Book claims Israel's nuclear arsenal on alert in Gulf War
New York Times News Service
WASHINGTON -- A new book says Israel has a nuclear arsenal far larger than previously suspected by the U.S. government and that it was on full alert during the Gulf War.
The book, The Samson Option by Seymour Hersh, an investigative reporter, says the Israelis have gone to full nuclear alert -- meaning missiles have been wheeled out of silos and put on launchers -- three times, twice during the 1973 war and once this year, while Israel was under missile attack from Iraq. The book further asserts that a principal potential target for the arms has been the Soviet Union.
In those cases, the book says, the targets would, have been the Arab nations that were threatening Israel.
But, quoting Israeli and American officials who discussed the matter with the Israelis, Hersh says Israel's central strategic doctrine during the 1970s and much of the 1980s was that the Soviet Union should know that it was under the threat of Israeli nuclear attack.
Hersh says Israel used U.S. reconnaissance-satellite photos and other intelligence data -- some obtained openly and some illegally -- to target Soviet cities.
Israel never has acknowledged that it possesses nuclear weapons, though the United States and other governments have long maintained that Israel has a substantial stockpile of nuclear arms. The Israeli government's general response to the allegations in Hersh's book was to restate the formulation it always offers when asked about its nuclear program.
"Israel is not going to be the first to introduce nuclear arms in the Middle East," said Danny Naveh, the Defense Ministry spokesman.
In interviews, officials and experts in the United States corroborated some of Hersh's findings but disputed some others.
Hersh was a reporter for The New York Times from 1972 to 1979. He left the paper to write books but has come back to The Times twice as a contract employee.
Hersh also asserts in his book, scheduled to be published today, that:
Late in President Eisenhower's second term, intelligence officials ordered Gary Powers and other U-2 pilots to carry out surveillance flights over the site where Israel was building its nuclear reactor, at Dimona in the eastern Negev.
In the 1950s and 60s, the French government sent hundreds of scientists and engineers to help the Israelis design and build their underground nuclear compound -- assistance that was far greater than U.S. analysis had thought.
Israel first went an nuclear alert early in the 1973 war, When Israel's leaders were convinced that the nation might be overrun within days. Hersh says the Israelis "blackmailed" the United States, in essence - threatening that they would have to use their nuclear weapons if President Nixon did not immediately supply replacements for aircraft and ammunition expended in the war.