January 3, 2025
Avner Cohen
The following is an excerpt from Haaretz.
On February 7, 1967, U.S. Ambassador to Israel Walworth “Wally” Barbour sent a classified cable to Secretary of State Dean Rusk and other officials that contained dramatic claims about the Israeli nuclear program. The ambassador referred to reports from two Israeli sources who maintained that “Israel could be much closer to nuclear weapons capability than we had supposed.”
The cable from Tel Aviv jolted officials at the State Department and elsewhere in Washington who were keeping track of Israel’s nuclear project. Ten days later, Rodger Davies, director of the State Department’s Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs, filed another classified document in which he wrote: “Some recent intelligence reports suggest that Israel may be constructing a chemical separation [of plutonium] facility and proceeding so far in the production of bomb components that assembly of a nuclear weapon could be completed in 6 to 8 weeks.” Davies added that his office was regarding the reports with caution, at least until they underwent a thorough evaluation by intelligence experts.
Continue reading at Haaretz.
