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THE HOFFMAN WIRE
Dedicated to Freedom of the Press, Investigative Reporting and Revisionist History
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Michael A. Hoffman II, Editor
Oct. 11, 2003 (Supplement)
THE SECRET HISTORY OF WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION (WMD) IN THE MIDDLE
EAST AND THE ZIONISTS WHO MONOPOLIZE THEM
Editor's Note: As befits God's Holiest People on earth, the Israelis are
permitted a Middle Eastern monopoly on WMD by the Great White Father in
Washington, D.C., for the simple reason that, only in the hands of the
Holy people are nuclear weapons rendered holy, as Bomb-fathers Andrei
Sakharov, Albert Einstein, Edward Teller and Robert Oppenheimer could
attest.
Here, in a ground-breaking investigative report from the Los Angeles
Times, is the history and extent of the nuclear weapons which Iraqi and
Syrian Arabs, and Iranian Muslims are too sinful and backward to be
allowed to possess.
Dravidian-Dalet Pakistan's nuclear capability is an anomaly over which
the Israelis are helping Aryan-Brahmin India gain a decisive advantage,
most recently by selling India $1 billion worth of state-of-the-art
aerial surveillance technology, further fueling an apocalyptic east
Asian arms race by altering the military balance between the two
belligerent states in favor of India.
It is little wonder that the French have such a guilty conscience
nowadays over the march of Israeli-directed American imperialism, since,
as the Times report demonstrates, the French government was instrumental
in helping the Israelis obtain their nuclear monopoly in the first
place.
Researcher's note: The L.A. Times article is post-dated Oct. 12 because
some metropolitan newspapers publish portions of their Sundays editions
online the day before. Hoffman Wire readers on the west coast may wish
to alert friends and neighbors who are not online to the contents of
tomorrow's hard copy edition].
Israel Adds Subs to Its Atomic Ability
Officials confirm that the nation can now launch nuclear weapons from
land, sea and air. The issue complicates efforts to rein in Iran.
By Douglas Frantz
Los Angeles Times | October 12, 2003
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-iznukes12oct12.story
TEL AVIV -- Israel has modified American-supplied cruise missiles to
carry nuclear warheads on submarines, giving the Middle East's only
nuclear power the ability to launch atomic weapons from land, air and
beneath the sea, according to senior Bush administration and Israeli
officials.
The previously undisclosed submarine capability bolsters Israel's
deterrence in the event that Iran Ñ an avowed enemy Ñ develops nuclear
weapons. It also complicates efforts by the United States and the United
Nations to persuade Iran to abandon its suspected nuclear weapons
program.
Two Bush administration officials described the missile modification and
an Israeli official confirmed it. All three spoke on condition their
names not be used.
The Americans said they were disclosing the information to caution
Israel's enemies at a time of heightened tensions in the region and
concern over Iran's alleged ambitions.
Iran denies developing nuclear weapons and says its nuclear program is
solely for generating electricity. Iranian leaders are resisting more
intrusive inspections by the United Nations, setting the stage for a
showdown in coming weeks. The U.N.'s International Atomic Energy Agency
has given Tehran an Oct. 31 deadline to accept full inspections and
prove it has no nuclear arms program.
Arab diplomats and U.N. officials said Israel's steady enhancement of
its secret nuclear arsenal, and U.S. silence about it, has increased the
desire of Arab states for similar weapons.
"The presence of a nuclear program in the region that is not under
international safeguards gives other countries the spur to develop
weapons of mass destruction," said Nabil Fahmy, Egypt's ambassador to
the United States. "Any future conflict becomes more dangerous."
Late last month, Egypt joined Saudi Arabia and Syria at the U.N. General
Assembly in criticizing the U.S. and U.N. for ignoring Israel's weapons
of mass destruction while pressuring Iran.
A senior Iranian official raised the same issue at a nonproliferation
conference in Moscow in September.
