Israel and the Bomb

No American president was more concerned with the danger of nuclear proliferation than John Fitzgerald Kennedy.¹ He was convinced that the spread of nuclear weapons would make the world more dangerous and undermine U.S. interests. He saw it as his role to place nuclear arms control and nonproliferation at the center of American foreign policy.² In the words of Glenn Seaborg, Kennedy’s chairman of the AEC, nuclear proliferation was Kennedy’s “private nightmare.”³

Kennedy’s global arms control agenda was shaped, to a large extent, by his commitment to nonproliferation. He supported a nuclear test ban agreement—the first arms control issue with which the new administration had to deal—primarily because he saw it as a nonproliferation tool. Even before the presidential election, he had opposed the resumption of nuclear testing because of the pretext it gave to nations wishing to acquire nuclear weapons. Kennedy reminded his advisers that more was at stake than a piece of paper—without an agreement, the arms race would continue and nuclear weapons would proliferate to other countries. The only example Kennedy used to make the point was Israel.⁴

The problem of nuclear weapons proliferation was made more acute in the early 1960s as nuclear technology and knowledge became increasingly available and cheaper.⁵ A 1962 study was prepared for Kennedy by the Office of the Secretary of Defense, stating that if there were no basic changes in technology, about sixteen countries, excluding the then four nuclear powers, were capable of acquiring limited nuclear weapons and a crude means of delivery in the next ten years. If the state of technology remained unchanged, the cost to these countries to maintain a modest nuclear weapons program were estimated to be $150–$175 million, and a program aimed at producing one thousand nuclear weapons would cost about a billion dollars. The study warned that “the costs of nuclear weapons can be expected to decline greatly over time through the diffusion of weapon technology, through the wider distribution of research and power reactors, and through advances in technology resulting from continued testing.”⁶

The study noted that the lead time from the initial decision to launch a weapon program until the first bomb could vary from three to ten years, depending on the level of technology, industrial capacity, and resources allocated to the task. With the diffusion of nuclear technology, however, “many countries have reduced the lead time and cost of acquiring weapons by getting research reactors and starting nuclear power programs. The technology involved is directly related to [the] weapons program and a decision to initiate a ‘peaceful’ program provides a lower cost option, later, to have a military program.”⁷ Regarding proliferation beyond ten years, the study stated that unrestricted testing would significantly lower the cost of acquiring nuclear weapons.

The study saw a linkage between a nuclear test ban and proliferation. Though a test ban would be helpful in stemming proliferation, the study was clear that even a comprehensive ban could only slow a determined proliferator. “It is probably not an exaggeration to say that it is necessary, but not a sufficient, condition for keeping the number of nuclear countries small.”⁸ One must remember that “even without testing, it is feasible for a country to produce and stockpile nuclear weapons.” Clearly a more important factor would be the political pressure that the United States and the Soviet Union would be willing to exert.⁹ The study dealt with nuclear proliferation as a global phenomenon, but Israel was regarded as the most likely Nth proliferator state after Communist China. The study referred to China as a country that “most certainly will” acquire nuclear weapons; Israel was defined as the next most likely proliferation case, followed by Sweden and India.¹⁰

Israel, more than any other nation, impressed the problem of nuclear weapons proliferation on the new president. Israel was the first case of nuclear weapons proliferation in which the United States had political leverage. It was a case of proliferation in a small, friendly state, outside the boundaries of the U.S. policy of containment, and surrounded by larger enemies vowing to destroy it. Unlike China or India, Israel did not aspire to the status of a Great Power. Israel also enjoyed unique domestic support in America. Kennedy was well aware that, without the support of about 80 percent of the Jewish voters, he would not have been elected.

