Israel Seizes Nuke Papers to Stem Media Leaks
BY JACK KATZENELL, THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Originally Published 13/01/2001
JERUSALEM -- Israel's State Archives confiscated papers relating to the country's nuclear secrets from the widow of a former prime minister while she was out of the country, a newspaper reported Friday.
Alarmed by persistent leaks of nuclear secrets to the media, the Defense Ministry ordered the confiscation of documents belonging to late Prime Minister Levy Eshkol, the daily Haaretz said.
The ministry suspected the Eshkol archives might be the source of some of the leaked information, the report said.
The papers were in the possession of Miriam Eshkol but were kept at a Jerusalem government office dedicated to Eshkol's memory. State Archivist Evyatar Friesel took advantage of the widow's absence to have the documents moved to the State Archives, the paper said.
Friesel on Friday refused to comment on the report. Miriam Eshkol could not be reached for comment.
Israel has a nuclear reactor near Dimona in the Negev Desert and is widely assumed to have nuclear weapons, but has always refused to confirm it.
Eshkol became prime minister in 1964 when the nuclear program was said to have been in its early stages.
Last month, Israel announced the arrest of a retired general accused of disclosing classified military information to a reporter. Retired Brig. Gen. Yitzhak Yaacov, 75, a scientist who has U.S. as well as Israeli citizenship, was involved in the nuclear program, the British newspaper Sunday Times said.
In 1986, the Sunday Times published photographs taken by Mordechai Vanunu, a technician who worked at the Dimona facility. On the basis of the photographs, experts said at the time that Israel had the world's sixth-largest stockpile of nuclear weapons.
Vanunu is now serving an 18-year sentence for providing the pictures. The Defense Ministry recently decided to keep Vanunu under surveillance after his release, and to try him again if he again attempts to disclose classified information, Haaretz reported.
Defense Ministry spokesman Shlomo Dror said he was not familiar with either the reported confiscation of the papers or the ministry's decision on Vanunu.
However, he said both decisions would be justified to prevent such leaks of sensitive information.
"It is against the law to divulge classified information . . .," he said.
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