"Stability cannot be achieved in a region where massive imbalances in
military capabilities are maintained, particularly through the
possession of nuclear weapons that allow one party to threaten its
neighbors and the region," said Ali Asghar Soltanieh.
Israel will not confirm or deny that it possesses nuclear arms.
Intelligence analysts and independent experts have long known that the
country has 100 to 200 sophisticated nuclear weapons.
Israel, India and Pakistan are the only countries with nuclear
facilities that have not signed the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty,
which was initiated in 1968 to stop the spread of nuclear weapons
through inspections and sanctions. India and Pakistan also have nuclear
bombs.
Iran and Arab states with civilian nuclear programs have signed the
treaty. The Arab countries have refused to agree to tougher inspections
because Israel will not sign it, U.N. officials said.
"A big source of contention is Israel," said a senior official trying to
win acceptance of the additional inspections. "This is a magnet for
other countries to develop nuclear weapons."
Israel and its U.S. backers regard its nuclear weapons as a centerpiece
of the country's security. The development of the arms over several
decades, with tacit U.S. approval, has been rarely mentioned, but it is
becoming an increasingly compelling component in discussions about
lasting peace in the Middle East.
While not acknowledging the country's nuclear capability, Israeli
officials have promised they would not "introduce" such weapons to the
Middle East. Israeli and U.S. officials said that means Israel would not
launch a first strike using the weapons. They argue that other countries
have nothing to fear from Israel's nuclear arms, whereas Israel has
everything to fear from its neighbors.Even so, Israel's nuclear
stockpile confers military superiority that translates into a high
degree of freedom of action, from bombing a suspected terrorist camp in
Syria last week to the destruction of an Iraqi nuclear reactor in 1981.
"Nuclear capabilities give the owners enormous political maneuverability
which otherwise they do not have," a senior Western security official
said.
Since 1969, Washington has accepted Israel's status as a nuclear power
and not pressured it to sign the nonproliferation treaty.
"We tolerate nuclear weapons in Israel for the same reason we tolerate
them in Britain and France," a senior administration official said. "We
don't regard Israel as a threat."
To avoid triggering American economic and military sanctions, U.S.
intelligence agencies routinely omit Israel from semiannual reports to
Congress identifying countries developing weapons of mass destruction.
The Clinton administration even barred the sale of the most detailed
U.S. satellite photographs of Israel in an effort to protect that
country's nuclear complex and other targets.
The Bush administration's determination to stop Iran from developing
nuclear weapons means Israel's worst-kept secret is likely to loom large
in negotiations with Tehran.
"You are never going to be able to address the Iranian nuclear ambitions
or the issues of Egypt's chemical weapons and possible biological
weapons program without bringing Israel's nuclear program into the mix,"
said Joseph Cirincione, director of the nonproliferation program at the
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a Washington-based nonprofit
organization promoting international cooperation.
Growing Vulnerability
Israel is smaller than New Jersey and its population of 6 million is
within reach of missiles from Iran and other neighbors. As Iran and
other countries in the region improved their long-range missiles in the
1990s, Israel's land-based nuclear weapons became vulnerable to attack.
The strategic alternative was to develop nuclear-armed submarines, which
would be almost invulnerable, said Robert S. Norris, a nuclear historian
at the Natural Resources Defense Council in Washington.
Israel ordered three specially designed submarines from Germany in the
mid-1990s and they were delivered in 1999 and 2000. The diesel-powered
vessels have a range of several thousand miles and can remain at sea for
up to a month.
The attempt to arm them with nuclear missiles was first disclosed in a
book published in June 2002 by the Carnegie Endowment. The Washington
Post published an article about the effort a few days later.
Recent interviews with officials in Washington and Tel Aviv provided the
first confirmation that Israel can now deliver nuclear weapons from
beneath the sea.