Kennedy was the first American President to have a close political aide who served as a liaison to the Jewish community and as an unofficial adviser on Israel. Myer (Mike) Feldman, a Jewish lawyer from Philadelphia, had been Kennedy’s senior legislative aide since 1958. Shortly after Kennedy won reelection to the Senate in 1958, he put Feldman in charge of developing policy issues regarding Israel and the Middle East. During the 1960 presidential campaign, Feldman acted as Kennedy’s representative to the Jewish community and handled his contacts with the Israeli government. The day after the election Kennedy appointed Feldman deputy special counsel, with special responsibility for Israel and the Middle East. The Kennedy White House thus had two offices formulating policies on Israel and the Middle East—Robert Komer’s section at the National Security Council, and Feldman’s.¹¹ Feldman made secret trips to Israel on behalf of Kennedy on at least two occasions, the one in early 1961 relating to the question of Dimona.¹²

Kennedy’s interest in the Israeli nuclear program was evident in his meeting with Eisenhower and his national security team on 19 January 1961, on the eve of his inauguration. After forty-five minutes alone, the outgoing and incoming presidents were joined by the secretaries of state, defense, and treasury of both administrations. One of Kennedy’s first questions was regarding atomic weapons in other countries. “Israel and India,” Herter replied. He told Kennedy that the Israelis had a nuclear reactor capable of generating ninety kilograms of weapon-grade plutonium by 1963, and advised Kennedy to insist on inspection and control before nuclear weapons were introduced in the Middle East.¹³

Kennedy took Herter’s advice seriously. Soon after assuming office he asked Dean Rusk, the new secretary of state, for a report about Israel’s atomic energy activities. On 30 January Rusk submitted a two-page memo to Kennedy. From the memo and its attached chronology it is evident that the State Department had no knowledge about the Israeli nuclear program before the summer and early fall of 1960, when “rumors reached our Embassy at Tel Aviv.” The memo summarizes the diplomatic exchanges that had taken place between the Eisenhower administration and the Israeli government, saying that “categoric assurances” were obtained from Ben Gurion “that Israel does not have plans for developing atomic weaponry.” France, too, assured the United States that its assistance to Israel was conditioned on Israel’s program being for peaceful purposes. The memo said that Ben Gurion’s explanation for the secrecy with which Israel handled the Dimona project—fears that the foreign firms that were assisting Israel would be boycotted by the Arabs—appeared reasonable to the State Department. “There is considerable justification for this Israeli reasoning.”¹⁴ The memo also highlighted why the United States should be interested in Israel’s nuclear program:

As to Ben Gurion’s assurances, Rusk noted that those assurances “appear to be satisfactory, … although several minor questions still require clarification.”¹⁶ Rusk pointed out, however, that the State Department intended to treat the issue not as a single episode, but as “a continuing subject and it [is] the intention of our intelligence agencies to maintain a continuing watch on Israel as on other countries to assure that nuclear weapons capabilities are not being proliferated.” He added that, “at the moment, we are encouraging the Israelis to permit a qualified scientist from the United States or other friendly power to visit the Dimona installation.”¹⁷

The next day Kennedy met former ambassador Reid, who had resigned on 19 January. On Dimona, Reid told Kennedy he thought that “we can accept at face value Ben Gurion’s assurances that the reactor is to be devoted to peaceful purposes.” He commented that an inspection of the Dimona site could be arranged, “if it is done on a secret basis.” Reid suspected that only a few people in Israel knew of the true character of the project, “possibly not even Foreign Minister Meir.”¹⁸

Kennedy was determined to make good on Ben Gurion’s pledge for a visit of American scientists to Dimona. Ben Gurion, however, appeared equally determined not to arrange the visit anytime soon. To add to the problem, Ben Gurion’s domestic political crisis—the Lavon Affair—intensified (see chapter 8). On 31 December 1960 Ben Gurion resigned in the wake of a ministerial committee’s conclusion on the affair, which exonerated Lavon, but he continued to serve as interim prime minister, awaiting the new election. Ben Gurion wanted to avoid a confrontation over Dimona, and continued his search for a solution.¹⁹ During February–April 1961 a pattern emerged in which the United States would press for a date for the visit, while Israel would invoke Ben Gurion’s domestic problems or the Jewish holidays as reasons for delaying the visit.

