William E. Colby served as the Director of the [[Central Intelligence Agency|CIA]] from 1973 to 1976. He shared the assumption that [[Israel]] had a few nuclear weapons and that if there was a collapse during the 1973 [[Yom Kippur War]], there was a possibility that [[Israel]] would use them. Colby believed that nuclear weapons would be used "only in an extreme situation."[^1] ### Footnotes [^1]: Hersh, Seymour M. *The Samson Option: Israel's Nuclear Arsenal and American Foreign Policy*. Random House, 1991. Chapter 17.