The Israeli official refused to provide details, but the U.S. officials
said the warheads were designed for American-supplied Harpoon missiles,
which can be launched from the subs and have sea-skimming cruise
guidance systems. Harpoons usually have conventional warheads and are
common in the arsenals of the United States and other countries.
Norris said Israeli engineers would have had to reduce the size of a
nuclear weapon to fit the warhead of a Harpoon and alter the missile
guidance system to hit land-based targets, both relatively simple tasks
with a sophisticated weapons program.
"They have been at it for more than 30 years, so this is something
within the realm of capability for Israel's scientists and engineers,"
said Norris, who added that the normal range of the missiles Ñ 80 miles
Ñ might have been extended as well.
The submerged submarines send missiles to the surface in capsules fired
from torpedo tubes. When a capsule reaches the surface, its top blows
off and the missile is launched.
An Israeli government spokesman, Daniel Seaman, confirmed that the three
new submarines carried Harpoon missiles, but he declined to specify the
type of warhead.
Israel has about 150 miles of coast on the Mediterranean Sea and its
submarines are deployed so that at least one is in the water at all
times, ensuring that Israel can retaliate if attacked.
The Israeli government rejected requests for interviews with officials
from its atomic energy agency and refused to answer questions on
nuclear-related matters.
The consensus in the U.S. intelligence community and among outside
experts is that Israel, with possibly 200 nuclear weapons, has the
fifth- or sixth-largest arsenal in the world.
Under the nonproliferation treaty, five countries are permitted nuclear
weapons. Britain has 185, the smallest number among the five, according
to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. The group
estimated that Russia has 8,232 weapons; the United States, 7,068;
China, 402; and France, 348.
Israel has about double the number of India and Pakistan. North Korea
claims to have nuclear weapons, but U.S. intelligence officials are
uncertain whether that is true. Estimates of the number have ranged from
one or two to six.
A Deal With France
Israel began building a nuclear bomb in the mid-1950s when hostile
neighbors surrounded the young country and the Holocaust was fresh in
the minds of its leaders.
A secret agreement with the French government in 1956 helped Israel
build a plutonium nuclear reactor. France and Israel were natural
partners then; they had been allies with Britain in a brief attempt to
seize the Suez Canal after Egypt nationalized it and had shared concerns
about the Soviets and unrest in North Africa.
The reactor site was in a remote corner of the Negev desert, outside the
village of Dimona.
It was a massive project, with as many as 1,500 Israeli and French
workers building the reactor and an extensive underground complex on 14
square miles. French military aircraft secretly flew heavy water, a key
component of a plutonium reactor, from Norway to Israel, according to
the Federation of American Scientists in Washington.
American U-2 spy planes spotted the construction soon after it began in
1958. Israel initially said it was a textile plant and later a
metallurgical research facility. Two years later, U.S. intelligence
identified the site as a nuclear reactor and the CIA said it was part of
a weapons program, according to documents at the National Archives in
Washington.
In December 1960, Prime Minister David Ben Gurion told the Israeli
parliament that a nuclear reactor was under construction, but he said it
was exclusively for peaceful purposes.
It was the first and last time that an Israeli prime minister made a
public statement about Dimona, according to "Israel and the Bomb," an
authoritative book by Avner Cohen, an Israeli American scholar.
Soon after taking office in 1961, President Kennedy pressured Israel to
allow an inspection. Ben Gurion agreed, and an American team visited the
installation that May.
A post-visit U.S. memo said the scientists were "satisfied that nothing
was concealed from them and that the reactor is of the scope and
peaceful character previously described to the United States."
American teams visited Dimona seven times during the 1960s and reported
that they could find no evidence of a weapons program.
In June 1967, on the eve of the Middle East War, Israeli engineers
assembled two improvised nuclear devices, according to published
accounts and an interview with an Israeli with knowledge of the episode.
By early 1968, Carl Duckett, then deputy director of the CIA office of
science and technology, had concluded that Israel had nuclear weapons,
according to testimony he gave to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in
1974.