On 3 February, in keeping with Kennedy’s interest in Dimona, Assistant Secretary G. Lewis Jones met Ambassador Harman to convey the president’s interest in a definite and early date for the Dimona visit. Ben Gurion’s resignation made things difficult. Jones expressed his government’s annoyance over the continued delay in carrying out Ben Gurion’s pledge, to which Harman replied that “in Israel no one is thinking about anything else except the political crisis…. Ben Gurion can think of nothing except the reputation of the MAPAI party. I do not see how I could get to him or think that he would be inclined to give an invitation at this time.” We may speculate that the domestic crisis was, in part at least, an excuse for Ben Gurion to postpone answering Kennedy’s request for visits to Dimona.²⁰

Harman assured Jones that there was no reason for the United States to worry about Dimona. It would take two years to complete the reactor, so no plutonium had yet been produced. There was no urgency for the visit. Harman reiterated Ben Gurion’s assurances that the plutonium, when produced, would be returned to France. Israel could not understand why there should be a continuing U.S. interest in Dimona. Jones replied that “proliferation of nuclear weapons was absolutely anathema to the United States,” and since the suggestion of an American visit “had been volunteered” by Israel itself, he saw no reason why such a visit could not take place “very quietly.” In any case, Jones suggested that it would be an “excellent gesture” if he could give a date to the secretary when he met him in the coming days. Harman promised to check on the matter, but stressed that he did not expect quick results from Israel because of the domestic political crisis there.²¹

A week later Harman told Jones that he was authorized to inform the State Department that Ben Gurion did not know whether he would be the next Israeli prime minister, but if he were, one of his first tasks would be to invite U.S. scientists to visit Dimona. Harman passed a similar message to Rusk when he paid a courtesy call to him. Rusk responded that complete candor on this matter would be of “great importance to future relationship.”²² When Teddy Kollek, the director of the prime minister’s office, visited Washington two weeks later, he told Jones informally that it would be possible to arrange the visit “during the months of March.”²³ President Kennedy was informed of that conversation and about the effort to find qualified American scientists to visit the reactor.

Israel, however, did not rush to set a date for the visit, despite frequent American reminders. On 28 March Jones, impatiently, informed Harman that the United States had been waiting since 4 January for the promised invitation to visit Dimona, and that the White House had inquired the previous day when the visit would take place and had requested a report on the matter by 31 March. Harman promised to cable Israel, but doubted whether any action would be possible until after Passover.²⁴

The State Department’s report to Kennedy included a chronology of the American-Israeli exchanges on setting a date for the Dimona visit, which detailed the department’s continued effort to “remind” Israel, “at approximately weekly intervals,” of the importance of an early, “quiet” visit by Americans to Dimona. The department appeared to believe Ben Gurion’s desire to honor his pledge and that the repeated delays were because of his domestic difficulties. After all, he did not want to appear as if he were being pushed by the United States during a time of the “greatest political difficulty of his career.” The report stated that an invitation for a visit was not possible before 10 April, after Passover.

By late March Ben Gurion realized he could no longer postpone the visit. He was persuaded by Feldman and Abe Feinberg, a Jewish friend and political ally of Kennedy and also one of the organizers of the fund-raising for Dimona, that a meeting between him and Kennedy, in return for an American visit to Dimona, could save the Dimona project. Ben Gurion determined that the political and technical conditions for the visit would be set in May. He approved the visit to Dimona against the objections of Foreign Minister Meir, who was apparently concerned about the implications of misleading the American scientists.²⁵

On 10 April Harman informed the State Department that the American visit to Dimona was scheduled for the week of 15 May. He was ready to discuss the modalities of the visit, and reiterated Israel’s request that the visit be kept secret. The State Department responded that it wanted a team of two American reactor experts, “with competence in planning and design of heavy water reactors,” to go to Israel for discussions with the technical people in charge of the project. “The discussion would give an opportunity in a most natural way for an incidental visit to the reactor site.” The United States agreed to handle the visit “quietly,” but said that to consider the visit “secret” and to make an effort to prevent leaks “might be counter-productive.” It was also stated that there was “a great deal of Congressional interest.”²⁶

