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The Samson Option: Israel’s Nuclearsenal & American Foreign Policy

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Contents

Author’s Note ix

1. A Secret Agreement 3

2. The Scientist 19

3. The French Connection 33

4. First Knowledge 47

5. Internal Wars 59

6. Going Public 71

7. Dual Loyalty 83

8. A Presidential Struggle 93

9. Years of Pressure 117

10. The Samson Option 129

11. Playing the Game 143

12. The Ambassador 159

13. An Israeli Decision 173

14. A Presidential Gift 183

15. The Tunnel 195

xii CONTENTS

16. Prelude to War 209

17. Nuclear Blackmail 225

18. Injustice 241

19. The Carter Malaise 259

20. An Israeli Test 271

21. Israel’s Nuclear Spy 285

22. An Israeli Asset 307

Epilogue 317

Acknowledgments 321

Notes 323

Index 335

• (8 of 366)

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The Samson Option: Israel’s Nuclear Arsenal & American Foreign Policy

by Seymour HershUsage Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0Topics Israel, Israeli, Nuclear, Nuclear Bomb, Dimona, Jonathan Pollard, AIPAC, Yitzhak Shamir, Yom Kippur War, Mordecai Vanunu, David Ben-Gurion, World War 3Collection folkscanomy_politics; folkscanomy; additional_collectionsLanguage English

The Samson Option explodes one of the world’s most closely guarded secrets—the secret of Israel’s atomic arsenal. It relates, for the first time, the political, diplomatic, and military repercussions that have for decades been concealed from the world.
It is also about America’s ability not to see what it does not want to see. All American presidents since John F. Kennedy have turned a blind eye toward Israel’s growing nuclear capacity while paying lip service to the goal of nuclear nonproliferation.
In The Samson Option, Seymour M. Hersh, the Pulitzer Prize-winner who wrote the first account of the My Lai massacre in South Vietnam, reveals one of the classic clandestine operations of our time: Israel’s spectacular underground nuclear facility in the Negev Desert, where its technicians and scientists began manufacturing nuclear warheads in the late 1960s. It describes the bitter infighting within the Israeli government over the bomb and its huge cost. It tells how the money for me nuclear program was raised abroad, and how the early technology was acquired with the aid of France. And it shows how and when Israel threatened to use its nuclear power.
The Samson Option reveals many startling events that played a secret and significant role in the history of our times from the early 1960s through the Gulf War:
• How, in the late 1970s, Israel not only stole reconnaissance intelligence from our most secret of satellites, the KH-11, but used that data to help target the Soviet Union;
• How Jonathan Pollard, the American spy now serving a life sentence in jail, was a key figure in Israel’s nuclear program (and how some of Pollard’s intelligence was turned over to the Soviet Union at the express direction of Yitzhak Shamir, the Israeli prime minister);
• How Israel created a false control room at the nuclear reactor at Dimona to give U.S. inspectors the false impression that the facility was solely for research;
• How the Eisenhower administration made a concerted last-ditch effort in December 1960 to force Israel to acknowledge its nuclear ambitions—and failed;
• How Israel threatened Henry Kissinger and Richard Nixon with the use of nuclear weapons on the third day of the 1973 Yom Kippur War, successfully blackmailing the White House to airlift much needed supplies;
• How South Africa cooperated with Israel to create a mysterious 1979 “flash” in the South Atlantic, actually a test of an Israeli-South African nuclear artillery shell;
• How Israel used a top London newspaper editor to help catch Mordecai Vanunu, its nuclear traitor;
• How a prominent American Jewish Democratic party fund-raiser also raised money for the Israeli bomb—and was able to intervene repeatedly at the White House; and
• How the American intelligence community was finally able to learn what Israel was doing at Dimona—though it was understood that no one’s career would be enhanced by providing such intelligence to the White House.
The Samson Option is ultimately a narrative of how the bomb influenced the diplomatic relations between Israel and America far more than was seen or understood by the press and the public. It shows that, in every sense, Israel was born a nuclear power. Since its founding, some of its leaders, including David Ben-Gurion and Ernst David Bergmann—the little-known scientist who was the father of the Israeli bomb—were determined that no future enemy would be able to carry out another Holocaust. Just as Samson brought down the temple and killed himself along with his enemies, so would Israel destroy those who sought its destruction.
The message of The Samson Option is stark: The next Middle East war might very well be nuclear.Addeddate 2010-11-19 00:04:28Identifier Sampson_OptionIdentifier-ark ark:/13960/t6zw27s6zOcr ABBYY FineReader 8.0Openlibrary_edition OL1567229MOpenlibrary_work OL1804618WPages 366Ppi 600

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Reviewer: jew_cockroach – – May 25, 2021
Subject: here is a quick summary to anyone new to this conflict

The Israel lobby controls American politics and politicians. America sends $5 BILLION in aid to Israel. Israel gets to do whatever the fuck they want – apartheid, genocide. If israel decides to use nukes, there is no one who can stop them – they’ll just say their “defending themselves” and the big and powerful American govt will sit around and watch it happen because the Israel lobby controls what they say and do.

Reviewer: prose – – January 20, 2016
Subject: Misspelling in title

Should be SAMSON not SAMPSON

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