Duckett said his assessment was based on conversations with Edward
Teller, the father of the hydrogen bomb, who visited Israel several
times and supported its nuclear program. Duckett said Richard Helms, CIA
director, ordered him not to circulate his conclusions.
In 1969, President Nixon struck a deal with Israeli Prime Minister Golda
Meir: As long as Israel did not go public with its program or test
weapons openly, the United States would stop its inspections and turn a
blind eye, according to Cohen's book.
The proof surfaced 17 years later. On Oct. 5, 1986, the Sunday Times of
London published an article in which a former Dimona technician,
Mordechai Vanunu, provided a detailed look at Israel's nuclear weapons
program. His cache included diagrams and photographs from inside the
complex, which he said had produced enough plutonium for 100 bombs since
it went online in 1964.
To conceal the weapons work from U.S. inspectors, a false wall had been
built to hide elevators that descended six stories beneath the desert
floor to facilities where plutonium was refined and bomb parts were
manufactured, Vanunu said.
Shortly before the article was published, a female agent from Israel's
intelligence service lured Vanunu from London to Rome. He was kidnapped
and smuggled back to Israel, where he was convicted of treason in a
secret trial and sentenced to 18 years in prison.
Vanunu is scheduled to be released next year. He has been denied parole
because prosecutors say he still has secrets to tell, according to his
lawyer and supporters.
Meanwhile, Israel was enhancing its ability to launch its nuclear
weapons.
The U.S. sold Israel F-15 and F-16 fighter jets, both of which can be
used to deliver nuclear bombs or missiles. In the 1960s, the French
helped Israel develop its first generation of Jericho missiles and the
Israelis had built a longer-range Jericho II by the mid-1980s.
The Jericho I and II are equipped with nuclear warheads, and satellite
photos indicate that many are hidden in limestone caves southeast of Tel
Aviv, near the town of Zachariah, which is Hebrew for "God remembers
with vengeance."
The Jericho II has a range of 930 miles, which means it could probably
hit targets in Iran. The F-16 has a range of 1,000 miles, and the F-15
can hit targets more than 2,000 miles away.
Israel has never openly tested nuclear weapons. Experts said the
Israelis have used supercomputers, some supplied by the U.S., to conduct
simulations for designing weapons. Components also can be tested using
conventional explosives.
"Nonnuclear tests would not be picked up by satellites and other
monitoring systems," said Gary Milhollin, director of the Wisconsin
Project on Nuclear Arms Control in Washington. "You can do a lot in
secret and without a nuclear explosion."
An Open Secret
Israel's nuclear program remains shrouded by a policy it calls "nuclear
ambiguity." The phrase means Israel does not acknowledge its nuclear
capability and suffer the accompanying political and economic fallout,
yet it gains the benefit of deterrence because other nations know the
weapons exist.
Though Israel is a democracy, debating the nuclear program is taboo. The
Israeli Atomic Energy Commission is one of the country's most secretive
organizations. Its budget is secret, its facilities are off limits, and
employees face harsh sanctions if they talk about its operations. Even
the name of the chief of nuclear security was a secret until three years
ago.
A military censor guards Israel's nuclear secrets. Journalists writing
about any security or defense matters must submit articles or broadcast
scripts for pre-publication review. The censor, an army general, can
block publication or broadcast. Decisions can be appealed to the Israeli
Supreme Court, but journalists said the government usually prevails.
Foreign journalists in Israel are subject to the censorship law, though
foreigners rarely submit material to the censor and enforcement is less
strict. This article, for example, was not submitted to Israeli censors.
However, some foreigners have run afoul of the authorities.
In late June, the British Broadcasting Corp. aired a documentary
examining the Israeli nuclear establishment's history, Vanunu's
imprisonment and illnesses among former workers at the Dimona complex.
