BOOK MARK : How Israel Gained Eyes for Its Nuclear Weapons

The astonishingly accurate KH-11 satellite imagery that the United States provided Israel--depicting any military activity inside the border of Israel’s four neighbors--is known as I&W;, for intelligence and warning, and carries the highest classification marking in the American intelligence community. There was one significant caveat in all this: Israelis were not to be given any intelligence that could help them plan pre-emptive strikes on their neighbors.

“I set up the rules,” one senior American intelligence official recalled. “The system was designed to provide (the Israelis) with everything they could possibly use within (the 100-mile) striking distance. If it was inside Syria or Egypt, they got it all. If it was Iraq, Pakistan, or Libya, they didn’t.”

The official added, however, that he and his colleagues anticipated from the outset that the Israelis would do everything possible to get around the restrictions of the agreement. One of the immediate Israeli arguments was that the limitations should not apply to the joint enemy of the United States and Israel--the Soviet Union. In the months ahead, there would be constant Israeli pressure for access to satellite intelligence on the Soviet supply lines to Syria and the Soviet involvement in the training of Iraqi combat divisions in western Iraq. Those requests were flatly turned down by the Carter Administration.

Nonetheless, Israel was once again an essential ally, and even if it could not get unfettered access to KH-11 imagery, the 1979 agreement did include language permitting Israel to make specific requests for satellite intelligence. Each request would be handled on a case-by-case basis.

Israel did have a secret agenda in its constant maneuvering for KH-11 access, but that agenda only became clear to a few top Reagan Administration policy-makers in the fall of 1981. The unraveling began with a bombing raid on an Iraqi nuclear reactor in Osirak, conducted with American F-16 fighter jets that had been purchased “for defensive purposes only.”

Confronted after Osirak with serious questions about Israel’s abuse of the KH-11 intelligence-sharing agreement, CIA Director William J. Casey authorized a small, ad hoc committee of experts to review the matter. The group was ordered to operate with the heightened security that always surrounded Israeli intelligence issues.

What the review group found was stunning.

In little more than two years, the Israelis had expanded what had been a limited agreement to the point where they were able to extract virtually any photograph they wished from the system. Most surprisingly, the Israelis had requested and received extensive KH-11 coverage of western Russia, including Moscow. “The Israelis did everything except task (target) the bird,” one disturbed military man acknowledged. There was anger at the senior officials of the CIA and Defense Intelligence Agency for what some officials considered “very lax” management of the liaison agreement.

After Iraq’s Scud missile attacks on Israel, questions again arose about whether Israel would use American technology “for defensive purposes only.”

An American satellite detected that Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir had responded to the Scud barrage by ordering mobile missile launchers armed with nuclear weapons moved into the open and deployed facing Iraq, ready to launch on command. U.S. intelligence picked up other signs indicating that Israel had gone on a full-scale nuclear alert that would remain in effect for weeks. No one in the Bush Administration knew just what Israel would do if a Scud armed with nerve gas struck a crowded apartment building, killing thousands. All George Bush could offer Shamir, besides money and more batteries of Patriot missiles, was American assurance that the Iraqi Scud launcher sites would be made a priority target of the air war.

The escalation didn’t happen, however; the conventionally armed Scud warhead caused--amazingly--minimal casualties, and military and financial commitments from the Bush Administration rolled in. The government of Shamir received international plaudits for its restraint.

The fact is, of course, that no one in America--not even its President--could have dissuaded Shamir and his advisers from ordering any military actions they deemed essential to the protection of their nation. Such sovereignty isn’t new or unusual. What is unusual is that one of America’s most important allies--a beleaguered ally surrounded by avowed enemies constantly threatening war--has secretly amassed a large nuclear arsenal while Washington looked the other way.

America’s policy toward the Israeli arsenal was not just one of benign neglect: It was a conscious policy of ignoring reality.

By the mid-1980s, the technicians at Dimona had manufactured hundreds of low-yield neutron warheads capable of destroying large numbers of enemy troops with minimal property damage. The size and sophistication of Israel’s arsenal allows men such as Ariel Sharon to dream of redrawing the map of the Middle East aided by the implicit threat of nuclear force. Israel also has been an exporter of nuclear technology and has collaborated on nuclear-weapons research with other nations, including South Africa. And in September, 1988, Israel launched its first satellite into orbit, bringing it a huge step closer to intercontinental missiles and a satellite intelligence capability.

None of this has ever been discussed in the open in Israel, or in the Knesset. Meanwhile, Israeli field commanders have accepted nuclear artillery shells and land mines as battlefield necessities: another means to an end. The basic target of Israel’s nuclear arsenal has been and will continue to be its Arab neighbors. Should war break out in the Middle East again and should the Syrians and the Egyptians break through again as they did in 1973, or should any Arab nation fire missiles again at Israel, as Iraq did, a nuclear escalation, once unthinkable except as a last resort, would now be a strong probability.

1991 by Seymour M. Hersh. Reprinted with the permission of Random House Inc.

BOOK REVIEW: “The Samson Option,” by Seymour M. Hersh, is reviewed on Page 1 of the Book Review section.