In the following weeks the preparations for the Dimona visit moved to the working level. The AEC selected two of its scientists to conduct the visit: Ulysses M. Staebler, assistant director of the AEC Reactor Development Division, and Jesse Croach, a heavy-water expert employed by Dupont at the AEC Savannah River facility.²⁷ In the interest of “avoiding publicity,” it was agreed that the AEC scientists would avoid contact with the American embassy in Tel Aviv.²⁸ After overcoming “scheduling problems,” including the State Department’s opposition to an official visit by Ben Gurion to the White House, it was arranged that Ben Gurion and Kennedy would meet privately at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York on 30 May, at the end of Ben Gurion’s official visit to Canada.²⁹

The two AEC scientists, Staebler and Croach, arrived at Tel Aviv airport on the evening of 17 May. Their official host was Professor Ephraim Katzir-Katchalsky, the head of the Department of Biophysics at the Weizmann Institute. The visit at the Dimona site took place on Saturday, 20 May. (The first two days were devoted to visiting the Soreq reactor, the Weizmann Institute, the Technion, and a tour of the Galilee.)³⁰

According to the scientists’ notes and memorandum, they were greeted “very cordially” by Dimona director Manes Pratt and informed that they were “the first visitors [to the reactor] from outside the country.” The ground rules of the visit were made explicit: “all questions would be answered, no written material would be given, and no pictures would be allowed.” The American visitors were told that information at the site was considered classified, since such information could lead the Arabs to “(a) boycott against suppliers, (b) action intended to stop or delay construction, and (c) a better appraisal of their technical capability.”³¹

Pratt opened the Americans’ visit with a briefing on the rationale and history of the Dimona project. Pratt indicated that Dimona was part of a broad effort by Israel to establish competence in the area of nuclear technology. This included the Soreq swimming pool experimental reactor, the heavy-water pilot plant at the Weizmann Institute, and a uranium recovery pilot plant near Rehovot. In mid-1957 a three-man scientific committee, consisting of Bergmann, Dostrovsky, and Pratt himself, was formed by the prime minister to establish a five-year national nuclear energy program. The committee’s objective was to consider Israel’s options regarding the use of nuclear power.

The committee first considered “more immediate ventures in power reactors.” The initial idea, which was rejected because of its cost, was to build a nuclear station consisting of two 70-MW power reactors of the PWR (pressurized-water reactor) type. The committee next considered acquiring research reactors and decided that “building a research reactor could provide experience in essentially all of the problems posed by power reactor.” The Dimona nuclear complex, then, “was conceived as a means for gaining experience in construction of a nuclear facility which would prepare them for nuclear power in the long-run.” Pratt also explained that natural uranium was chosen as fuel for reasons of both energy independence and cost, referring to Israel’s interest in extracting natural uranium from phosphates in the Negev.³²

According to Pratt, the committee submitted its report to the prime minister in mid-1958, it was approved by the prime minister in late 1958, and ground-breaking at the Dimona site took place in 1959. It is evident that the chronology was carefully prepared to be consistent with what Israel had told the United States in the past about its nuclear energy plans (such as Bergmann’s statements in 1955–58 about nuclear power, the Israeli request for ten tons of heavy water, and so on). It is also apparent that Pratt’s strategy was designed to convince his guests that the Dimona project was conceived in 1958, that is, after the decisions about the smaller Soreq reactor had been made.³³

The Dimona complex was described as a national nuclear research center that would include, in addition to the reactor, various laboratories, including a “pilot plant for Pu [plutonium] separation.” As to the reactor, the Israeli hosts said it had a 26-MW power capacity and used heavy water as both a moderator and a coolant. The Israelis acknowledged that the reactor’s design calculations were made by the French, and that the design “was very much influenced by the French EL-3.”³⁴ The reactor was expected to be completed in 1964.³⁵

