil, Air Samples Disclosed Atomic Capability, Washington Star, 8 December 1977. Archived at the CIA FOIA Electronic Reading Room.
Roger J. Mattson, The NUMEC Affair: Did Highly Enriched Uranium from the U.S. Aid Israel's Nuclear Weapons Program? National Security Archive, 2 November 2016.
Victor Gilinsky, The US silence on Israeli nuclear weapons and the right-wing Israeli government, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 4 May 2023.
William Burr, Richard Lawless and Henry Sokolski, Why the U.S. should start telling the whole truth about Israeli nukes, Washington Post, 20 February 2024.