Ever since the early 1950s, Israel has had one military eye firmly fixed on atomic weapons as a means of salvation, using them primarily as a military threat for both offensive and defensive purposes. Hersh, a Pulitzer Prize winner, expounds on the steady but quiet growth of an Israeli nuclear industry that proved so successful that Israel was able to coerce several U.S. administrations into doing its bidding. He also explores in depth Israeli access to U.S. intelligence satellite technologies that resulted from inattention by Washington leaders as well as from the four years of insider spying by Jonathan Jay Pollard. He reveals that the Soviet Union has been targeted by Israeli nuclear warheads since the mid-1980s. Unlike several other recent expos es of Israeli intelligence apparatus (Ian Black and Benny Morris's Israel's Secret Wars , and Andrew and Leslie Cockburn's Dangerous Liaison , Hersh follows the threads of a specific intelligence focus while highlighting U.S. policies that ultimately ignore the very real presence of the Israeli nuclear arsenal. This incredibly well-written book should be in every collection.
**
Israel has been a nuclear power for more than 25 years. Yet even in 1991, Israeli officials denied that their country possessed an atomic arsenal. Here, for the first time is the story of the Israeli nuclear weapons program & its influence on world events. Recounts Israel's clandestine nuclear mission, from the building of a reactor site in the Negev desert during the late 1950s, to the establishment by the late 1970s of a sophisticated underground nuclear production facility that targeted & threatened Israel's enemies in the Middle East as well as the Soviet Union itself. America turned a blind eye toward Israel's nuclear capacity while paying lip service to the goal of nuclear non-proliferation.
Ever since the early 1950s, Israel has had one military eye firmly fixed on atomic weapons as a means of salvation, using them primarily as a military threat for both offensive and defensive purposes. Hersh, a Pulitzer Prize winner, expounds on the steady but quiet growth of an Israeli nuclear industry that proved so successful that Israel was able to coerce several U.S. administrations into doing its bidding. He also explores in depth Israeli access to U.S. intelligence satellite technologies that resulted from inattention by Washington leaders as well as from the four years of insider spying by Jonathan Jay Pollard. He reveals that the Soviet Union has been targeted by Israeli nuclear warheads since the mid-1980s. Unlike several other recent expos es of Israeli intelligence apparatus (Ian Black and Benny Morris's Israel's Secret Wars , and Andrew and Leslie Cockburn's Dangerous Liaison , Hersh follows the threads of a specific intelligence focus while highlighting U.S. policies that ultimately ignore the very real presence of the Israeli nuclear arsenal. This incredibly well-written book should be in every collection.
**
Israel has been a nuclear power for more than 25 years. Yet even in 1991, Israeli officials denied that their country possessed an atomic arsenal. Here, for the first time is the story of the Israeli nuclear weapons program & its influence on world events. Recounts Israel's clandestine nuclear mission, from the building of a reactor site in the Negev desert during the late 1950s, to the establishment by the late 1970s of a sophisticated underground nuclear production facility that targeted & threatened Israel's enemies in the Middle East as well as the Soviet Union itself. America turned a blind eye toward Israel's nuclear capacity while paying lip service to the goal of nuclear non-proliferation.