Perhaps the most intriguing aspect of the report involved the “pilot plant for plutonium separation.” The rationale for having that plant was “to provide experience in fuel processing since they [the Israelis] believe that shipping long distances for processing is impractical for nuclear power in the long run. Also, they want enough plutonium to experiment with as a power fuel.” The American scientists were also told that the plant would not have the capacity to process all the fuel from the reactor.³⁶

On 25 May, two days after their return, Staebler and Croach discussed their findings with officials at the State Department. Based on these debriefings, a two-page memo was prepared the next day for McGeorge Bundy, the president’s national security adviser. The memo described the scientists “as satisfied that nothing was concealed from them and that the reactor is of the scope and peaceful character previously described to the United States.”³⁷ After summarizing what the scientists had been told about the history and rationale of the Dimona project, the memo cited eight “tentative conclusions and opinions” of the scientists that might be “desirable to bring to the President’s attention.”³⁸

First, the scientists felt that a second visit would not be necessary for another year. Second, while “Israel’s obsession with secrecy is regrettable,” the AEC scientists were persuaded that it was “perhaps understandable in view of Israel’s physical and political circumstances.” Third, as to plutonium production, while the reactor would eventually produce “small quantities of plutonium suitable for weapons, there is no present evidence that the Israelis have weapons production in mind.” Fourth, the Israeli host told the scientists that the reactor would not be completed before 1964, which the scientists thought was “too conservative.” Fifth, the scientists saw evidence of close French cooperation. Sixth, the size of the entire complex was estimated to occupy “a 750 square meters to a side,” but the surrounded fenced security area was much larger. Seventh, the scientists thought the reactor, when completed, would be a $15 million investment, with the supporting plant costing another $20 million. Eighth, the scientists were impressed by what they saw at Dimona: “Israel’s Dimona project is a most creditable accomplishment both in concept and execution.”³⁹

Israel could not have hoped for a better report. It supported everything Ben Gurion said publicly and privately about the project and its scope. It is striking how uncritically the American technical experts accepted what the Israelis had told them about the project. Did it make sense for a small country to invest in two nuclear projects in a single year—one was admitted to cost $35 million—when it did not yet have a clear idea of its future energy plans? Does it pay for such a small country to invest so heavily in nuclear energy? Why did Israel insist on having access to virtually all aspects of the nuclear fuel cycle, including fuel reprocessing, while its future power program needs were still uncertain? What other motivations could there be for such a program in a small country, surrounded by enemies, whose leaders believed that science and technology would negate some of their adversaries’ advantages? These questions could have shed a different light on the nuclear project, especially if Israel’s security problems would have been considered.

This, however, was not the scientists’ mind-set. Their mission was not to challenge what they were told, but to verify it. They toured the construction site as official guests escorted by their Israeli hosts. In all probability, they were not given access to special intelligence about the Israeli program, in particular the U-2 photographs taken by the American intelligence agencies. They had no indication that a large underground reprocessing plant was under construction. Israel’s explanation about the rationale of Dimona made some sense; that is, at that time nuclear energy was widely viewed as the advanced technology solution to provide energy, particularly in countries without indigenous fossil fuels. Seven additional teams of AEC experts visited Dimona in the coming decade, all reaching the same basic conclusions as this team. There was no definitive evidence of a weapons program.

The visit set precedents for both countries. The United States became involved, outside the IAEA framework, in attempting to verify the purpose of a nuclear facility that was built without American help. However, while the United States was prepared to take action to stem the proliferation of nuclear weapons, under the conditions imposed on the visit by the Israelis, it was naive to expect that it would be able to detect any activities embarrassing to Israel (and the United States). The U.S. visit to Dimona thus illustrated the limits of the American’s bilateral approach to halting proliferation.