The Israeli government retaliated within days. It stopped providing
spokesmen for BBC stories and prohibited BBC reporters from attending
government news conferences. "They are trying to demonize the state of
Israel," Seaman, the head of the press office, said of BBC in an
interview in August. "We are not cooperating with them."
Tim English, a BBC spokesman, said the broadcaster stood by the accuracy
and fairness of its program.
Censorship extends to academics too. Cohen, the Israeli American
scholar, has written a second book that criticizes Israel's nuclear
secrecy as "anachronistic."
In July, his Israeli publisher submitted the manuscript to the censor in
hopes of publishing it in Hebrew. Cohen said a decision was expected
soon.
"This will show how far the Israeli government is willing to go to allow
serious discussion of the issue," he said.
Uproar in Parliament
Israel's parliament was dragged into the nuclear debate briefly on Feb.
2, 2000. Issam Makhoul, one of 10 Israeli Arabs in parliament, got the
item on the agenda by petitioning the Supreme Court after being rebuffed
seven times.
"The entire world knows that Israel is a huge warehouse of nuclear,
biological and chemical weapons that serves as a cornerstone of the
nuclear arms race in the Middle East," said Makhoul, whose speech was
protected by parliamentary immunity.
Several members of parliament walked out. Others responded with angry
shouts. "This is putting lives in danger," said one member, Moshe Gafni.
Haim Ramon, a Cabinet minister, said no democratic country invites its
enemies to listen in on discussions of nuclear arms policy. "Do you want
us to announce to Iran and Iraq exactly what we have?" he asked.
Sitting in his cluttered office in Haifa recently, Makhoul defended his
attempt to spark a debate and argued that the issue was more pressing
now.
"The American administration decided to destroy weapons of mass
destruction in Iraq and they are threatening Iran," he said. "They
cannot continue giving a blind eye to what is going on in Israel."
Some experts contend Israel no longer needs nuclear weapons because Iraq
is no longer a threat and Israel's conventional forces are superior to
any combination of Arab armies. Israel's problems with Palestinian
extremists, they argue, cannot be remedied by nuclear strikes.
"Israel has a direct interest in making sure no Muslim state acquires
the one weapon that could offset its conventional superiority, a nuclear
bomb," said Cirincione, the nonproliferation director at the Carnegie
Endowment. "One way to do that is by putting its own nuclear weapons on
the table."
Some Arab leaders advocate declaring the Middle East a zone free of
weapons of mass destruction. The process would be long, starting with
mutual pledges to give up weapons and the creation of a mechanism to
verify compliance.
Few Israelis think this is the right time to discuss it, because of the
level of violence with the Palestinians.
"Israel could accept the idea after two years of comprehensive peace in
the Middle East," said Ephraim Kam, deputy director of the Jaffee Center
for Strategic Studies in Tel Aviv. "Only then could we consider changing
our nuclear position."
Israel's Nuclear History
1949: France and Israel set up a joint nuclear research project. Israel
begins a geological survey of the Negev desert in search of uranium.
Recoverable amounts are found.
1952: Israel creates an atomic energy commission.
1953: Israeli researchers perfect a process for extracting uranium and a
new method of producing heavy water, providing the home-grown capability
to produce key nuclear materials.
1956: France and Israel agree in secret to build a nuclear reactor in
the Negev desert.
1960: U.S. intelligence determines that Israel has a secret nuclear
facility.
1965: Israel performs its first plutonium extraction; France helps
Israel develop its Jericho missiles.
1975: Israel receives nuclear-capable Lance missiles from the U.S.
1986: The Sunday Times of London exposes Israel's nuclear weapons
program, using information from a former Israeli nuclear technician,
Mordechai Vanunu, above. He is convicted of treason and sentenced to 18
years in prison.
1987: Israel test-fires the Jericho II missile.
2000: First test of submarine-launched missiles is reportedly made in
the Indian Ocean.
<<End Quote>>
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