The Waldorf-Astoria meeting was Ben Gurion’s second meeting with Kennedy. Of their first meeting a year earlier, Ben Gurion said, “he looked to me like a twenty-five year old boy … at first, I did not take him seriously.”⁴⁰ This time Kennedy was president. Ben Gurion was “very tense, fearing that Kennedy’s stiff position on the matter of the reactor would severely jeopardize the relationship.”⁴¹ Although Ben Gurion was anxious, the meeting, which lasted an hour and a half, was anticlimactic. It was friendly, at times even chatty. What set the relaxed and amicable tone was the report on Dimona that Kennedy had received from Rusk a few days earlier. Ambassador Harman took notes for the Israeli side, and Feldman took notes for the American participants. The following account of their meeting is based on official U.S. and Israeli transcripts.⁴²

After a brief exchange of amenities, the two leaders “plunged into a discussion of Israel’s nuclear reactor.”⁴³ Ben Gurion noted that he had intended to brief the president about the reactor, but this would have been redundant since the U.S. scientists had already visited the site. Kennedy responded that, indeed, he had seen the report and that it was “very helpful.” He added that, on the same theory, “a woman should not only be virtuous, but also have the appearance of virtue,” it was important not only that Israel’s purposes were peaceful, but that other nations were convinced that this was the case.⁴⁴ Ben Gurion explained Israel’s interest in nuclear energy: Israel lacked fresh water, and development was possible only if a cheap source of energy could be found to allow desalinization of sea water. Israel believed that atomic power, although still expensive, would one day (“in ten or fifteen years”) be a source of cheap energy.⁴⁵

After outlining Israel’s long-term plan for desalinization, Ben Gurion went on to discuss the present. It is worthwhile to record them as they appear in both transcripts. The text of the Israeli note taker, Harman, reads:

Kennedy responded by returning to his earlier point. The United States appreciated Israel’s desalinization needs, but it was important for the United States that it did not appear “that Israel is preparing for atomic weapons,” especially given the close relationship between the United States and Israel, since Egypt would then try to do the same. “Perhaps in the next five years atomic weapons would proliferate, but we don’t want it to happen.” At this point the two versions differ slightly. According to the Israeli text, Kennedy said, “The report … is a fine report and it would be helpful if we could get this information out.” The American summary is more explicit: “The President then asked again whether, as a matter of reassurance, the Arab states might be advised of findings of the American scientists who had viewed the Dimona reactor.”⁴⁸

Kennedy asked Ben Gurion to let him share the scientists’ findings, and both versions confirmed that Ben Gurion gave Kennedy permission to do whatever he saw fit with the report. Kennedy then asked, “because we [the United States and Israel] are close friends,” whether it would be helpful to let “neutral scientists,” such as the Scandinavians or Swiss, observe the reactor.⁴⁹ Ben Gurion had no objection, and Kennedy expressed his satisfaction with the reply. With this sense of mutual understanding, the nuclear issue was dropped and the conversation shifted to the general issue of Israel’s security.

In his meeting with Kennedy, Ben Gurion had followed the circumspect path he had taken in his first statement to the Knesset in December 1960. He wanted either to buy time for Dimona’s completion, while avoiding a confrontation with the United States or lying outright, without making impossible commitments about the future. It was a juggler’s act, and he knew it. His tension before the meeting highlights the point. He must have decided it was too risky to admit Israel’s interest in nuclear weapons, and the reactions of both the Eisenhower and Kennedy administrations suggest he was correct.

According to this interpretation, Ben Gurion concealed the real purpose of Dimona behind Israel’s professed “need” for cheap nuclear power, especially for desalinization. This explanation was not without foundation. Bergmann convinced Ben Gurion that nuclear energy would be the key to the vision of making the Negev desert bloom. Faith in nuclear energy was a familiar Ben Gurionite theme, and Bergmann often argued that nuclear energy could be used for both peaceful and nonpeaceful purposes.

Ben Gurion emphasized Israel’s interest in civilian use of nuclear energy, but during the meeting he never excluded a future interest in developing nuclear weapons. Ben Gurion did not make binding pledges. Both records of the conversation show that he was deliberately ambiguous. By stressing, “for the time being the only purposes are for peace, … we will see what happens in the Middle East,” he introduced an element of tentativeness and ambiguity to balance his emphasis on peaceful purposes. He did not hide Israel’s intention to build “a pilot plant for [plutonium] separation” in four or five years. Kennedy made no comment on the matter.

The briefing papers prepared for Kennedy for the Waldorf-Astoria meeting indicate that U.S. intelligence agencies had reasons to suspect that Israel was moving toward building nuclear weapons,⁵⁰ but Kennedy did not ask his guest difficult questions on this issue. He did not ask about Israel’s future plans to separate plutonium, nor did he bring up the question of the ownership of the plutonium that might be produced there. Kennedy asked only that the results of the U.S. scientists’ visits be released to other nations—meaning the Arabs—to which Ben Gurion gave his approval.⁵¹ Even Kennedy’s request to let scientists from a neutral state visit Dimona was not raised as an urgent matter.

Both leaders wanted to avoid a confrontation, and each had a sense of his own political limits. Based on these understandings, the two leaders created the rules of the game as they were muddling through. Kennedy did not raise questions that went beyond what Ben Gurion told him on his own. Kennedy did not question why Israel needed two research reactors, a small American reactor (Nachal Soreq) and a larger one of French design (Dimona), which could produce significant amounts of plutonium. He did not ask why Israel needed a plutonium separation plant, or why Israel would invest so much in a large research reactor whose ostensible purpose was only to serve as an interim step to building a nuclear power plant, or why the French-Israeli nuclear deal had been kept secret. Kennedy did not raise these issues, although they were the ones that had led to the confrontations in December and January. Kennedy did not try to extract a promise that Israel would not develop a nuclear weapons capability in the future. He limited himself to making the U.S. position on nonproliferation clear, pointing out the need to assure others of Israel’s intentions.

Ben Gurion respected Kennedy’s political needs. He did not question U.S. nonproliferation policy as applied to Israel. Later in the conversation, Ben Gurion expressed his worries about Israel’s long-term security and the geopolitical vulnerability of the Jewish state, but he did not use these issues to legitimize Israel’s interest in acquiring an independent nuclear deterrent. Only a year earlier France had acquired nuclear weapons. Nonproliferation norms did not yet exist. Ben Gurion, however, did not try to convince Kennedy that Israel was politically or morally justified in pursuing the nuclear-weapons option.

The nuclear issue was the reason for the New York meeting and the cause of Ben Gurion’s apprehensions, but it took up no more than ten to fifteen minutes of the conversation. Kennedy exerted no new pressure, and Ben Gurion had no need to use all the arguments he had prepared. As his biographer wrote, “Ben Gurion felt relieved. The reactor was saved, at least for the time being.”⁵²

The Waldorf-Astoria meeting removed the immediate threat of U.S.-Israeli confrontation over the nuclear issue. It created tacit rules that made it possible for the issue to recede into the background for almost two years, while other topics, such as refugees and water, became central.⁵³ In June 1962 there was an exchange of letters between Kennedy and Ben Gurion. The exchange involved water issues. Not even a single reference to the Dimona project was made.⁵⁴ In mid-August Kennedy secretly sent Myer Feldman to Israel to craft a deal that would tie the U.S. supply of air defense HAWK missiles to Israeli concessions on the Palestinian refugees problem. Again, the nuclear issue was not mentioned even in passing during Feldman’s conversations with Ben Gurion and Meir.⁵⁵ Thus there is no basis for the rumor that Israel received the HAWK missiles in return for its permission for regular U.S. visits at Dimona.⁵⁶

The Israeli nuclear program, however, was not forgotten. During the first half of 1962 the Kennedy administration tried to persuade Sweden, a neutral Western country, to take over the task of visiting Dimona in light of the Ben Gurion-Kennedy agreement. Sweden was not interested in the job (probably because it had its own nuclear weapons program), and the administration began to negotiate with Israel over another American visit to Dimona sometime during the summer. According to British diplomatic reports from Washington, the administration recognized that the Israelis were “dragging their feet on this,” but the administration continued to press.⁵⁷ In light of these diplomatic efforts and Israel’s persistent effort to delay it, it is even more significant that the administration did not raise the issue at the highest level, either through presidential letters or emissaries.

On 26 September 1962 the second U.S. visit to Dimona took place. It was a brief visit, which Barbour later described as “unduly restricted to no more than forty five minutes.”⁵⁸ The visit was made to look as a spontaneous Israeli idea during a trip by two U.S. nuclear scientists who arrived to conduct a routine inspection at the Soreq reactor. This “improvisation” had been planned as a way to ease American pressure on Dimona. This time the Israeli escort was Yuval Ne’eman, the scientific director of the Soreq Nuclear Research Center.⁵⁹ The visiting scientists found no evidence of weapon-related activity. The positive results allowed the United States to assure Arab governments, for the second time, “that latest observations again confirm Israeli statements that reactor [is] intended for peaceful purposes only,” and that no evidence of preparation for nuclear weapons production were found.⁶⁰

American suspicions over the Israeli nuclear program were not dispelled. Israel was a prominent case in American global thinking about nuclear proliferation. In a long Pentagon study on nuclear diffusion, Israel was placed ahead of Sweden and India as the next likely nuclear weapons proliferator.⁶¹ The study also predicted the dates when France, China, and Israel would acquire nuclear weapons. As far as motivation for acquiring nuclear weapons, Israel, along with France and China, was at the top of the list. “The pressures for possession: prestige, coercive and deterrent value and military utility have overridden inhibitions, apart from the two superpowers, only in the cases of the U.K., France, almost certainly China, and probably Israel.”⁶²

The only occasion in 1962 in which the Israeli nuclear program was raised at the presidential level was probably during a seventy-minute meeting between Kennedy and Foreign Minister Meir on 27 December. The meeting was a friendly exchange of opinions about the situation in the Middle East, during which Kennedy reassured Meir of the U.S. commitment to Israel’s security. At the end of the conversation, as Kennedy reiterated the American friendship toward Israel, he noted that “our relationship is a two-way street,” and added that “Israel’s security in the long term depends in part on what it does with the Arabs, but also on us.” This allowed him to allude to the nuclear issue. The American note taker described the brief exchange as follows:

In December 1961 the Kennedy administration endorsed the slightly revised Irish nonproliferation resolution in the UN General Assembly. The language of the Irish resolution made the idea of a nonproliferation agreement compatible with both the legal requirements of the Nuclear Energy Act and with existing NATO nuclear arrangements, as well as with a future collective European nuclear force. The Soviets voted for an alternative Swedish resolution, which did not allow nonnuclear states to receive, deploy, or station nuclear weapons in their territory on behalf of any other country.

The Kennedy administration was the first to recognize that the key to halting nuclear proliferation was an international weapons nonproliferation agreement. Such an agreement should be based on a bargain between the nuclear and nonnuclear states. A prerequisite for such a multilateral agreement must be cooperation with the Soviet Union; both nuclear superpowers must sponsor such an agreement. It was assumed that nonproliferation was one of the few areas in which both nuclear superpowers shared a fundamental common interest. The first U.S.-Soviet talks on a nonproliferation agreement were convened in Geneva in March 1962, but it was soon evident that their opposing interests over the present and future nuclear arrangements in Europe blocked all progress. The United States proposed a nonproliferation agreement based on language similar to the Irish resolution of 1961. This did not satisfy the Soviets, who maintained that it would allow the United States to equip Germany with nuclear weapons under the guise of NATO. The negotiations reached an impasse, setting the stage for the next four years of American-Soviet negotiations on a nonproliferation agreement. The effort to break this stalemate was a major factor in Kennedy’s second confrontation with Israel over Dimona in 1963.